An Unintended Squat Compliment

[Gary Gibson]

Check out this comment I got on one of my Youtube vids:

you're using a olympic / power lifter style lol. You need to go full blown o lifter or keep doing good mornings. Keep your torso more upright, you can look up when you hit the bottom so to maintain your arch.

This person doesn't realize it, but they just paid me a huge compliment. That combo is EXACTLY what I was going for.

I believe an ideal squat is somewhere between a high bar Olympic style squat and a good morning. Fred "Dr. Squat" Hatfield uses the term "athletic squat." I think it's what Rip coaches well (the only difference is I drive my traps into the bar after the bounce in order to maintain the back angle when things get really heavy).

By "full blown O lifter" I'm guessing the poster means high bar which we all should know by now means more quads at the expense of hamstring involvement. Good mornings of course hammer the hams and leave the quads out almost entirely.

[Nauticus]

Yeah, there's this misconception that low bar squats are just a squat with a good morning tacked on.. the torso is not actively raising as it does in a good morning. The hamstrings anchor it upright while the hips drive up. By the time the knees and hips are locked out, the torso is basically upright. I've seen that piece of advice - "torso upright" - too many times to count. Torso upright with low bar position = less hamstring involvement and knee problems.

[misspelledgeoff]

Gary I've been meaning to ask about this cue, 'drive traps into the bar' to maintain back angle.

how is this in contrast to Rip's coaching? As opposed to his cue of 'keeping the chest up'? Is there a real difference in squat movement between the two, or is it just a difference in coaching cues to effect the same fundamental squat technique?

I ask because 'keep the chest up' hasn't been that useful a cue for me. But thinking about driving my traps into to the bar seems much more effective in keeping me from getting bent over when the weight is heavy.

With heavy squats, I have a strong tendency to lead hard with my ass out of the hole--making my back go horizontal--and then finishing with a good morning to straighten my back up. As horrible as this tecnique is, it's actually MUCH easier for me to lift heavy like this than with good form. Perhaps my quads are just girly weak in comparison to my ginormous ass.
At any rate, this tendency is so strong that only a strong cue like 'drive traps into bar' seems to help.

I think it's what Rip coaches well (the only difference is I drive my traps into the bar after the bounce in order to maintain the back angle when things get really heavy).

[Gary Gibson]

Gary I've been meaning to ask about this cue, 'drive traps into the bar' to maintain back angle.

how is this in contrast to Rip's coaching? As opposed to his cue of 'keeping the chest up'? Is there a real difference in squat movement between the two, or is it just a difference in coaching cues to effect the same fundamental squat technique?

I ask because 'keep the chest up' hasn't been that useful a cue for me. But thinking about driving my traps into to the bar seems much more effective in keeping me from getting bent over when the weight is heavy.

With heavy squats, I have a strong tendency to lead hard with my ass out of the hole--making my back go horizontal--and then finishing with a good morning to straighten my back up. As horrible as this tecnique is, it's actually MUCH easier for me to lift heavy like this than with good form. Perhaps my quads are just girly weak in comparison to my ginormous ass.
At any rate, this tendency is so strong that only a strong cue like 'drive traps into bar' seems to help.

"Keeping the chest up" is just maintaing thoracic extension, that is to say keeping the upper back tightly arched. (The lumbar region is neutral and braced by the forcefully pushed out rectus abdominis.) When it's all done right, your shoulder blades will be touching and your arched upper body will sort of "rest" on your braced abs.

Shoving the ass up in the air is what everyone wants to do because the combined muscularity and strength of the hip extensors is much greater than those of the knee extensors. Your body "wants" to eliminate the weak link quads and let the strong link glutes/hams/adductors take over the task at hand (elevating your back with a heavy ass barbell across it).

Your experience and mine are similiar (and you probably have the other half to this amulet I was given at birth) and resound with the powerlifter cry of "push your traps into the bar!" My synthesis of this advice with Rip's involves letting the bounce off the hams and resulting hip drive occur first, but then IMMEDIATELY driving with the traps. When you get really good at this, it occurs so smoothly that only the most minimal change in back angle can be detected and that's if there's any change at all. It's easier to pull off with a light (under 80% of 1RM) weight; with heavier weights or when fatigue is great the hand off between hip drive and trap drive becomes much more obvious. This can be seen in all my training videos involving reps. First, easy reps look smooth; last reps involve more hip drive followed by a good morning, as do limit reps (which is why I'm always posting them and asking if my max attempts look like I'm getting TOO bent over; I expect some form degradation when things get really heavy).

At lighter weights, you can just concentrate on making your hip muscles hold the correct angle so that the quads can contribute. At heavier weights or under conditions of great fatigue, I find that I really have to forget that and just concentrate on drving my traps into the bar to get the same result of holding a decent back angle.

If you look through my training vids, you can see that before I started concentrating on driving my traps into the bar, my back would get flat quickly and stay that way. In the later vids, my back angle only deteriorates under fatigue or on new max attempts...and even then it's not as bad as when I was just thinking "hip drive" instead of "hip bounce, then trap drive."

[kabab]

The "chest up" cue didn't worked for me either, but after I looked at a lot of squat form at Rip's forum I found one that he gives the cue "Keep your trunk tight". so before each rep I take a huge breath and tighten everything up this seems to work better for me than the chest up cue, maybe you should try it.

P.S
Gary holy crap, your so skinny how don't you get crashed by that weight you put on your back?

[Sgsolberg]

Yes, Gary is skinny... and crazy. He puts on and loses weight like no man's business! Just imagine how strong he will be when he fills out his weight for the next weight class up. Crazy...

[misspelledgeoff]

both helpful and lucid, as usual. thanks Gary.

[tescott]

I've always struggled with this issue too. Though, the cue that I found most helpful was thinking about the position of my knees. I need to think about getting them out over my toes, and leaving them there until the last 1/3 of the ascent. (as outlined in SSBT, but not for this purpose) This forces me to extend my hips and stand up straight, rather than bend over.

[Gary Gibson]

Thanks for the kind comments, all. I too often wonder what sort of lifter I'll be at ~200 lbs. I'm a little under a 2.5xbodyweight unequipped squat now and hope to be over 3xbodyweight when I fill out to 200. I would love to get well over 700 lbs equipped in competition when I'm actually competition size. We'll see how it goes. And it's going to take years.

As Rip often says, chest up is NOT raising the chest. Neither is driving the bar into the traps. It's just a cue that helps me keep back angle from degrading. The cues that Mark offers are just fine, too. Whatever keeps the torso tight and the back angle from being lost.