My suit is HUGE on me...amazingly huge but Geared lifters will use the box squat even more because the suit acts similar to the box...as it will stop you in the hole and you can sit back farther with a suit on than without. Imagine having a very light weight wall behind you allowing you to sit back against it with the tip of your butt...leaning into it...that is how a suit helps you to be able to sit back.
The suit also often causes more problems than it can help (knees turning it, losing arch, rounding shoulders, can't keep your air, etc...) so geared and on the box is a great way to practice.
You are 100% correct...it's about doing what works...WORKS for you! Box squats don't work for a lot of people simply because they don't perform them properly. I still find tons of mistakes in my squat sessions when I review them on video.
i used a suit for a couple years... managed a 485@148ish in the gym before i lost it... some asshole hater at the gym stole it out of my bag when i left it in the weightroom for a couple minutes to piss... so i decided to go raw and show them i could do it without...
i will get back into geared lifting, i had just bought a bench shirt as well and barely used it twice, though i probably need to go up a size now in the shirt...
i could get my suit on by myself, just had to use the pegs on the squat rack to get the straps up...
get a tighter suit dammit!
ive done some box squatting, but nothing serious... im sure a time will come when i need it, but for now im just alternating between cycles of ed coan deadlift routine with front squats and zerchers and then smolov when i take a break from deads...
so far this is working out great... neither lift drops much as i work hard on the other... i was trying to do both heavy deads and squats in the same week for a while and it just wasnt getting me anywhere...
maybe when i run smolov again this late summer i will try it with box squats, could be fun... the way ive done them look just about how yours are, though my bar only has 405 on it lol.... i do use knee wraps when ive done them though, as i tend to get a little more pressure in the knees doing these, would that be normal? i do drive out conciously, they dont buckle in...