Active Hip 2.0: The Directors' Cut

"...active hip is best understood as the use of an actively locked lumbar extension and actively shoved-out knees, which results in a below-parallel squat that incorporates a stretch reflex using all the muscles of the posterior chain in the most optimal way possible. The active hip gets the thighs out of the way of the pelvis so good depth can be more easily obtained. At the same time it makes the squat stronger because of the now-active use of the external rotators holding the femurs out so that both external rotators and adductors can contribute to hip extension. This produces a more effective use of more muscles over a wider range of motion."

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I love reading these articles. They never fail to provide a new way to look at a familiar problem.

From reading the books, and the myriad posts on this board, I knew that shoving my knees out would better enable me to squat more effectively. When the weight gets heavy, I find it difficult to keep my knees shoved out on the way down. However, I find it even more difficult on the way up if I didn't keep my knees shoved out on the way down.

The bourbon has me rambling, but the gist is this article reinforces the necessity of keeping your knees shoved out while squatting.

Thanks for the additional insight,
Sean

Another great article!... seems I've read it before somewhere?

just curious as to how i may know if i have the kinesthetic sense "to get my erector muscles to contract to arch my lower back with no tension from the
hamstrings interfering?"

If you know how to voluntarily arch your lower back, and can do so hard enough to make it start to cramp, you're performing the contraction properly.

Coach,

Another great article that helped me immensely, thank you. I had a problem with my lower back arching. I tried doing a ton of stretches and nothing seemed to work. After reading the article, I just shoved my knees out as hard as I could and had NO problems maintaining the arch and I even jumped up about 20 lbs yesterday on my squat with no issues. It actually felt a bit lighter. Anyway, thanks again, keep the info coming.

I'm no lifting coach, but I have taught the lifts out of the book/dvd/forum to about 4 of my friends/siblings and one thing that seems to work is to tell them to stop trying to be nice to the weight and do it with a mean streak. This works best with the knees out problem with the squat and the jump in the power clean.

I can say "keep your knees out" but SHOVING introduces the violent, aggressiveness of the movement and is a great cue that registers as 'hey this is some important shit' and once you start consistently doing it, you never even think of going back to knees in

Great article

From an anatomical perspective the article makes sense, but for a small percentage of the population the either the feets have to be further apart or the back will have to be more upright to assume the bottom position. In such cases, what would be the better tradeoff? Off course, other factors such as adductor extensibility would come in to play when moving the knees out.

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Originally Posted by Vegard Nilsen

From an anatomical perspective the article makes sense, but for a small percentage of the population the either the feets have to be further apart or the back will have to be more upright to assume the bottom position. In such cases, what would be the better tradeoff? Off course, other factors such as adductor extensibility would come in to play when moving the knees out.

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I have some questions about all of this myself. Is not shoving the knees out and even widening the stance of the feet incorporating the hips more, something we are trying to maximize with the low bar squat? I watched a video of Louie Simmons demonstrating a wide stance box squat on this guy and he not only couldn't stand back up, he fell backwards onto his butt. Louie told him it was because of weak hips, and then proved it. He told the guy to try to stand by simply forcing his feet outward, which signaled his hips. His ascend into standing position was then not only possible, it was explosive.

I wonder would the box squat not help train those with weaker hips and also, why do we not squat with a wider stance than "shoulder width"? I ran upon a study that seems to correlate what I'm talking about. It demonstrated maximum weight lifted with feet at exactly 150% bi-acromial width stance, which also directly reflected an article I read about doing bench press with the same exact width grip, though that was done with EMG which I have to question the validity of. Weights, however, don't lie. So along with this new article, I'm that much more confused as to why most people shoulder width squat in the first place.

Influence Of Stance Width On Power Production During The Bar... : The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research

A wider stance makes it harder to hit depth. Shoulder/armpit width typically allows for proper depth and stretch reflex, and it is easily quantifiable/repeatable for a novice. It's a starting point and there is room for variation, but you're probably not going to get too too far from shoulder width if you're training for strength and/or in a federation that judges depth.