Before I tell you my problem, which you probably already know, let me introduce myself since I am a new member here.
I have been reading this forum for the past week and have found the advice here invaluable. I am not just a newbie because I have been lifting weights for 4 years hardcore bodybuilding style. I used to go to the forum at the bodybuilding.com and found the members there to be bodybuilding zombies. I used to train doing splits and everything and gained 60lbs mostly muscles (190lbs) but I also injured my shoulders and back.
I took off lifting for 3 yearrs because I hated my six meal diet, platueas, and weak despite impressive muscles.
A month ago I decided to lift weights again but with a totally different outlook. Now I measure my success through strength, flexiblity and endurance. I decided to do Olympic Lifting.
I chose exercises that would help me learn to lift olypmic style. Having mastered every single bodybuilding exercise, I was surpised I found it such a hard time doing OH with a stick.
I worked on OH for a week, and today in the gym I showed a lifter how I was doing back squat and he told me that I wasn’t arching my back. I was shocked because I always thought I had an arch and when I check myself in the mirror I didn’t. I didn’t round my back either. It was straight (what is fine), leaning forward and my problem is that I cant arch it. That situation is what is preventing me from mastering the OH, because without an arch I lean forward too much and I wont’ be able to support the weight with my shoulders.
I had injured it somewhat in the past doing squats and deadlift. It is okay now but I just cant arch it.
Can you please tell me exercises and stretches that I can do to help me to better arch my back. Thanks a bunch.
I would talk to some kind of professional about the lower back. How about your shoulder flexibility? The line of gravity in OH should go behind your head to start with, at least for me it does. Use the stick for shoulder dislocations and other good stretches. The stick is an exellent tool. Continue doing OH and go as low as you can while maintaining balance. Since the stick is so light you can also use an empty bar to check that your balance is ok. Good luck.
You don’t necessarily how to have a big arch to OHS, squat. For the OHS, your shoulder/chest inflexibility may be keeping you from pulling your shoulder to the rear and pulling your shoulder blades together.
Don’t assume your back is the problem. With the OH squat, tight calves (yes bear with me) can cause you to look in all the wrong places for a solution to the OH squat.
Try doing an OH Squat but standing (heels only) on, say 25 Lb plates - enough to raise your heels up about 1 to 1.5 inches. Does that make the OH squat work for you?
If so, then you have flexibility issues in your lower legs - work on this area with various dynamic and static stretches.
(You may also have back flexibility issues too of course, but calves play a major role in being able to perform OH squat - more so than most might think at first).
[quote]bushidobadboy wrote:
I fully agree that tight soleus can have a part to play in OHsquatting biomechanics, as can tight fibularis (longus and brevis), tight illiotibial tract and weak adductors (knee tracking over foot or not), BUT how does this differ from a ‘regular’ squat (front, zercher, plate loaded, back squat)? If your lower body permits you to squat ‘normally’, then it shouldn’t be a limiting factor in the OH squat. Or have I missed something…[/quote]
You need more flexibility in lower legs to do OHS than regular squat. I assume you can do “ass-2-grass” squats already with ease (if not, you definitely have leg flexibilit issues). But even if you can, it does not mean you have sufficient ROM for OHS in my view.
Test it though: do an OHS with a moderate weight whilst standing with heels on plates. If it’s much easier than the corresponding OHS without the plates, I think working on your leg-flexibility may improve your current issue. Worth a try; costs nothing.
[quote]John431985 wrote:
Okay, thanks for all the advice.
I found that I can do overhead squat perfectly with a light barbell if I elevated my heel with a five pound weight.
Do you think that eventually I would be able to take away the weight and do it just standing flat?[/quote]
Yes I do. When I first started doing OHS I had to stand on 25 Lb plates and even then the weight was very light. But the more you do them, the more your body will generate the strength it needs over the range of motion it needs.
Out of interest, try standing on 25Lb plates - you’ll almost certainly lift quite a bit more than you could with the 5Lb plates.
[quote]bushidobadboy wrote:
John431985 wrote:
“Can you achieve a neutral lordosis when your hands are not overhead?”
Please explain.
Sorry. OK, well, when you stand with your arms dangling by your side, do you have a neutral curve in your lower back? By neutral I mean approx half-way between a flat back and a maximally arched back.
If you DO have a neutral curve (the curve in the lumbar spine is called a lordosis or lordotic curve, the thoracic curve is called kyphosis)
[/quote]
have to jump in here. Lordosis is NOT description of the normal lumbar curvature.
MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia: Lordosis
Lordosis is an increased curvature of the normally curved lumbar spine.
Thinking about it, perhaps I should have used the term: “neutral lordotic curve” which would have been 100% accurate…[/quote]
Trust me, I wasn’t being “that guy” as I was always taught that the curvature in the lumbar spine is called the lordotic curve, and thoracic curavature is called the kyphotic curve. Took my by surprise to see these definitions. I wonder now what is right. saying that a slight lordosis is normal doesn’t really do it for me as this could mean that a little bit of abnormal curvature is common, normal, whatever. who knows. verbage gymnastics
