(Very Light) Squat and Deadlift PR

[apwsearch]

tedro wrote:

As I’m sure you know, one of the major functions of the glutes are hip abduction. When we use the phrase, “spread the floor” what we really mean is activate your hip abductors. Spreading the floor is a basic technique in the squat that can help you add weight and be stronger. A wider stance makes it much easier to activate the hip abductors, which means the glutes are getting used more, and the lifter will be stronger. Don’t believe me? Get up and try to spread the floor with both a narrow stance and a wide stance? Which stance lets you “spread” it more?

Aside from this, a wider stance also puts the glutes at a more biomechanically efficient position, so you will use them more. All to a certain extent of course.

You still haven’t explained why it leads to greater glute involvement. I don’t need you to explain to me why a squatter should exert outward pressure when performing the movement. This isn’t anything profound and applies regardless of stance. Every goof ball on this site who has read the 8 keys could tell me that.

What I want to know is, based on your personal experience, not parroting what you have read on the internet, why a lifter is better able to activate the glutes with a wide stance more than a moderate stance. I don’t see it. Hell, Tate had huge glute activation issues, if I am not mistaken so assertion is both shallow and narrow.

Maybe I should rephrase that. Is he falling forward? Not yet, but his hips are rising faster than his shoulders, causing his chest to cave, which will likely lead to him falling forward. Why are his hips rising fast is the question we need to answer then. It has been suggested that his abs and upper back may be weak, and I agree with this. This would cause his hips to rise faster. It is also likely that his hips and hamstrings aren’t up to par with his quads. If he wants to squat bigger weights, he is going to have to learn how to use his hips more.

His chest is caved at the start of the lift. I would state it remains in basically the same position througout. I don’t see his hips rising faster than his shoulders in his squat. I train several powerlifters remotely and watch many, many training videos every week. I don’t think I am missing anything. I would state his set up sucks and his total leg strenght is poor, including his quads. He needs to work on set up and get stronger everywhere. Having a bias towards hips and hammies isn’t going to do anything for him at this point.

Just because it is not a problem, per se, does not mean that he does not have room to improve. I also suggested that he learn to push out his knees (spread the floor) and sit down, hence why I said a wider stance will give him more of a hole to sit back into.

What is this hole you refer to? Sitting down and pushing out the knees, regardless of stance width, is what gets you that last inch of depth. It’s not a function of stance width. In fact, as I stated before, most people lack the hip flexibility to effectively break parallel in a wide stance so the whole idea of having a ‘bigger hole,’ is weak at best.

And what width stance am I advocating? I haven’t told anybody a certain width, I have only used the term wider. I would not suggest a super wide squat, but I think the OP definitely would benefit by going wider. How much wider he will have to determine with some trial and error.

Exactly. You are just making a broad based assertion that wider is better. Again, based on what? Fuck, I can’t even tell by that video where his stance is relative to his shoulder width. Why would he benefit by going wider? Because you read it somewhere? Do you spend your time cruising the forums telling people all their squatting problems will be solved by going wider? It seems to me you need a few more tools in your tool box.

Biomechanics. Leverage.

In the squat, the hip joint acts as the fulcrum while the back is the lever. What is the easiest way to make a lever more efficient? By moving the force closer to the fulcrum, or in our case, a lower bar position.

You are simply wrong here. It is not that simple and to make this as a blanket statement borders on ignorance. It sounds cute and academic but at some point real world experience has to take precedence. Bar position, an upright starting position and speed of descent are the three variables that contribute most to a lifters lean in a squat. Similar to ‘going wider’ you can’t apply the same logic to everybody. You are dealing with individuals, not clones.

[tedro]

[quote]apwsearch wrote:
You still haven’t explained why it leads to greater glute involvement. I don’t need you to explain to me why a squatter should exert outward pressure when performing the movement. This isn’t anything profound and applies regardless of stance. Every goof ball on this site who has read the 8 keys could tell me that.
[/quote]
I just explained, in laymen’s terms admittedly as I am not going to spend 20 minutes giving you a response dealing with the greater intricacies of biomechanics, that the glutes are activated more in a wide stance squat. Is it that hard to take the next step and assume if the glutes are being activated more, that they are also more involved in the lift?

What I want to know is, based on your personal experience, not parroting what you have read on the internet, why a lifter is better able to activate the glutes with a wide stance more than a moderate stance. I don’t see it. Hell, Tate had huge glute activation issues, if I am not mistaken so assertion is both shallow and narrow.

This thread isn’t about me, it is about helping the OP. If you truly wanted to know about my personal experiences, I would be happy to share them. However, being that you have called me out and do not really care about my experiences other than to find more points to argue about, I see no justification for taking the time to share my experiences with you.

It’s funny how you assume I am simply parroting others information, though. It’s almost as if you believe it is now trendy to tell people to work their hips, so now anybody that gives this advice must just be following the trend and rehashing the information. Because it would be impossible for me to have educated myself through both experience and research and have reached similar conclusions, right?

It’s like you have turned against the advice because you don’t like the people giving it. Some newb rehashes a Tate or Cressey article so now you have beef with both the advice and the poster.

His chest is caved at the start of the lift. I would state it remains in basically the same position througout. I don’t see his hips rising faster than his shoulders in his squat. I train several powerlifters remotely and watch many, many training videos every week. I don’t think I am missing anything. I would state his set up sucks and his total leg strenght is poor, including his quads. He needs to work on set up and get stronger everywhere. Having a bias towards hips and hammies isn’t going to do anything for him at this point.

I would agree that his setup is poor and that his whole body needs strengthened. This does not mean it is a bad idea to put extra emphasis on his POSTERIOR CHAIN. Oops, I said it again.

What is this hole you refer to? Sitting down and pushing out the knees, regardless of stance width, is what gets you that last inch of depth. It’s not a function of stance width. In fact, as I stated before, most people lack the hip flexibility to effectively break parallel in a wide stance so the whole idea of having a ‘bigger hole,’ is weak at best.

You know very well what the hole refers to. Pushing out with the knees may help somebody get that last inch of depth, if the are leaning very far forward. It also helps keep the torso erect, thus minimizing the flexion of the hips and keeping the weight back, which makes the lift easier.

Exactly. You are just making a broad based assertion that wider is better. Again, based on what? Fuck, I can’t even tell by that video where his stance is relative to his shoulder width. Why would he benefit by going wider? Because you read it somewhere? Do you spend your time cruising the forums telling people all their squatting problems will be solved by going wider? It seems to me you need a few more tools in your tool box.

It seems to me you should get to know me better before passing judgement.

You are simply wrong here. It is not that simple and to make this as a blanket statement borders on ignorance. It sounds cute and academic but at some point real world experience has to take precedence. Bar position, an upright starting position and speed of descent are the three variables that contribute most to a lifters lean in a squat. Similar to ‘going wider’ you can’t apply the same logic to everybody. You are dealing with individuals, not clones.

No, I am absolutely right. There are limiting factors in how low you can hold the bar, namely how you are going to hold onto it, and how much the weight is going to throw you back. If the latter are not a problem, the closer the weight is to the fulcrum the greater the advantage for the hip muslces.

So, basically it seems like you have a problem with people giving out advice because they simply read an article. Fine, these people shouldn’t be giving advice, we agree. You have taken it a step further and now seem to dislike the advice and perhaps even the writers of said articles. Just because one is not qualified to give out advice does not mean that there is anything wrong with the advice.

Second, you have taken it upon yourself to assume that I am in the same class as such newbs. This is laughable. Just because my advice is on par with these articles does not mean that I am handing out advice only because I read it. Contrary to your opinion, it should speak for itself that my advice is similar to the so-called “experts” in the field.

[Hanley]

I was polite in my thread because you were trying to help me, but after reading your little rants here it’s blatanly obvious you don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.

YOU’RE TELLING A RAW LIFTER TO SIT BACK MORE AND TO TAKE HIS STANCE OUT EVEN FURTHER.

How, HOW can you not see how ridiculous this??

Actually you probably can’t, you’ll just argue your points anyway even if they’re not going to help the OP.

It’s probably gonna be a shock for you to learn that not ever squat problem is solved by taking you stance out, sitting back further and activating the pchain.

It’s threads like this that are making me rapidly lose patience with this site. If I wanted to read about how sitting back and bringing up the pchain is the only way to squat then I’d spend all day reading Elite or WSBB.

[apwsearch]

[quote]tedro wrote:

No, I am absolutely right. There are limiting factors in how low you can hold the bar, namely how you are going to hold onto it, and how much the weight is going to throw you back. If the latter are not a problem, the closer the weight is to the fulcrum the greater the advantage for the hip muslces.

[/quote]

OK. Let me tell you a quick story.

We have a Junior lifter we work with. She is a prototype powerlifter. Unbelievable body type. She just secured the Jr. world team slot at Women’s this year.

We do hands on with her with increasing frequency as a meet approaches but can go for some period of time without actually seeing her lift, just giving training cycle input.

She started training with a group that subscribed to your general philosophy. Unlike you, some of them actually competed in the sport, but none of them lift USAPL.

Long story short they had her lower her bar position and widene her stance. First of all, as a 132# woman, she lacked the upper back mass to carry the bar where they told her to. It was fucking ridiculous. Additionally, she is an oompa loompa with a very short torso and short thighs so with the low bar/wider stance she developed stability problems in the hole because the bar position was causing her to lean excessively and she didn’t have enough hip strength so she would lose her balance forward on heavy attempts. (Physically stepping out of the lift.) She was also sudden having significant difficulty breaking parallel because of the forward lean.

Keep in mind this girl is not a newbie. She has been to Jr. Worlds and has been competing for @ 7 years.

Once we got her out here and saw what was going on we straightened her out. She doesn’t listen to these guys anymore even though she still trains with them from time to time.

The real problem was they didn’t even have the depth of experience to realize the problems they created, nor the wisdom to assess a lifter on an individual basis and not hand out the same advice to everybody.

Sound familiar?

In regards to your referencing of experts, nowhere in your response to the OP did you reference set up, body position, etc. You told him to widen his stance, spread the floor and drive his traps.

When you coach lifters you have to pick out 2 or 3 things TOPS that need to be worked on, let them get that down, and take it from there. Given his set-up and body position, your advice doesn’t even make the top 5, and probably wouldn’t make the top 10.

Widening his stance is not going to help him get depth and it won’t necessarily make him more upright either. Not to mention he has probably read all that shit anyway, so it should not be some big revealation.

I know of no ‘experts’ that apply blanket statements in trying to assist a lifter. They assess the situation and pick out a couple things that will help and take it from there. Not provide fundamental information coupled with stance modification. It is a process of trial and error and occasionally you learn something you hadn’t even anticipated.

[tedro]

[quote]Hanley wrote:
I was polite in my thread because you were trying to help me, but after reading your little rants here it’s blatanly obvious you don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.
[/quote]

My rants! Seriously?

I didn’t start ranting until apw responding to one of my posts. You asked my a question in this thread and I answered it. I hope you didn’t take that as a rant.

YOU’RE TELLING A RAW LIFTER TO SIT BACK MORE AND TO TAKE HIS STANCE OUT EVEN FURTHER.

How, HOW can you not see how ridiculous this??

No, I told the OP to widen his stance, I didn’t tell him anything about sitting back more, he seems to be doing ok with this. I did tell him widening his stance will him sit back into the hole. This is not the same as sitting back.

I told you that you could sit back more in the box squat, as you tend to break first with your knees and drop down pretty straight. I stand by this advice, take it or leave it.

Actually you probably can’t, you’ll just argue your points anyway even if they’re not going to help the OP.

It’s probably gonna be a shock for you to learn that not ever squat problem is solved by taking you stance out, sitting back further and activating the pchain.

And who said they were? We are talking two cases here, in which my advice was different. I think some of my advice is being taken out of context, whether or not this is intentional, I don’t know. In the videos, it appears the OP’s stance is only slightly wider than shoulder width. He has plenty of room to widen this up. I did not tell him to go as wide as he could, I only said wider. It is up to him to find HIS optimal stance, but there is a strong chance that that stance is wider than his current one.

[quote]
It’s threads like this that are making me rapidly lose patience with this site. If I wanted to read about how sitting back and bringing up the pchain is the only way to squat then I’d spend all day reading Elite or WSBB.[/quote]

A lot of good stuff at both of those websites, as well as this one. Elite does has some stuff on raw lifters. WSBB is pretty much all geared, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t good stuff there also.

Again, nobody said bringing up the pchain is the only way to squat, but in the vast majorit of cases it is the limiting factor.

Keep in mind I based my advice on both his squat and dl videos. His dl also shows a lack of hip involvement, which is one reason I am confident in telling him that he is having trouble with his hips in general.

[Zap_Branigan]

[quote]CrewPierce wrote:
I freezed the movie right at the bottom of the squat and from this angle it looks like a good squat to me as far as depth goes. Feet are pretty damn close together though.

Having long ass legs I know your pain (sometimes literally) in using more back than legs with deadlift.[/quote]

I just did the same thing and it looked deep enough to me. But I don’t know jack shit.

Listen to the pros.

[tedro]

[quote]apwsearch wrote:
tedro wrote:

No, I am absolutely right. There are limiting factors in how low you can hold the bar, namely how you are going to hold onto it, and how much the weight is going to throw you back. If the latter are not a problem, the closer the weight is to the fulcrum the greater the advantage for the hip muslces.

OK. Let me tell you a quick story.

We have a Junior lifter we work with. She is a prototype powerlifter. Unbelievable body type. She just secured the Jr. world team slot at Women’s this year.

We do hands on with her with increasing frequency as a meet approaches but can go for some period of time without actually seeing her lift, just giving training cycle input.

She started training with a group that subscribed to your general philosophy. Unlike you, some of them actually competed in the sport, but none of them lift USAPL.

Long story short they had her lower her bar position and widene her stance. First of all, as a 132# woman, she lacked the upper back mass to carry the bar where they told her to. It was fucking ridiculous. Additionally, she is an oompa loompa with a very short torso and short thighs so with the low bar/wider stance she developed stability problems in the hole because the bar position was causing her to lean excessively and she didn’t have enough hip strength so she would lose her balance forward on heavy attempts. (Physically stepping out of the lift.) She was also sudden having significant difficulty breaking parallel because of the forward lean.

Keep in mind this girl is not a newbie. She has been to Jr. Worlds and has been competing for @ 7 years.

Once we got her out here and saw what was going on we straightened her out. She doesn’t listen to these guys anymore even though she still trains with them from time to time.
[/quote]

This would be an example of some of the limiting factors with lowering the bar too far. Her leverage has been increased, but the bar has been lowered to a point where it is no longer feasible for her to squat properly.

Our OP does not have an excessively low bar placement, so this is not likely an issue for him.

The real problem was they didn’t even have the depth of experience to realize the problems they created, nor the wisdom to assess a lifter on an individual basis and not hand out the same advice to everybody.

Sound familiar?

In regards to your referencing of experts, nowhere in your response to the OP did you reference set up, body position, etc. You told him to widen his stance, spread the floor and drive his traps.

When you coach lifters you have to pick out 2 or 3 things TOPS that need to be worked on, let them get that down, and take it from there. Given his set-up and body position, your advice doesn’t even make the top 5, and probably wouldn’t make the top 10.

This is all debatable, and hopefully you agree that nobody can give him perfect advice based on a couple videos and one angle. The point here is to throw out suggestions to him and I am sure he is intelligent enough to figure out which ones are the most likely to help his situation and which ones he should work on first.

Widening his stance is not going to help him get depth and it won’t necessarily make him more upright either. Not to mention he has probably read all that shit anyway, so it should not be some big revealation.

Widening his stance WILL help him with both depth and remaining upright. This is very basic stuff. It puts his hamstrings and glutes in a more efficient position to prevent him from falling over backwards as he goes low, or from excessive forward leaning to counteract this.

I know of no ‘experts’ that apply blanket statements in trying to assist a lifter. They assess the situation and pick out a couple things that will help and take it from there. Not provide fundamental information coupled with stance modification. It is a process of trial and error and occasionally you learn something you hadn’t even anticipated.

A good coach is going to look at the fundamentals first. There are no benefits to nitpicking if these are not mastered. Simply because a problem is common doesn’t mean that the advice to fix it is a blanket statement.

I agree with your last sentence. It is ultimately up to the OP to solve the problems and do what he wants with the suggestions given to him.

[apwsearch]

You don’t get it, dude.

Never mind. I’m all out.

[quote]tedro wrote:
apwsearch wrote:
tedro wrote:

No, I am absolutely right. There are limiting factors in how low you can hold the bar, namely how you are going to hold onto it, and how much the weight is going to throw you back. If the latter are not a problem, the closer the weight is to the fulcrum the greater the advantage for the hip muslces.

OK. Let me tell you a quick story.

We have a Junior lifter we work with. She is a prototype powerlifter. Unbelievable body type. She just secured the Jr. world team slot at Women’s this year.

We do hands on with her with increasing frequency as a meet approaches but can go for some period of time without actually seeing her lift, just giving training cycle input.

She started training with a group that subscribed to your general philosophy. Unlike you, some of them actually competed in the sport, but none of them lift USAPL.

Long story short they had her lower her bar position and widene her stance. First of all, as a 132# woman, she lacked the upper back mass to carry the bar where they told her to. It was fucking ridiculous. Additionally, she is an oompa loompa with a very short torso and short thighs so with the low bar/wider stance she developed stability problems in the hole because the bar position was causing her to lean excessively and she didn’t have enough hip strength so she would lose her balance forward on heavy attempts. (Physically stepping out of the lift.) She was also sudden having significant difficulty breaking parallel because of the forward lean.

Keep in mind this girl is not a newbie. She has been to Jr. Worlds and has been competing for @ 7 years.

Once we got her out here and saw what was going on we straightened her out. She doesn’t listen to these guys anymore even though she still trains with them from time to time.

This would be an example of some of the limiting factors with lowering the bar too far. Her leverage has been increased, but the bar has been lowered to a point where it is no longer feasible for her to squat properly.

Our OP does not have an excessively low bar placement, so this is not likely an issue for him.

The real problem was they didn’t even have the depth of experience to realize the problems they created, nor the wisdom to assess a lifter on an individual basis and not hand out the same advice to everybody.

Sound familiar?

In regards to your referencing of experts, nowhere in your response to the OP did you reference set up, body position, etc. You told him to widen his stance, spread the floor and drive his traps.

When you coach lifters you have to pick out 2 or 3 things TOPS that need to be worked on, let them get that down, and take it from there. Given his set-up and body position, your advice doesn’t even make the top 5, and probably wouldn’t make the top 10.

This is all debatable, and hopefully you agree that nobody can give him perfect advice based on a couple videos and one angle. The point here is to throw out suggestions to him and I am sure he is intelligent enough to figure out which ones are the most likely to help his situation and which ones he should work on first.

Widening his stance is not going to help him get depth and it won’t necessarily make him more upright either. Not to mention he has probably read all that shit anyway, so it should not be some big revealation.

Widening his stance WILL help him with both depth and remaining upright. This is very basic stuff. It puts his hamstrings and glutes in a more efficient position to prevent him from falling over backwards as he goes low, or from excessive forward leaning to counteract this.

I know of no ‘experts’ that apply blanket statements in trying to assist a lifter. They assess the situation and pick out a couple things that will help and take it from there. Not provide fundamental information coupled with stance modification. It is a process of trial and error and occasionally you learn something you hadn’t even anticipated.

A good coach is going to look at the fundamentals first. There are no benefits to nitpicking if these are not mastered. Simply because a problem is common doesn’t mean that the advice to fix it is a blanket statement.

I agree with your last sentence. It is ultimately up to the OP to solve the problems and do what he wants with the suggestions given to him.[/quote]

[conorh]

[quote]Pemdas wrote:
Yeah…not quite deep enough. With that narrow of stance you are not going to want to sit back that far. Think more about sitting between your legs. If you consciously spread your knees out to the side this should almost come naturally. The slight rounding of the upper back is result of you not getting your elbows under bar. Rotate them forward as you descend and really force them to stay there on the way up.

DL - I am pretty sure that lower back rounding can remedied by simply pulling more air into your stomach and pushing out on them hard.

For both of them…you probably have weak abs, but I think it is more the case that you are not utilizing the ab strength you have. Focus on suck as much air into your stomach as possible and make yourself look pregnant. [/quote]

I don’t know what everyone is talking about, that looks like good depth to me. You are right though, it looks way too narrow. You’re going to be forced to lean forward more with a stance that narrow. If the OP would bring their stance our it will let you keep your shins more vertical and your torso more upright.

On the dead I would try scooting the bar away from your shins a little. It looks like you’re starting with the bar right up against your shins, and what you want is to start so that your shoulders are behind the bar. For some people this means you’ll start the lift scraping the shins, for others it means farther away, like over the toes.

Good lifts though, keep it up.

[conorh]

[quote]Hanley wrote:

And for god sake don’t take your stance out any more. You’ll end up even more bent forward. I can’t understand why anyone is recommending you do that.[/quote]

It’s just physics. The closer together your feet are, the longer the horizontal distance (in the saggital plane) from knee to hip in the hole. The farther apart, the closer the knee and hip are from front to back. Imagine looking at the femur from above.

The “longer” your femur in the saggital plane, the more you’ll have to lean forward at the waist and/or let the knee travel forward to keep your center of gravity over your feet. Try doing a squat with your heels touching and notice how much you have to lean to keep your balance versus sumo.

Now, that’s not to say there may not be other reasons why he may not want to widen his stance, but this was my reasoning in suggesting it based on how far he bends over at the waist.

[conorh]

Oh, and I didn’t see the whole slew of posts above me when I posted this, definitely not trying to stir the pot!