Center of Gravity: Hip Drive.

[SBegetis]

Hey Coach,

First off, let me thank you for all your work and commitment into getting people strong. I'm up to a modest 235x3x5 in the Squat which I train the most often, my hamstrings got much more flexible with a broomstick trying to overemphasize the bar over my heel (I know it's supposed to be for the middle of the foot, I just went above and beyond to get it over the heel), but with barely training the deadlift I pulled 405 conventional. I'm 6 ft tall, 183 pounds.

The reason I write is you make a valid point in a video, "This is the Sacrum. I want you to pretend the load is right here." I was scorned at my new university by people who high bar partial squats who think they know everything, because I'm lifting my butt in the air, I'm looking down, and I'm not leading with my chest, and I'm not shooting my hips forward, all things that KILL the hip drive. For some people so experienced in weightlifted I'm amused that they haven't figured out this importance. (I've filmed myself, my hips are in flexion, not my trunk. I know for a fact it's not a good morning). Besides the point, I remember reading from Kinesiology that the Body's center of Gravity is in front of the S2 vertebrae.

Also, the angles of a low bar squat are MUCH more realistic and applicable to everyday life. I figured out just by sitting on a chair that had no back; if my knee angle and hip angle were both 90 degrees I would have busted my ass backward. Also, getting UP OUT of the chair involves the remarkable act of leaning forward (as if we were placing the bar over the middle of the foot) and then DRIVING the HIPS up. I wish people would stop thinking the squat involves verticality and that we lead up with the chest. But I digress.....this is just a rant.

[Mark Rippetoe]

I sympathize.