There are many options for flexibility and mobility drills to help you obtain a full range of motion squat. But what if you have the mobility to squat down and yet you still have a nasty forward lean in the full squat? A lot of people talk about flexibility or mobility drills but rarely talk methods to help you obtain a full upright squat once you have the requisite mobility. So I thought it’ll be a great post to discuss what I’ve found to be effective for those that have a problem staying upright.

Why Stay Upright?

I’m a big believer in an upright squat because of the high translation to the classical lifts in Olympic Weightlifting. It’s clear that in the snatch and clean the Weightlifter WILL need to be upright, otherwise can potentially miss the lift. Another aspect is that if there’s a constant forward lean in the snatch, the lifter can be putting undue stress onto their elbow, shoulder, and wrist. A typical Weightlifter lifts 4+ days a week and at times snatching all 4 days, that amount of volume with a forward lean will inevitable cause problems in the future.

Hip Drive

I don’t want to go too much into a debate about “to hip drive or not to hip drive” but for now the short answer is that as a Weightlifting Coach I don’t feel it’s transfer is as beneficial vs an upright position. Anecdotally, I also find it safer on the back, especially in the front squat. In experience I’ve found more Weightlifters hurting their back, including myself, when they have a torso lean in the front squat.

Basically we focus on staying upright in ALL squats 🙂

3 Keys to Squatting Upright

The 3 keys I’d like to talk about is:

• Quad activation
• Tempo
• Multifidi

Today we’ll discuss Quad Activation

If you a typical fitness fanatic, you probably read a lot of forums and articles about squatting. Most likely you’ll hear “you need to hit the posterior chain (PC), that’ll spike up your squats”. While this can be the case, I’ve found that most of my Weightlifters, who have a forward torso lean, are already strong in the PC but don’t know how to properly fire their quads to stay upright in the squat. Doing simple activation exercises before they squat can help with this over time. Exercises such as:

• TKE
• Short step ups
• Leg press (yes the leg press can help quad activation)

Also you can add in more auxiliary movements that focus on the quads:

• Step ups
• Bulgarian split squats
• Leg Press
• Full ROM rev. lunges

A sample day can look like this:

Activation

• TKE 2×15
• Reaches + Y 2×10

Strength

• Snatch 4×2
• Clean 5×1
• Back Squat 4×5+
• Bulgarian Split Squat 3×12

Stay strong,

Team Fusion Weightlifting