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Overcome these sins of the squat [Article, Video]

Posted by Pascal Landshoeft

May 19, 2017 10:00:00 AM

Overcome these sins of the squat

Hereby you find my sins on the squat and how some tips on how to avoid them. I hope they help you to become a better athlete and if you have any questions, remarks or want to share your own experience please comment.

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Ankle mobility

My nemesis after being a runner are my weak ankles. This seems to be a common problem amongst beginners for the squat. Spend some quality time with your ankles and hips to get the full range of motion for the squat before you progress to the bar. Cossack squats, Goblet squats and J Curls are great for this purpose. In addition, use some bands to get yourself into the lowest squat position you can get and improve range of motion inch by inch until you can do an ass to grass squat without any load. Take it from there.

Only trained low bar

The most common variations of the squat are the high bar squat, the low bar squat and the front squat. As I am a lazy person I opted for the movement pattern which was most appealing to an inflexible blob like me, the low bar squat, and trained the hack (If you missed that pun, look up hack squat) out of it. Make sure to train these forms of the squat. It will enrich your life immensely more than only doing one of them and will immediately turn you into an expert as most people have no clue what the different versions of the squat are. Cool, isn’t it?

Wrong breathing

If you want to get a hernia, there is one very effective way to achieve this.

  • Go to your nearest gym
  • Find a power rack with a barbell
  • Adjust the setup to your height
  • Put 2x times your bodyweight on the barbell
  • Unrack the the bar and do not brace to tighten your abdominal wall
  • Squat
  • Breath out at the lowest point of the squat
  • Done, you have a hernia. (and possibly a fractured skull and spine as a free bonus)

It was not that bad for me but I fixed my breathing way too late in the process coming very close to a hernia when I attempted my first 140kg squat. Lesson learned is to read up or go to YouTube and learn about proper breathing before you start to squat heavier. You can get away with poor breathing up to your body weight for the squat but after that it will hit you in the gut (literally).

Not enough box squats

Box squats are great and I did not do enough of them. Learn them, do them and cancel your gym membership find a place which is serious about strength in case they won’t let you. Enough said.

Weak lower back

Another mistake was not to incorporate more back extension, good mornings and glute ham raises into my regime to get a six pack on my back side. In fact, if you want to become a real strong bastard, aim to have abs on the front and the back. (I don’t have that, so don’t ask me how, but it’s easy to find people who do. Just look up any person which pulls more than 2 times bodyweight and is lighter than 100kg.)

Too little in my teenage years

I was big into strength training in my teenage years. Unfortunately, I spent most of my time on my chest. That was dumb, don’t do that.

Conclusion

The squat is a great exercise which will make you stronger and gives you confidence as not a lot of people do it well. To achieve a better squat than mine work on your ankle mobility, vary bar placement more than me, work on your explosiveness with box squats and train your lower back like others their abs. Once you are done sent me an Instagram video of you doing 200kg squat for reps while you laugh at me. Goal achieved (unless I outpace you and reply with 210kg for reps. Now we are friends :P).

Further reading

 

Topics: Lift stronger, Squat