Kill the bounce, own the bottom. Builds control and brute strength.
Stay tight in the pause, don't let your back round or your chest collapse.
Sitting motionless below parallel deletes the stretch reflex, so the quads have to generate every newton of the drive up from a dead start. The glutes assist out of the hole where paused reps are won or lost. It is the go-to fix for lifters who divebomb their squats and vanish at the bottom, building both bottom-position strength and the confidence to sit in the hole.
Two to three seconds of genuine stillness, no sinking and no creeping upward. Count it honestly, because a half-second touch is just a slow squat and will not build the dead-start strength you are after.
The bounce out of the hole is worth a lot, and the pause takes it away, so a meaningful drop from your normal squat is expected. That gap is exactly the raw bottom-end strength the exercise builds.
Both. The long stop happens where the quads are most stretched, which is a strong hypertrophy signal, and the dead-start drive builds strength out of the hole. That combination is why they show up in both powerlifting and bodybuilding programmes.
