My Favorite Exercise Combinations: Installment 15 – Building Up the Squat

The overhead squat is a coveted screen and assessment tool used by many in the fitness, strength community, and rehab worlds. Many live and die by this movement, and others do not place much priority on it. This combination will look at my own experiences and observations in the overhead squat, along with providing pragmatic application of exercises that will hopefully aim to improve your movement capacity in the squat.

Enjoy!

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There are many different ways to identify how to “score” the overhead squat – I choose to follow an FMS-based instruction towards the overhead squat, as it allows me an easier component towards bucketing and placing athletes in certain groups. Over my tenure at Cressey Sports Performance, I’ve had the pleasure of seeing a relatively large amount of athletes, on top of providing an individual program to cater to their specific needs. This is an experience that is unique to this facility, because many times coaches can look at a large population of individuals, but cannot provide the individual instruction or exercise selection necessary in order to improve outcomes.

The numbers of adequate overhead squats were staggering – over 115 squats and only 12 (twelve) squats were at industry standard. The other 103 squats were below standard or had other complications in their other movement patterns which limited the squat!

Those who scored “3’s” on the Overhead Squat were either young, relatively hyper mobile in comparison to their other peers (especially in the hip region), and interestingly, played multiple sports (more than just one sport such as only baseball).

Now the reasoning for a lack of ability to perform an overhead squat can be traced to several ideas:

  • Your joints don’t allow it.
  • Your tissue quality doesn’t allow appropriate lengthening and shortening in this movement.
  • You are unfamiliar with the movement.
  • Your brain is limiting you in some capacity due to pain, novelty of movement, or some other threat.
  • Your issue is not the squat – it is higher up in terms of movement patterns.

(With respect to the above, I’d like to assume that almost all of the individuals coming into CSP are pain free.)

  1. If your joints don’t allow appropriate motion because of one hard structure bumping into another hard structure, that will be difficult to improve an overhead squatting motion to past 90° of hip flexion.
  2. If your tissue quality is relatively dense and possibly fibrotic, well then that could limit your ability for your muscles to be pliable. Relatively less dense muscle quality can relate to improved neural connections as these drivers.
  3. Many times individuals simply have no pre-conceived notion of what an appropriate squatting movement pattern consists of, so naturally their performance on the screen is limited or poor.
DNS
No one instructed “baby” on how to squat…

If your brain perceives threat in some manner, then perhaps changing levels at the hip joint will cause some type of input into the brain that says, “Don’t do this! It might hurt!” There are tons of ways to reduce threat (if you need to), so making sure you are in a positive environment (to take care of the psychological component), safe and appropriate environment and equipment (to take care of the physical component), along with using the right exercise for the right individual will hopefully take care of the issue of threat perception.

Systems
The psychological component can definitely influence physical factors.

And finally, the overhead squat is in actuality, my least concern of a movement pattern from a screening perspective. There are actually several other movements that I’m more concerned about, on top of owning breathing, and more importantly several other athletic movement endeavors, such as skipping, shuffling, sprinting, throwing, etc.

The small parts of the overhead squat are actually addressed in detail in other movement patterns from another assessment process, other tests, and even screens. In this case, the small parts that comprise the bigger parts of the overhead squat are just that – mere minutia in the grand scheme of a total screening and assessment process.

Despite having a limited overhead squat pattern…

  • Will your athlete be successful in his or her sport?
  • Will your athlete still have immense amounts of force production capabilities?
  • Will your athlete be able to control other motoric movement patterns?

I’m not saying completely ignore the overhead squat, but placing an immense amount of priority on whether or not someone can perform well when screening for the overhead squat correctly is not a big deal.

To re-emphasize this for you, I’ve done over 115 formal assessments, and an unknown amount of informal assessments (for staff, interns, friends, etc) while only at CSP, and I’ve seen only 12 overhead squats that have gone for par.

That is only 10% of the individuals that have come through the doors, having an adequate standard of movement for one test (out of several movements that were also assessed and screened).

SFMA - Top Tier 7
There are other priorities in an individual!

So 90% of the other population that I’ve assessed have had poor squat patterns.

This does not mean I exclude the squatting motion from their exercise program – it just gives me better information on how to address their specific and individual problems.

With ALL of this in mind, now I can introduce an exercise combination that I’ve found lots of success with, as it address several things all at once – a catch-all combination to use some cliche phrases.

Reverse Inchworm to Overhead Squat

This exercise catches a lot of things all at once:

  • Challenges anti-extension movement
  • Upward scapular rotation
  • As you sit back, it catches hip flexion
  • As you rock back into a squatting pattern, there is sensory input so you can find more ankle dorsiflexion
  • There is input as you rock back as well for great toe extension, which is crucial for acceleration and gait purposes
Photo Credit: StoneAthleticMedicine.com
Photo Credit: StoneAthleticMedicine.com

Prying Goblet Squat with Breathing

The next component in this exercise combination talks about:

  • Owning a position of deep hip flexion
  • Improving the activation of the hip external rotators as you rock the kettlebell/dumbbell up and down
  • On top of owning breathing patterns.

Programming for Building Up Your Squat

I refer to “building up your squat” because you are doing so from the ground up. First you have a movement pattern that forces you to move backwards – something that doesn’t happen too often in a commercial gym setting, and then own it with breathing and heavy weights.

If you’re programming this, you probably don’t need it too much to improve upon your squat. It’s like taking medicine, you don’t need a full week of over-the-counter medicine to improve symptoms, but maybe 2 days of it plus good sleep will do the trick.

Just like that analogy, maybe you only need a few days of this exercise combination in order to improve your movement patterns, instead of a full month or year of “corrective exercises!”

With this in mind, see how this feels in the beginning of your day, or at the beginning of your exercise program as follows:

A1. Reverse Inchworm to Overhead Squat – 2×5

A2. Prying Goblet Squat with Breathing – 2×5 Breaths (Inhale + Exhale)

As always,

Keep it funky.

MAsymbollogo

One Weird Trick: Installment 7 – Roll Out, Roll Out

Many times in our quest for six-packedness, we embark on several different exercises that are targeted towards our abs. In reality, what is the true, underlying solution towards revealing a six-pack? Positive hormonal changes due to sleep, nutrition, and training derived changes, along with slight hypertrophy of the obliques. (I say obliques intentionally, because many times the rectus abdominis could be overly relied on in a synergistic dominance point of view.)

That isn’t where the weird trick comes into play. The above is meant to be followed through with of course!

During this quest for aesthetics and awesomeness, torso position is something that is of utmost importance during various abdominal and core-related drills.

If our ability to produce force is limited by the ability to resist motion in our midsection, then this idea of challenging motion in any capacity will be introduced. Well, why does resisting motion even matter?

Well, to put it very simply, imagine if you have two linemen opposing each other. From a biomechanics and muscular level, would you rather take someone who can resist being pushed around, or someone who will fall down at the slightest movement?

(Keep in mind, from a tactical point of view, there may be an advantage towards letting someone push while you allow them to push – which will ultimately let them fall on their butt.)

Pull when someone pushes and you get thrown!
Pull when someone pushes and you get thrown!

There are tons of other science-y reasons why developing resiliency at the abdominals, and ultimately, the spinal vertebrae will help you get a six pack!

Spinal motion can involve rotation in both directions, extension, flexion, and side bending both ways, not to mention a total combination of all of these movements. When trying to perform stability ball rollouts, however, you need to be cognizant of not letting yourself lose position!

Spinal Function

Another Trick That Involves Balls

In any case, this one weird trick involves developing tension in the most correct path towards improving co-contraction for your abdominals and even extensors of the posterior chain in your backside.

If you perform stability ball rollouts, or ab wheel rollouts, make sure to do these items from an external cuing perspective:

External Cues

  • Maintain a long line towards the ceiling.
  • Resist motion in any one direction while in your first starting position
  • Punch arms down into ground as you descend into the bottom/second position.

How Does This Trick Work?

Many are focused too much on their abdominals during this exercise, and performing rollouts in this manner is probably the most efficacious way to do them! You feel your abs kick on right away, and you can even maintain a better position while performing your stability ball rollouts!

Long story short, performing bilateral shoulder extension (the act of bringing your hands down and back, or away from the ceiling) will elicit torso flexion. Now, as we perform this movement in the stability ball rollout, we are in fact challenging torso extension – so if we combine the two…

Torso Extension + Shoulder Extension = Co-Contraction of All Torso Muscles

This is great news, because we don’t need to think about our position too much, just performing the action in a subconscious and perform it to an immediate mastery! That’s what I’m talking about!

As always,

Keep it funky!

MAsymbollogo

My Favorite Exercise Combinations: Installment 14 – Improve Your Speed Today

There are tons of ways to improve explosiveness and athleticism. One of the coveted ideas for achieving athleticism involves “triple extension” – extension of the hips, knees, and ankles in a very rapid manner.

Since there are a plethora of exercises can help develop the quality of explosiveness and power, many may throw the baby out with the bath water, instead of identifying the goals of the individual. With this in mind, it is always important to keep in mind these things:

  • Does this person have the requisite joint position to get into the desired position?
  • Does this person have a pre-existing context for which this movement can be taught?
  • Does this person have any soft tissue structures that can be limiting them from moving well?
  • Does this person have any pre-existing anxieties about the movement?

After identifying these items, quickly move on to the fitness side of things, and try this exercise combination out!

Let’s Talk Power

The DB Snatch is a great exercise aimed at improving triple extension in a unilateral fashion. In this exercise you can achieve a lot of great power qualities, on top of improving your ability to stabilize a weight overhead, something not many people can do effectively (simply because they are uninitiated with how to do so).

When performing the 1-Arm DB Snatch, make sure to keep these external cues in mind!

Coaching Cues

  • Throw the weight to the ceiling.
  • Snap your arm like a whip/rope.
  • Head goes to the ceiling.

It is common to be unfamiliar with the movements of the DB Snatch, so make sure to keep these “phases” in mind.

DB Snatch - Phases
Left – Hip Hinge, Middle – High Pull, Right – Receiving Position

However, sometimes individuals do not have the initial ability to bring their arms overhead – they may need better control on how their humerus moves in conjunction with how their scapulae move on their ribcage…

ShoulderMvmnt

… on top of relaxing their neck muscles!

Janda

The Shoulder Joint is Connected to the…?

By improving shoulder and scapular stabilizers, you are better likely to improve upon your neck motion. The reasoning for this is because you are now improving how your shoulder feels, instead of often “shrugging” or using compensatory patterns that involves your head/neck to take the brunt of the workload.

By performing the next exercise in this combination, the Supine Band Resisted PNF Diagonals, you are better able to keep reinforce these qualities:

  • Reintegrates anterior core stabilizers (IOs, EOs as you exhale)
  • Reintegrates anterior neck (SCMs as you rotate neck)
  • Improve scapular control (as you hold band in position)

Practical Programming

Ideally, you can super set these movements back and forth. If you’re in a supine position for the band pullaparts, you are in the easiest progression their is – which isn’t a bad thing. Sometimes you need to relax in order to move fast. No one just stays “tight” in order to develop athleticism – you need to move quick, and also relax in order to develop that “whip” like feeling.

So with this in mind, let’s combine these movements in a pairing.

A1. 1-Arm DB Snatch – 3×4/side
A2. Supine Band Resisted PNF Diagonals – 3×8-10/side

One thing to keep in mind is that power development can be justified as being used in the 3 to 6 rep range. As long as force development is the main goal, adequate rest is improved upon, and technique is on point, utilizing the DB Snatch is a great choice of an exercise!

With respect to the band pullaparts, I view these items as simply improving upon the various functions of the scapula and shoulder motion. That is, when you go down by your side, you are performing shoulder extension and scapular retraction/depression. When you bring your other arm up, you are working on shoulder flexion, and scapular upward rotation.

Also, if I am moving my neck after locking my shoulders into position, I am forcing my neck to turn on my SCMs, which help with rotary motion with the neck, something that I is often an issue with our athletes and even everyday folk.

With these things in mind, it is easy to see how you can integrate a great power development exercise, while still respecting the need for your overhead mobility and stability!

As always,

Keep it funky.

MAsymbollogo