Transitioning a client from high bar to low bar

[Ben Baker]

Hey Andy,

First off, I'd like to say I admire and respect all of the work you do for Starting Strength and I reference your work in Practical Programming and SS: BBT3 all of the time. I have a quick question for you. I tried searching for the answer to my question in the forums, and found some things that came close to answering my question, but I wanted a more specific answer from someone with more knowledge than I.

I've been training a client for about 3 months now on the SS LP. He is not doing power cleans or low bar squats due to poor mobility and injury history in his shoulders/ rotator cuff + a cervical spinal fusion a few years ago. Thus, we've been performing high bar squats since we started and he has progressed from 75x5x3 to 185x5x3 this past Tuesday. As part of out warm ups, I've been having him perform the low bar squat stretch as detailed by Paul Horn and about 2 weeks ago he was finally able to put the bar in the correct low bar position, so I believe he's ready to start performing low bar squats.

My questions to you is, how would I go about programming them into his routine? He's been making great progress and I know resetting to a weight that he could perform proper low bar squats for 3x5 and progressing from there is probably the best way to go, but I don't want to shake his confidence too badly by resetting too much on the weught (he's a bit sensitive about regressing, even it's for a good reason light to work on technique or after coming back from a lay off).

Any advice you could give me would be greatly appreciated! And I hope I didn't put this into the wrong forum, if I did, feel free to move it.

Thank you!

[Andy Baker (KSC)]

Probably need to do a small reset just to get him used to the change in form. He's gonna feel like he's "falling forward" when he switches over so you'll have to constantly cue him to lean forward more. As soon as the weight feels heavy, he'll start reverting back to high-bar mechanics so you'll really have to be coaching him hard during his heavy work sets.

Just explain to him that he will eventually get more weight this way even if you temporarily need a reset.

And you cannot mix the 2 at this point. Either all high bar or all low bar. Don't go back and forth