Category: Training

How Are You Teaching the Squat?

You have a young athlete who walks into your weight room for the very first time. He has never participated in exercise other than his youth football games a few times a week, let alone any sort of weight training. You decide you want your athletes to squat today, so you grab a 25-pound kid bar, have the athlete put it on his/her back and instruct to squat down and come back up.

You notice it looks terrible. The athlete’s body flies all other the place, knees are caving in, and heels are no where close to the ground. What do you do now?

The real question is, what should you have done first?

At Performance Edge in Lansdowne, Virginia, Dave Mikel and his staff take each athlete (and adult) through an initial evaluation. Not every person moves the same, so why do the same thing?

As a strength coach, this assessment is key in observing how well athletes move, their training age, and knowledge base of training. Determining each individual’s strengths, weaknesses and deficiencies drives how we begin and progress each individuals programming. Simply sitting down and standing up may seem simple, but for an athlete who doesn’t have these patterns ingrained in them, you will need to figure out how to cue, coach, and progress and regress the squat.

Owner J.L. Holdsworth from The Spot Athletics, in Columbus, Ohio utilizes a very simple yet effective process in teaching the squat that we at Performance Edge believe in as well.

“The programing should adhere to the needs of the individual, not the individual meeting the needs of the program!”
J.L. Holdsworth

Wall Squats 

The first progressions that JL will have an athlete do are wall squats. These squats use an internal cueing method that makes an athlete conscious of keeping their chest up and sitting their butt back first to avoid “eating” the wall.

“Not all athletes need to start here, it is just a good drill to put them into if they are having trouble grasping the pattern.”
J.L. Holdsworth

Cues: What you will see with a lot of young athletes is that they break at their knees before the hips. Continue to tell them “hips back first” and “hips back”. Another big issue is that athletes often keep their chests down. Yes, you can say “chest up, look up”, but some kids still won’t understand it.

“Let me see your logo” is a great cue for athletes. This will keep their chest up by thinking about having to show you the “TROPHIES STACKIN” logo on their shirt (or whatever logo is on their shirt that day). “Knees out” and “spread the floor” are also some good internal and external cues to get kids to keep their knees out, especially when coming up from a squat.

Box Squat

Box squatting is an excelling squatting drill to get your athletes to think about “hips back.” JL starts his athletes here before they move on to a free squat to really engage that posterior chain when squatting. Coaching points for the box squat include a wider stance, toes pointing out, hips back first, knees should not come over their toes, nice controlled descent to the box, don’t “plop” on the box, and stand straight up without the knees shifting forward.

If an athlete is still unable to grasp the concept of controlling themselves to the box, build the box height higher. This means that their hamstrings and glutes are so weak that they won’t let them descend without falling down. If they can do a great box squat, load it goblet style with a dumbbell or kettlebell.

Getting to depth: Weak glutes or poor hip and ankle mobility will stop any athletes from hitting depth in the squat. So how do we fix this? One method is putting plates under their heels. This automatically puts them into a hinge, so it is a smoother transition into the squatting pattern. This also helps with ankle mobility as well.
Another good drill is to have an athlete put plates under their heels and stand in front of a box while holding a light plate out in front of them. Then they must squat down until the plate hits the box and hold. Make sure the box is an appropriate height, and keep the athlete down in that position to feel what it is like for their glutes to be working hard at the bottom of a squat.

Depending on your standards, proper depth is the most difficult aspect of squat technique to ascertain. As a coach, this simple fact is why the goblet, front, or even box squat is such a valuable progression and regression. Depth will be the most prevalent discrepancy when transitioning to the [back] squat.
– Mark Watts

Free Squatting

Box squatting is a great drill and very good for athletes, however, it still won’t make you better at the squat. Take away the box and move into a kettlebell goblet squat. JL recommends starting older athletes and adults with at least a 35-pound kettlebell to progress up to that 45-pound barbell. Young athletes will start with a 20-pound kettlbell, because his athletes will start with a 25-pound barbell.

Front Squat

Front squats are great because they force an athlete to use all of the cues that have been engrained in them by coaches. If they don’t keep their chest up, the bar will drop forward. If they don’t keep their knees out and break at their knees first, the chest will usually fall forward, hence the bar falls forward again. Just make sure you teach the athletes to get into a position of comfort, either rack position or the cross-over position. Elbows have to be up.

Teaching is Learning Twice

Teach your athletes to coach each other. The more you teach them, and have them to teach other fellow athletes, the better they will be. Tell them what to look for in a squat. When an athlete is squatting, ask an athlete watching, “what could you say to make this squat better, what do YOU see wrong?”

Adapted from a blog by ERIC CRESSEY, July 1. 2015 “How Much Work Are You Actually Doing?”

Something to think about (both for those who train and for those who don’t have time – read “maybe you do have time”): When you “work”…do you waste time? What’s “work”? Think about Force x Distance. Also consider your load and range of motion….make sure they’re both appreciable. Then take it a step further and work w/out wasting time. Do significant work w/out a lot of standing around.

In the general fitness industry, this is a more common problem than we realize. There are a lot of people struggling to make progress because they think that they train a lot harder than they actually do. No fault of their own, however, as a lot of them have never been taught how much volume and intensity is needed for progress, and even fewer have actually gotten into a training environment that forced them to take on a challenging training program.

So, how do you know if you’re working hard or not? Is it sweat on your shirt, or wobbly legs as you leave the gym? Sure, those are somewhat subjective signs, but they’re a good start.

Speaking more objectively, though, lifters should be able to get in warm-up work and then 20+ sets of mostly compound lifts in 60-75 minutes. And, in most cases (particularly beginner and intermediate lifters), the weight used on these sets should increase from week to week.

If you’re not able to get that much quality work in over the course of that much time, there is a good chance you’re doing too much waiting around between sets, or you’re getting caught up doing some other low-priority training initiative.

From time to time, it’s useful to do a “training audit” to see where you stand on this front. Review your recent programs to see if you’re getting in enough quality work to continue making progress. Even accomplished powerlifters do this and realize that with all the heavy singles and long rest periods, they were actually getting in very little total work in training sessions.

You may also find that you’re doing so much work that you could benefit from a back-off period. That might come in the form of volume, intensity, or frequency reductions. The important thing is that you are cognizant of the hard work it takes to succeed. And, even more importantly, you’ll understand where you are relative to that benchmark.

If you read this article and think it might pertain to your training, take better advantage of your training time…work harder – you’ll see the results. For those of you who don’t have time to “work out”….consider that maybe you do – but you will have to “work”! We’d love to help – it’s our passion!

A note from Dave:

All too often at Performance Edge my staff and I hear many if not most of my prospective or new female clients share their concerns with regard to bulking up by lifting weights. As a professional strength coach that has had the privilege of coaching professionally, collegiately and working with aspiring young men and women the past eighteen to twenty years, I can say that this is entirely not true. Many of the beliefs women have with regard to keeping healthy, getting or staying lean are not based on quantifiable research or facts. If you are at all interested in learning the truth and become stronger and healthier then please read the informative article below by Tami Bellon. Knowledge is Power!

The Female guide to Getting Lean

Calorie Intake

If you weigh 200lbs and are only eating 1,200 calories, you are not eating enough. That doesn’t mean break out the donuts, that means increase your protein consumption – to start. A general guide for calorie intake is your bodyweight times ten to twelve. Example: 200lbs x 10 = 2000 cal.
 
You may be thinking this is a lot of food, but it is not. Women have been taught that starving themselves will make them lose weight. In reality, we don’t just want to be smaller do we? Don’t we want to be leaner, too? I’m not saying bodybuilding lean, but enough to see a little definition in your arms and/or abs. Most women would answer me with a very loud, “Yes!”
 
Calorie intake is just one component of many that go into this machine we call our body. The body is much smarter than the average person. You may trick it once or twice, but it will learn how to overcome what you are trying to do to it. The body will combat under eating by hording everything you feed it. Then you jump on a piece of cardio equipment and pedal your little heart out for extensive amounts of time, and still – nothing. Why is that? Keep reading!
 
Drop the Carbs Down

You don’t have to completely eliminate them; doing so would only set you up for failure. Do you know what foods are considered high in carbohydrates?
           
The foods to reduce in this category would be sugar, which includes candy, cakes, pies, etc. But it also includes fruit. I hear so many people say how healthy they eat and then proceed to tell me they load up on fruit. Fruit is mostly sugar. Natural sugar is still sugar, and it still makes you fat if you eat too much of it. Okay, so we have sugar clarified. More foods that are sugary: pasta, potatoes, some other veggies – research those. Don’t forget rice and bread are sugary, too.
 
Another misconception is that brown rice and pasta and whole grain breads don’t do the same thing as their regular white counterparts. Truth is – they do. They just have a little more fiber and digest more slowly, so you don’t get quite the same insulin spike, but they are still a carbohydrate and they can still cause fat gain if you overeat them.
 
So what we have learned is to drop carbs down. In general, I start people out at 25-30% carbohydrates in their diet and assess from there. How are you going to do that if you don’t know how many sugars and carbohydrates are in what you’re eating? Think about it. Take responsibility for what goes in your mouth.
 
Increase Your Protein and Don’t Fear Fat

Beef, chicken, turkey, fish, etc. There are studies out now that are proving our governments “lean meat only” consumption isn’t necessary.
 
For example:
 
CLA is a substance that accumulates in the fat of grass-fed ruminant animals-fats like butter and tallow-that has anti-cancer effects.
Industry apologists have now done an about-face and are campaigning against the trans in favor of the liquid oils – while using this opportunity of heightened public interest to continue demonizing the fats we should all be using, the natural saturated animal fats in animal foods and tropical oils.
 
Increased protein helps maintain the lean mass (muscle) you already have. You want to keep this, as it increases your metabolism. Adding a little more lean mass is usually a good thing. As a general starting point, I think 40% of daily food intake should be protein. I have seen great results with this.

Resistance Training

Ladies, listen very closely: you will not bulk up from resistance training. If you start getting bigger, it is most likely because you are also eating more. You may put on a little lean mass, but it should not cause you to outgrow your pants. In fact, if you clearly know what foods are acceptable, watching your nutrition, and doing resistance training, you should be getting smaller and leaner.
 
Just because you work out doesn’t mean it’s time to go get a pizza because you “just worked off the calories.” It’s simple, if you have a high body fat percentage; you are eating too much, unless there are medical reasons surrounding your weight in which case you should be even more attentive to your food intake.
 
Resistance training has some proven benefits:
Improved muscle strength
Weight management
Prevention and control of health conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and arthritis
Pain management
Improved mobility and balance
Improved posture
Decreased risk of injury
Increased bone density and strength
Reduced body fat
Boosted metabolism
Improved sleep patterns
Increased self-esteem
Enhanced performance of everyday tasks
 
A Little Cardio Goes a Long Way

Women today go way overboard with cardio. I have a simple explanation for what this does to your body. It is well known to those of us in the industry that excessive cardio (meaning more than 45 minutes steady state or 30 minutes of high intensity interval training) is too much for the average person.
 
After this amount of time, your body will start to become catabolic, which means it starts to eat muscle for fuel instead of food recently eaten and fat stores. All those ladies you see on the cardio equipment day after day, who always look the same, are actually eating up their muscle.
 
Do you realize what this means? They are lowering their metabolism because now they have less lean mass. Basically, if you would give them a body composition test, they would be fatter.
 
Becoming catabolic also happens when we don’t eat enough. Starving yourself will only make you carry more fat. When you can’t stand starving yourself anymore and go back to “normal” eating, don’t expect a positive result. All the scam diets that tell you to drink nothing but shakes or eat only five hundred calories a day, they make you catabolic and set you up for failure. Don’t be lazy. Take control of your body.
 
All of it comes back to being balanced and approaching your health and fitness from a variety of angles. While these guidelines are general, they work and they are a great place to start whether your goals are athletic or aesthetic. Cardio, strength, and nutrition are all important and all build upon each other. Focusing too much on any one aspect while leaving others at the wayside won’t have you be the best athlete you can be.