Q&A – 11



Happy PR Friday
Post your weekly PR’s or training updates to the comments. Be on the lookout for a nice Christmas post this weekend. Happy Festivus in the mean time!

Kyle S. asks on the Facebook Fan Page:
What are some cues I should keep in mind for teaching my wife (or anyone) to high bar squat? I’ve looked on YouTube but I never know who is full of shit.

Dear Kyle,

I briefly answered this in the wall thread, but figured it would be good for others to hear too. Irre-fucking-gardless of type of squat, the knees need to be shoved out. This will prevent hip impingement — a pinching of the femur and the ASIS (hip bone) that can prevent full ROM, prevent the lumbar from maintaining extension, and can pinch tissues like skin, fat, tendons, or muscles. There’s no point in explaining it further when a comprehensive article has already been written. So “knees out” is an important cue for any squatting, including the high bar squat.

The chest also needs to be up so that the thoracic spine is held in extension from the time the bar is un-racked until it is re-racked. I’ve been meaning to do a post on this for a while, because I see a lot of you fucking it up. Think “chest into chin”, which is the cue that means, “pull your chest up as high as you can, as if you were going to try and touch your chin without actually lowering the chin”.

The eyes need to be forward. Some look up, but this puts the cervical spine in extension and I’m not a fan of that. Eyes straight ahead will help maintain proper positioning throughout the entire spine.

Those last two things (the chest and eyes) are passive cues — the lifter shouldn’t have to think about them at all because they should be automatic every time. Assuming “knees out”, “chest to chin”, and the eye positioning is all correct (or at least the passive cues are automatic), then “heels” can be cued. That’s the cue to imply “drive the heels out of the bottom” in order to prevent any forward torso inclination during the ascent as a result of shifting the weight to the balls of the feet.

And for fuck’s sake, if you’re trying to high bar squat without weightlifting shoes then that’s the first thing to correct. Here’s the gear post.

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