Do Squats, Righteous!

Most, when doing squats are thinking more about getting from point A to point B than about properly conditioning their intended target muscles. They just get through the movement, often with haphazard, sloppy, and inherently dangerous form. Your focus, though, to safely and effectively achieve some righteous thigh and glute condition is precise and controlled movement, within the boundries of points A and B. Before you approach the alter, er...squat rack, annoint yourself with the wisdom of the good book of squats.

Bar placement

First, get under the bar while it's still on the rack. Place your hands outside of shoulder width. Your ideal hand placement on a squat is much like it would be on a shoulder press.

Make sure your elbows hang directly beneath your hands. Positioning your hands wider than your elbows makes it more likely that you'll rotate your shoulders inward, and hunch forward, whereas, pulling them close, between your shoulders and your elbows tends to leave you feeling cramped.

For easy symmetry reference, align your grip via the thin breaks in the gnurling on Olympic bars.

To correctly center yourself beneath the bar try putting your middle fingers directly over this break in the gnurling. Now, place your shoulders firmly into the bar, to get comfortable before you take the weight from the rack. You'll find that positioning the bar just above the superior aspect (top) of the spine of the shoulder blade beats resting the bar higher, right on your neck, every time. While keeping your shoulders in contact with the bar, bring your hips and feet forward, under and in line, vertically, with the bar. Your ankle and hip joints are to be aligned directly beneath the bar to make sure that there is no torque placed on your lower back when you initiate the lift from the rack. Now (without lifting the bar), press up into the bar. Tighten your thighs, trunk and mid-section and then smoothly raise the bar, straight up from the rack. Do this carefully, and only lift high enough to clear the rung supporting the bar so you avoid bumping into the rung that on most racks (depending on your height) is immediately above the bar. Carefully step back, outside of the squat rack.

Foot placement

For now, use a standard just-wider-than-shoulder-width stance.

Once you are outside of the rack with the bar resting securely on your shoulders, make certain that your weight is distributed evenly across the bottoms of each of your feet. Avoid raising your heels and balancing on the balls of your feet, or, allowing your feet to invert (or roll inward). It's unlikely that your feet will be rolling outward, (or everting,) but if they do, adjust to bring them into a flat, stable position on the floor. Feel the ground with your whole foot.

Point both your feet outward about 30 degrees, give or take a bit. You might be surprised how often exercisers have one foot pointing due north while the other is at anorth, northwest angle. Preserve your bi-lateral exercise symmetry for balanced, equal, and more precise physical development. This also lowers the chance of your incurring an injury via uneven stress or wear on your joints.

Alignment

When you squat, make sure that your knee caps track over the first two toes of each of your feet. Picture this for a moment: your toes are pointing straight ahead but your knees are moving well outside of your feet. Or, your toes are pointing outward, almost as though you are doing a plie, yet your knees and thighs are pointing nearly straight ahead. Does this seem like it may create some unwanted torsion within your knee and ankle joints? You betcha! Preserve your correct knee / toe alignment to ensure the safest squat possible.

Also, spinal alignment is often neglected when doing squats. Preserve and protect your back by maintaining your neutral spinal alignment while squatting.

Usually, when an athlete or exerciser is out of alignment their lower back is rounded, their neck is hyper-extended or they sink below their individual ROM and their pelvis tucks under.

Rounding your lower back while squatting is hazardous because it puts compressive forces on the anterior (frontal) aspects of your intervertebral disks and expansive forces on the posterior (rear) aspects of these same disks. You may suffer vertebral degeneration, herniated disks, bulging disks, nerve impingement and irritation, strained back muscles and mild to severe pain from squatting with poor form. Always assume a neutrally aligned spine when squatting.

Hyper extending your neck while rising from a squat is quite common, and is often taught as the correct method of maintaining a chest up position, especially with apprecialbe loads. Again, similar stresses are applied to your cervical spine (neck) as are cited above regarding your lumbar spine (lower back) when you look up at the ceiling when returning to the starting position during a squat. The safe, and more comfortable method of squatting is to keep your head in a neutrally aligned position above your shoulders throughout the exercise. You may feel as though your are looking down, but you aren't. Your trunk is angled forward somewhat, so relative to your upper body you are looking staright ahead, neither up nor down. Always keep your neck in neutral alignment while performing squats.

Also, keeping your elbows directly beneath your hands--pointing straight down toward the floor–tends to promote a neutral alignment. At least keep your upper and forearms in line with your body, rather than pointing behind you.

At the bottom of this movement many athletes sink well below what is appropriate for their individual bodies. By this I mean some exercisers are able to easily perform a full squat, in perfect alignment, whereas many others are unable, at least initially, to do anymore than a 1/4 squat without losing their proper alignment.

You know you've reached the limit of your safe range of motion when squatting because your pelvis tucks under at the bottom of the movement. Have a friend, training partner or qualified trainer tell you at what point you come out of alignment, and begin to tuck under. Just above that point is the limit to your individual range of motion. Exceding this range sets you up for strained ligaments, muscles and spinal degeneration. Always be safe and use a range of motion that is consistent with your own body, your specific goals and safety in general.

Completing the Rep

Ascend under control to your starting position. As you rise, remember to maintain the previously outlined neutral alignment.

Keep your elbows directly beneath the bar. When using heavy weight this position is helpful in completeing the lift. It allows you to effectively press up into the bar, with your hands, as if to lift it from your shoulders. While it doesn't make the weight any lighter, it certainly feels a bit more comfortable and reinforces your good form and your upward progress.

This starting position is not quite all the way up. Your knees are slightly bent so that tension is maintained in the quadriceps muscles. Once you've finished your final rep, carefully walk into the squat rack until the bar makes contact with the rack. At that point bend your knees so that you lower the bar onto the supporting rungs of the rack. It's important that you avoid stopping short of making contact with the rack, and then leaning forward, with the weight on your shoulders to place it onto the supporting rungs. Always be cognizant of your lower back's susceptibility to injury or strain when lifting weight onto or off of a support. Be as vertical as you can be when starting or ending a movement.

Pace

A major hinderance to effective and safe exercise is the movement speed that is used when training. Although there is something to be said about speed-specific weight training, I don't feel that wieghts lend themselves very well to that type of specificity.

Use your weight training to build muscular power, strength and endurance. Speed train on the practice field. The power you develop in the gym carries over onto the the playing field. Studies have shown that slower movements can recruit more muscle fibers than faster movements. Fast movements with weights necessitates momentum, and infers sub-optimal form. Momentum and poor form reduce target muscle involvement and increase injury potential.

When strength development is your concern, and you have access to and the desire to use heavy weights, the standard repetition pace of 2 seconds up and 4 seconds down works very well. You'll notice that your ascending pace slows as the poundage increases. By the same token, resist gravity's tendency to pull you down faster as you increase your training weight. The slower negative movement, or eccentric contraction is especially helpful in adding strength. Especially when using forced reps. Make sure that you have a competent training partner to spot you so that you can venture farther into development and growth, safely and effectively. Finishing that last rep but losing all semblance of form is not acceptable. If you can't squat 500 pounds with good form, you can't squat 500 pounds. This is black and white.

Suppose you do not have access to or the interest in lifting heavy. What then? You can easily create greater intensity by moving the weight you do have, even your own body weight, slowly. One popular technique is to descend with the same 4 second pace as above, and to ascend with a much longer, 10 second pace. You'll only need to do 4 to 6 reps to get the benefits. This super slow pace ennervates a great number of muscle fibers because over the duration of these few reps, muscle fibers fire and fatigue, and then, new muscle fibers fire to take over and then they fatigue, and then, again, still other muscle fibers fire, and so on . Consequently, you work deeper into the target muscles without the need for great poundages. This is certainly different from firing all you have at once to move a huge weight, but, nonetheless, you stand to develop very well.

Now, for conditioning muscular endurance, or for just adding variety to your training regimen, a moderate movement pace is useful. (By the way, a slow pace is always good, and equally effective in creating muscular stamina.) Consider a moderate pace to mean about 2 to 3 seconds up and about 2 to 3 seconds down. Make sure that every repetition is smooth, controlled and devoid of momentum. You'll be doing 12 to 20 reps, so maintain an even rythmic cadence, throughout. Whether using a slow or a moderate exercise pace, keep each and every rep precise and controlled.

Remember

Weight training is not just about hoisting some iron from point A to point B. It's more. It's…a bit spiritual, actually. Look at weight training as your daily ritual of developing a personal relationship between yourself and those muscles you hold sacred. A good set should always be, if not an epiphany, at least righteous!