The quads on that Greek oly lifter 2 minutes in are insane.
[quote]BlackWidowGirl wrote:
[quote]Mangusrah wrote:
[quote]BlackWidowGirl wrote:
Keep your head UP, your body will follow your head otherwise
Elbows up is a good tip, another thing that will help will be actually try to press the weight up with your arms too. even if you only push up 10 or 15 pounds with your arms it will still take that weight off of your legs.[/quote]
I know you mean well, but this warrants swift correction.
The first belief is common, and often perpetuated by people who work in fitness, and should know better.
The second point, however, attempts to prove levitation. Explanation! Pressing the bar transfers the weight from your upper back to your arms, which rest on your shoulders and so forth. All roads lead to Rome, and all weight leads to feet. If that weight could be intercepted, then you might be able to put a broom between your legs and shrug into the night sky.
Here’s some light reading on head position, among other things.
www.elitefts.com/documents/texasbbq-2.htm[/quote]
Oh, so you should keep your head down? That is the dumbest thing i have ever heard. I am not saying arch your neck and stress your spine but have you ever ridden a motorcycle? your body is going to follow your head, case closed. your head should stay upright, And in order to prove my “levitation” its called momentum, have you ever done a push press? Your legs help you with the weight, this is it reversed. Your arms are helping your legs with the weight if you time it right. I can understand why you would be confused, its difficult to time it right and understand.[/quote]
I have never ridden on a motorbike, but you should see me unicycle.
Hiccup. Unless we’re in a muddle, you are clearly suggesting to arch the neck, in order to hold the head upright. If it were not arched then the head would follow the angle of the spine as it leans forward–or down, as you call it. You’ll have no trouble finding reputable sources to corroborate your side of this argument. It is a popular error, and not a terribly harmful or contentious one, unlike stopping shallow to spare the knees. Good riddance to that, though I would like to point out that I had the misfortune of learning to squat with both these considerations.
The second point, about the push press comparison. The push press involves the legs because the legs give velocity to the bar. The bar is being moved and the arms take advantage.
To put it bluntly, there is no way for the arms to do this on the squat. That is unless the bar breaks contact with your back. Any lightness you feel is imagined, because this is a question of inertia rather than force. If the bar is not being moved by the arms alone, then there is no momentum gained. All that the force exerted by the arms can accomplish is removing weight from the back and transferring it to the shoulders.
Wow, lots more responses than the last time I checked this topic - apparently I wasn’t getting any email notifications about it. Anyway, thanks a million to everyone who posted! I am still plugging away at Maximum Strength (I’m in the final phase now, yay!). I’m really enjoying the program and I’m very excited to see if my maxes have gone up 4 weeks from now.
Per everyone’s advice, I’ve switched to a low-bar squat with thumbless grip and it’s helped immeasurably with the back tightness and chicken-wing elbows. I’m getting to depth now (though still battling the damn low-back rounding at the bottom… silly posterior tilt).
Reason I’m resurrecting this ancient thread is to ask another bizarre question about squatting. Yesterday, Max Strength had me doing heavy singles of “Anderson Front Squat from Pins” - aka a front squat where you rest the bar on the pins at the bottom for a second before coming out of the hole. In the process, my boyfriend/training partner noticed that I have an asymmetric torso position at the bottom of the lift.
It might be hard to tell from the attached picture, but it’s almost like I’m leaning closer to my left leg than to my right leg. My feet are even, turned out the same amount, and I don’t -think- that my left leg is just caving inward.
I’ve got no ideas about what could be causing it (and I have no idea if this is a recent thing or not). Could my core be caving some on the left side? It doesn’t have to do with the weight being heavier - when I was done with the heavy singles, I drastically dropped the weight so that we could take a couple pictures of it. I also can’t seem to tell that I’m doing it - in other words, it feels like I’m coming down symmetrically, though obviously from the photo, I’m not.
Anyway, sorry for the ramble, I’m just at quite a loss about what I’m doing here. Any possible ideas would be greatly appreciated!
Two observations–or maybe questions–about the first video. Which others have made but not with the same words.
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It looks like you have a pretty low back angle when you reach the low point of the squat, instead of maintaining an angle closer to 45 degrees. You may even fold the upper body down a bit. This stresses the back. (Did somebody post about good mornings? That is how it looks.)
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When you rise out of the squat, you lock out the knees, throw the pelvis forward and go back to the sigmoid flexure of the lumbar area–which is your normal standing posture. I think with heavy weights and high reps, that will give you some back problems you wouldn’t get with keeping a “straight” slightly curved back throughout. I would not have weight on my back with a pronounced sigmoid curve to the spine.
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