[quote]Spidey22 wrote:
[quote]lift206 wrote:
I was hoping the front squats would help you learn to keep a tight upper back since that’s your main weakness but I know you had some trouble with that. I do agree with halcj in sticking with the comp squat because getting better at alternate movements doesn’t guarantee an improvement in the comp lift. Alternate movements can be useful in teaching how muscles should feel and function but aren’t very useful if not done properly.
I think your setup still has room for improvement. You’ve been focusing on ab/lat bracing and it’s good you made progress on that but the missing piece is keeping your upper back tight. It’s a cascading effect since your upper back caves, placing too much stress on your abs and causing your lower back to momentarily lose tension, which then causes your hips to shoot back so that your hams can regain tension. By the time your hams are loaded, you’re already in a shitty position. This happened to me too when I had trouble getting my upper back tight. Move your grip in and play around with it until you get to a point where you can focus on the cue: chest up, lats down. You should feel a lot of tension in your chest, lats and upper back. Your elbows don’t have to be straight down, just in the direction that creates the most lat tension while your chest is up.
For accessory work, I would recommend seated good mornings or hyper extensions. I would do the seated good mornings with a rounded upper back while bracing my core and really focus on thoracic extension.[/quote]
Yeah no I’m happy I worked on the bracing and stuff, I think I’ll actually use a belt much more effectively now, I feel less ‘fearful’ in the hole. But yeah it really seems to be upper back, which is an issue with my DL too at lockout.
I’ve never tried seated OR rounded back good mornings, didn’t even know what was an exercise lol. I’ll look into them. Will hammering Rows and Chins help this at all? Obviously those always help, but will they help this specific issue? [/quote]
Rows and chins can help but the main focus with the seated rounded back good morning is to build the erectors in the thoracic region. Doing it seated will place greater emphasis on your upper back. Doing chins where your chest meets the bar also reinforces thoracic extension. That’s where your weakness is. Getting your entire torso tight and utilizing your gluteus medius and hip flexors will enable you to have greater body control and allow you to dictate where you want to place your hips.
Once you have complete control you can sit back more if you want to focus more on hams or shift your hips forward more if you want more quad usage. That’s up to you how you want to perform the lift. You just need to develop torso and hip stabilization before that’s possible.
Do some thoracic extension stretches before doing the movement too. One I like doing is holding my hands together, straightening my arms and placing it on a wall or post while stretching out my back and forcing my chest up.
It doesn’t matter if you do back squats, front squats, zercher squats, or any variation of deadlifts, just make sure you get the upper back tight statically so it gets trained to remain stiff in an advantageous position when doing those movements. The good mornings will bring up the weakness and teach you how to get tight.