my paused squat has almost caught up completely with my comp squat. since adding the variants, it has decreased my comp squat frequency to once a week. i think this might be having a negative effect on my ability to utilize the bounce out of bottom. do you ever see this, where squat variants like pins and pauses may be negatively affecting the comp squat? would you replace the variants with another regular squat slot? (or just continue doing the variants with the mentality of its ok, all that means is my pauses are getting stronger)
I don’t really think so, no. Rather, I think there are a handful of confounders:
Different levels of fatigue on the day you do the variation vs the comp lift
Some “cheating” going on on the variations, e.g. non-paused paused squats or above parallel pin squats (also using a belt can narrow the gap)
Mental approach to variations different than comp lifts
That said, I don’t think there’s going to be a huge difference in your comp lift and close variants either. If there’s a meet coming up, I’d probably have an individual like this do the comp lifts more for ~2 weeks just to hedge my bets.