Week Two - Rest Day

"The more I learn, the more I learn how little I know." -- Socrates

Matt and I received our new Pendlay Do-Win lifting shoes this week (Which are awesome, btw.). We decided to grab an empty bar and a video camera to see how our base squats were fairing.

What a lesson in humility...

We quickly realized where our sticking points were in the squat. That's the beauty of the program we're doing. Every training day, the goal is to lift, assess, and correct. Our sticking point is leaning forward in the squat (According to EliteFTS this is the most common squat problem). I finally broke the habit of my knees buckling inward, but our squats can quickly turn into raised good-mornings. So now that we've assessed the problem, what's the correction?

First off, our anthropometry comes into play on how vertical we can get. Matt and I will be less vertical in our squat since our legs are longer than our torsos. but the goal is to strengthen our bodies correctly so we utilize all the proper muscle tensions to get that bar back up.

Forward motion is caused by improper back tension. A few exercises to help strengthen this are back extensions, good mornings, planks, and reverse hypers. An awesome series by Matt Wenning called So You Think You Can Squat? addresses this issue and provides ideas for accessory work to strengthen the back.

Another cause of forward motion in the squat is improper Hip/Hamstring mobility. We'll help this by making sure the hips are open and warm by including more hip mobility in our warmup.

Dan John has a great video on practices to open up the hips for proper Squat Form.

Some other great openers are Yoga Frogs, bootstrappers, Goblet and Tea Cup Squats, light O Squats, and front squats (For an explanation on how the Front Squat fixes the Back Squat, there is a great post by Mark Rippetoe on the Starting Strength Forum. The squat is a hip lift, Mark Rippetoe has a great video for fixing this. An Example of these can be found on this video from Fixing the Squat by Again Faster

One thing to note: There are different techniques employed by different squat and lifting styles (Olympic vs. Powerlighting). For reference, the article Olympic vs. Powerlifting Squats by Geoff Neupert and Mike Robertson explains the difference and how to incorporate them both.

In summary, the lift will correct itself as you keep your back properly tense and tight (Causing "big chest"), your hips open, your knees properly coming over your toes, (1 inch over), and your hips loaded and driven through the movement.

So here's to getting in the hole and driving out of it!