If a lifter I'm coaching lets his knees slide forward at the bottom of a squat, I have to correct this critical error. I am the coach, and my job is correct movement instruction. My job is not to figure out a reason why this inherently inefficient movement pattern is really just fine if that's the way the lifter wants to do it, and thereby excuse his inefficiency and my coaching inadequacy. My job is to understand the exercise and its mechanics, to teach it correctly, to evaluate its performance, and to provide correction to the lifter when it is wrong.

This correction is accomplished with short easily-comprehended “signals” that are called Cues. Cues are essentially reminders of pieces of the teaching instructions that have already been given but are not being performed correctly. They can be verbal, visual, or tactile, depending on the circumstances. A visual cue might be the coach standing in front of the lifter with hands pointing out as a signal for the lifter's knees. A tactile cue might be a tap on the sacrum below the lifter's belt as a reminder to drive hips up. But most common and effective cueing is verbal.

Cues are given during the set – actually during the rep – allowing the movement to be corrected in real time. Cues are designed to evoke an immediate response: a reaction, not an analysis. Cues are not explanations. They deal with ideas that have already been discussed, not new material that has not already been explained and understood. If a rep is 5 seconds long, any cue that can possibly affect the performance of that rep must trigger an immediate reaction within the part of the movement that is not being expressed correctly.

Therefore a cue cannot be a metaphor, or a slang expression, or really anything except a command such as you would give to your dog. “Proud chest” is not a cue, but a metaphor for the pose of a nautical hero in the prow of his ship at the Zenith of his career after an historic battle at sea. It does not mean anything that does not require interpretation. “Chest up” is a cue, as is “Knees out,” “Hips back,” “Bend over,” “Nipples to the floor,” “Hips first,” and anything that can be immediately translated into an action. Anything more complicated requires re-racking the bar and explaining the concept again, as does any cue that is not responded to after the second attempt.

Cues must be intrusive to be perceived by a lifter under a heavy bar, since a heavy bar has already commanded the lifter's attention. A verbal cue must be short, loud (the heavier the weight, the louder the cue), and immediately understandable, so as to break through to the part of the brain that must be involved in reorganizing a movement pattern. A long, quiet, peaceful, tranquil, polite, respectful cue will not be perceived by a lifter under a heavy weight.

They must also be given at the appropriate time to affect the error being displayed, since there is an inherent delay in receiving and perceiving any sensory input. A cue for the knees at the bottom of the squat must be given before the bar starts down, and a hips-up cue must be given before the bottom is reached. For most trainees, two cues per rep is too much information – restrict yourself to one correction at a time for maximum effect, and fix the second problem during the next set.

A cue for a power clean must be given before the start of the pull, since the entire clean takes little more than one second to complete, and no cue can be perceived and acted upon that quickly. A power snatch is obviously the same, as is any Olympic lift. Less obvious is the press, which must be cued before the rep starts because you can't change anything about a press after it starts up from the shoulders.

These lifts are either made or missed immediately after they start, because bar path errors happen at that time and bar path errors are the limiting factor in cleans, snatches, and presses, due to their sensitivity to mechanical inefficiency. The bar path both determines and is a reflection of the lifter's interaction with the bar, and if the bar path is wrong enough the lifter cannot generate enough force to compensate for the inefficiency if the load is close enough to a limit rep. Cueing the quick lifts requires an advanced understanding of the mechanics of the movement patterns, an ability to analyze both body and bar path quickly, and the ability to prioritize the best correction for what might be a complex error.

The deadlift is a little different since it may take 6 seconds to lock out a limit rep, but if it comes off the floor from the wrong position it cannot be completed. You can cue the shrug at the top, but a deadlift pulled off the floor too far forward of the mid-foot will not get much past the knees, and a deadlift that stops above the knees is a missed deadlift.

So the timing of the cue is critical, which means that coaching these lifts requires an awareness of how cues are perceived and reacted to, as well as familiarity with the lifter's ability to process input about the lifts. A coach that persistently cues a pull at the knees or cues a press after the bar is overhead does not understand this important aspect of communication.

And in a stunning bit of professional honesty, cues are often lies – baldfaced lies designed to evoke a response that the often-woefully-inadequate truth cannot produce. If “Knees out!” as a cue does not work after a couple of attempts, have the lifter rack the bar, and then tell him, “See that wall on the left of the platform, and see that bench on the right of the platform? I want you to hit the wall with the outside of your knee, and I want you to knock the bench over with the outside of your other knee.”

“But I can't do that.”

“Do it anyway. Take your stance and do it right now.”

The exaggeration of the movement pattern produced by this instruction will get the knees out more than they have been before, and perhaps more than they need to be. But that's fine right now, because the overcorrection will average out once the load is added. Then the lifter takes the bar out of the rack and the cue becomes “Left wall!” and “Hit the bench!” and the knees will track correctly along the feet according to the model of the squat. Lies, but we're not under oath – we're here to produce correct movement, and if it takes an overcorrection to produce the correction, that's just fine.

So here's an important thing to consider: if you have not personally performed the lifts, and personally experienced the problems you're trying to correct in the lifter you're coaching, and personally corrected them yourself under the bar with a heavy weight on your back or in your hands, this is all theoretical bullshit to you. You cannot coach your way through problems you have not solved. This is not to say that you cannot coach a 750 squat unless you've squatted 750 – rather it is to say that unless you've corrected your own squatting at what to you was a heavy weight, you don't know that what you're telling your lifter actually applies to the rep you are trying to correct.

Subsequent to acquiring sufficient personal experience under the bar, learning the basic science of the lifts, understanding and memorizing the steps used to teach the lifts, and learning to visually evaluate the lifter's compliance with the model of the movement pattern, learning to cue the corrections is the most important function of the coach. But it is based on the requisite understanding of what the lifter is experiencing under the bar, which ultimately determines the best way to provide corrections for the errors people make. 

---

Discuss in Forums