In my opinion staying upright in the squat is very crucial for an Olympic weightlifter. The upright squat position gives greater translation to the sport, as it increases stability and strength in very similar joints angles to the snatch and clean.
I’ve been struggling with the hips driving out for years and eventually due to poor form herniated my disc during the front squat. I’ve looked for many various reasons why I was kicking out my hips from neuromuscular, inactive quads, posterior chain dominate, weak abs, weak glutes, etc… And I’ve finally figured it all out! The key is….
TIME!
Well the key is time, determination, patience, and correct movement patterns… Re-learning how to squat upright without your hips kicking out is an EXTREMELY frustrating experience. During this phase you’ll have to swallow your pride and drop down the weight, not just a little bit but most likely down to 40-50%!
But WHY?
I’ve found that starting from ground zero has been imperative for this transition. We have to place ALL the focus on staying upright, if you’re too focused lifting the weight you’ll go back to your natural squat pattern = hips kicking out. In time it WILL come together, you’ll just need patience. Strength will come through position, once position is there you can then refocus on your strength.
With that said here are a few tips I’ve found helpful:
*Notice head starting the initiation up
Key Tips to Squat Upright
- Stop initiating the movement with the hips- if you want to stay upright you’re going to have sit straight down- sit STRAIGHT down not hips back.
- Change the feet to a wider stance with toes outs- you’re going to have to play around with what angle works better via video feedback and/or the coach. It’s going to feel weird at first so make sure to keep it light, in either case you shouldn’t be touching anything tough during this phase. Once you find that position, stick with it and keep building off of that = a lot of VOLUME with low-medium intensity.
- Initiate the ascent up with your head and back, not the hips. This cue is from Joe Yu, he taught me this a while back and it’s just now clicking. The gist of it = Instead of letting the hips kick out first, you want the upper back and head to drive upward FIRST. The initiation from the head and back should help keep upright torso and get a little “pop” out of the hole.
Step by Step Squat Process
I generally have the lifters stand as upright as possible, squeeze the glutes, and lean back so that all their weight is distributed on the heels – still keeping an upright position = shoulders, hips, knees, ankles still aligned- then sit straight down while focusing on keeping that chest upright. Once you hit the hole use your head and shoulders to initiate the movement up. The descent should be a nice controlled manner, once you start the ascend up you should be driving up with speed.
*not a good position for front squatting
Programming Keys
As I stated earlier, this will take time so be patient. You may to want to go heavy and push it but I would suggest against that. Generally speaking, when you go heavier there are compensation patterns that we don’t want = hip kicking out. For this phase we need to focus on everything upright, that means you can’t do that shit 🙂 so let’s re-focus, ya meatball!
The key that I’ve found to have greater translation is an accumulation of volume, not total volume within the sets but through the week. Usually when I program higher reps (back squat = 5+, front squat = 3+) technique breaks down very quickly. We need to reinforce good position both for neuromuscular adaptation and to strengthen the lifter in that specific joint angle for higher translation to the lifts. *Keep in mind this for the lifter that has a problem staying upright in the squat, clean, and snatch*
For our lifters I don’t program in a lot of work sets i.e. 10×2 8×3 etc… because I’ve found it to tax their legs too much. Since most of our guys lift x4-5 a week and we want to constantly expose them to quality squat reps and also the classical lifts, I need to tread lightly on total volume within one session. During this phase, want our guys to squat with high weekly volume and low-moderate intensity. If all goes well the lifter will have enough juice in their legs to handle the squat volume and also the positioning for the olympic lifts. If we zap them all in one session, it can ruin the quality of training for the next few sessions. While there maybe a time and place for this, I would not suggest that this is one of them.
Conclusion
This will take time and it’s a process, for some fast other slow. Add in more variable such as the positioning for the classical lift and you’re going to have to figure out a good balance. Most of my lifters are students and/or work full time, so we also have to take into consideration the demands of working in NYC too. I’ll talk more about the balance risk vs. reward and where we stand with it later next week.
Stay strong,