If You Physically Can't Squat...

...then your mobility probably sucks. What this means is, your body is not flexible enough to perform the squat correctly, so you physically cannot perform the squat with proper form. The reason for this is most likely due to your lifestyle, if you spend a majority of your time sitting down for instance.

For the low bar squat, the three most common areas (from what I have seen) where people have mobility issues are in:

• the hips
• the shoulders
• the ankles

If you are teaching someone to squat correctly, the first thing you should do is use coaching cues to try to get the lifter to use proper form; e.g. "knees out", "chest up", etc. If this does not work, the following sections may be of use.

Mobility issues don't only apply to new lifters. For instance in my case, my knees only buckled in during heavier weights, so I didn't know for a long time that I needed to work on my hip mobility.

Hip Mobility

A person with tight hips will have trouble keeping their knees shoved out on the squat (demonstrated on the left in the figure below):

An example of knees buckled inwards vs. knees shoved out on the squat

 Having the knees shoved out in the squat (shown right in the above image) is important because:

1. It pushes your legs out of the way and gives space for your body, making it easier to hit depth.
2. It ensures optimal distribution of forces through your knee. If your knees are inside of your feet instead of pointed directly over your feet, there is more torque on the knee.
3. It's prettier to look at

Seriously though, squatting with the knees shoved out is important in keeping the movement as safe as possible. So what if you absolutely cannot shove the knees out?

There is a great drill you can perform daily in order to improve your hip mobility shown below:

http://www.mobilitywod.com/2012/01/episode-363-pre-squat-hip-opener-mob-rx.html

The above drill should be performed after all your training sessions, as well as every night before you go to bed. You will notice an improvement in your hips (and subsequently your squatting) after about two weeks or so.

The below stretch is also worth doing before you start doing squats in your training session. Hold the stretch for about 30 seconds, and take the same foot stance that you squat with. Also keep your chest up.

 

Squat stretch

Shoulder Mobility

Basically, your shoulder mobility needs improving  if you are unable to put the bar in this low bar position:

The low bar position

The low bar position will initially feel quite uncomfortable. Your wrists may also not be as straight as in the above figure (that is, they will be very bent). Your body will get used to this position over time, you may also want to try shoulder dislocations to help open up the shoulders. 

Also when getting into the low bar position, you may need to jam your body into place, and it may take a few pushes with your body until you can get the bar low enough. You can see me doing this here.

Ankle Mobility

Poor ankle mobility can be in different forms. One case is shown in the left in the below figure, where you can see the feet caving inwards in the bottom of the squat position:

  A comparison of poor vs. adequate ankle mobility. Yes I edited this in Paint.

 

The second case is harder to identify, and is basically when your ankles are so stiff, you literally cannot hit depth without rounding your lower back. This is sort of shown on the right in the figure below:

Just imagine that the lower the man squats, the more his lower back rounds, because his stiff ankles do not permit his knees to track forward (the ability for his knees to track forward is shown on the left figure).

In order to identify this ankle issue, stand with the balls of your feet on the edge of a box, and basically perform the negative portion of a standing calf raise. In other words, you want to place your ankles into dorsiflexion. If you cannot get much dorsiflexion in your ankles, you will need to stretch them out. 

A good ankle stretch you can do will involve you getting into this position, and try to get your knee as close to the wall as possible (don't go too overboard with this). You can do this stretch for both ankles in between all your squat sets. You may also wish to try out this ankle stretch too.

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Hopefully you squatters out there will find this post useful. Individuals will have varying levels of mobility in their hips, shoulders and ankles based on their lifestyle and how long they have been living this way. If your mobility is absolutely shocking, you may need to do further research into how to further improve on your mobility outside of the drills that are shown in this post, and it may take longer to be able to squat properly. Don't give up however, it'll be worth it in the end.

GPC Push Pull Meet

I recently competed at the GPC Push Pull Meet on the 18th of November. It was a great experience and I got to see a lot of big lifts. I came fifth overall.

My attempts:

• Bench 1st attempt: 107.5kg
• Bench 2nd attempt: 115kg
• Deadlift 1st attempt: 220kg
• Deadlift 2nd attempt: 242.5kg
• Deadlift 3rd attempt: 250kg (failed)

Here's the video of my attempts:



Meet Prep:

Even though the squat wasn't a contested lift in this meet, I still trained it, wouldn't want it to fall behind :P

So I planned ahead what numbers I wanted to hit. Everything pretty much went according to plan, I ended up squatting 185kg x 4, deadlifting 225 for 3,2. I was doing Texas Method for the bench press but it stalled earlier than I expected so I did Smolov jr just to make a bit more progress. I'll be continuing with the Texas Method for the bench in the future but adding more sets on intensity day to get in more volume because I feel that's what was lacking the first time.

In Week 8 I hit what I expected to get for my 2nd attempts. For the squat I did 205kg, and for the deadlift I did 240kg. I decided to do doubles for the bench that week and did 110kg x 2. You can see the video here.

At this stage I don't feel like it was worth it doing the '2nd attempts' in training, because the fatigue built up over the weeks made these attempts feel pretty tough. I didn't end up deadlifting much more than 240kg in competition anyway.

Week 10 (the week of the meet) was a deload week, so I was just lifting light weights to reinforce technique.

Weigh-In:

For this meet there was a 24 hour weigh-in. I wanted to lift in the 82.5kg weight class but weighed about 84kg. It wasn't hard to make weight because during my deload week I lost 1kg of water weight because I wasn't drinking as much water (because I wasn't lifting heavy). So all I had to do was not eat as much on Friday night and I weighted 82.3kg on Saturday morning. After weigh-in I drank and ate a lot and was 85.5kg that night.

Thoughts about the day:

Based on how I went, I think I overestimated what I could do. I was hoping for a 120kg bench and at least a 250kg deadlift. I based these numbers off what I hit for triples in training. At least now I have a better idea of what maxes I can hit, based on what I can lift for reps in training. My paused bench and deadlift improved by 7.5kg since the last meet, so I'm happy that I got stronger.

There was a lot of big lifting at the competition which was amazing to watch, 200+kg benches, 300+kg deadlifts. Check out PTC Sydney's YouTube channel over the next few days to see videos of these lifts.

Intermediate Programming: The Texas Method

Linear progression does not work forever. Eventually the stress induced on your body will take longer than 48 hours (the time until the next training session if you're training on Monday, Wednesday, Friday) to fully recover from, and as a result your next training session will be affected negatively. For example if you squat 140kg for 3x5 on Monday, you might only get 142.5kg for 4,3,2 or something like that on Wednesday. If you're not fully recovered, you'll feel it.

Stress on your body when you're on linear progression

If linear progression is right for you (and it will be for anyone who is new to lifting), the stress induced on their body will behave like the above diagram. Your body gets stressed by the first training session on Monday, but then the body is able to recover from it before Wednesday's training session, and so on. During this period you'll make the quickest gains you'll ever make.

  Stress on your body when linear progression is no longer suitable

As you can see from the diagram above, as I described previously eventually you'll reach a stage where the stress induced on your body will take longer than 48 hours to recover from and will affect your next session. This isn't invitation to be a pussy at the first sign of missing a rep though. If you get 3x5 on Monday but 5,5,4 on Wednesday, repeat the Wednesday weight for the next session.

A good rule of thumb of knowing when your linear progression days are over (PROVIDED YOU HAVE GOOD TECHNIQUE) is when you stall at a certain weight, then you deload but once you work your way back up you stall again at pretty much the same time, or a little bit higher. This means the time you put in to get little to no improvement is no longer worth it and you need to change how your program things.

If you started out on 5x5  and are experiencing the above, drop down to 3x5. You'll be able to continue making progress.

Introduction to Intermediate Training:

Intermediate model

In the above figure, you can see the model for intermediate programming. This is also known as the "Texas Method", because it was developed in Texas I guess. Basically you have a Medium day on Monday, a Light day on Wednesday, and a Heavy day on Friday. In terms of rep schemes it goes like this:

Monday

5x5 (~80-85% of Friday's weight)

Wednesday

3x3-5 (at a weight ~80-85% of Monday's weight)

Friday

1x5

This is the concept, remember how I said once you're at the end of your linear progression days, the stress induced from your first training session in the week will take longer than 48 hours to recover from? In intermediate programming, we take advantage of that. You will do a moderately heavy weight for 5x5 on Monday, then on Wednesday you will lift a light weight for low reps just to flush blood through the muscles (and whatever other justification there is for having a Light day, e.g gives you a mental break etc.), then on Friday you will lift a heavy weight for 1x5. 

Friday is the most important day, this is the day where you handle real weights. But it is important to get the volume on Monday's session in other to set yourself up to being able to lift heavy weights on Friday. Monday will be referred to as your "Volume day" and Friday will be referred to as your "Intensity day". You'll understand why when you look at the figure below:

Relationship between volume and intensity during a week of the Texas Method

So the week starts out with high volume moderate intensity, then you have the light day in the middle of the week, then the week ends with high intensity low volume (since you only do one heavy set).

The Texas Method Template

Here is what the program looks like:

Monday

Squat 5x5

Bench 5x5 (alternate with Press 5x5 in the next week)

Row 5x5

Curls

Wednesday

Squat 3x3

Press 3x5 (alternate with Bench Press 3x5 in the next week)

Power Cleans

Weighted chin-ups

Friday

Squat 1x5

Bench 1x5 (alternate with Press 1x5 in the next week)

Deadlift 1x5

Dips

Ab work should be done everyday too, just one exercise for 3 sets should be fine.

NOTE: Since the bench press and press alternate from week to week, the percentages for the light pressing days are determined from the volume day weight from the previous week. E.g in the above case, the weight to be used on the Press on Wednesday for 3x5 is 80-85% of what was done for 5x5 last Monday.

Getting Started on Texas Method

When you first start on the Texas Method, start light. Give your body time to adapt to this way of training. Whatever weights you finished with on linear progression, take around 80% of those weights and use them as your starting weights.

Your first week should feel easy. Let's say you stalled on 140kg for 3x5 on squats on linear progression. When you start on Texas Method, do 110kg 5x5 and 130kg 1x5 in your first week, 115kg 5x5 and 135kg 1x5 in your second week, 120kg 5x5 and 140kg 1x5 in your third week, 125kg 5x5 and 145kg 1x5 in your fourth week. The weights probably won't feel easy at this stage, so from here on take smaller jumps. Increase Friday's weight by 2.5kg.

Don't obsess over how much you do on Monday. It is just a volume day. After your fourth week on Texas Method, you can stick to the same weight on Mondays for 2-3 weeks. If you increase the 5x5 weight every week eventually you'll burn out too soon for this routine. At the moment I'm doing 145kg on Monday, and in the 180's for 1x5 on Friday (this may vary depending on individuals, but if you're doing 150 for 5x5 on Monday and 160kg 1x5 on Friday, the weights are too close).

I've been running Texas Method for squats for almost a year, and I can imagine doing it for much longer still.

Things You Should Know

• The weight you handle on Volume day doesn't matter to the point where you care about setting PR's on Monday
• Don't skip Volume day ever, without it you cannot perform well on Intensity day
• You can microload on the bench press and press if you wish
• If you stall, deload by 10% and take 3-4 weeks to work your way back up
• If you don't like benching and pressing heavy every second week, you can switch into a Texas Method split:

Monday
Bench 5x5
Press 3x5
Row 5x5

Tuesday
Squat 5x5
Power cleans

Thursday
Bench 1x5
Press 1x5

Friday
Squat 1x5
Dips
Deadlift 1x5

I haven't really listed assistance lifts in the above template. Note that you'll be focusing on one pressing movement over the other since one of them has to be done first. The light day has been omitted, but you can still do it on Wednesday if you wish (I do this).


Hopefully this post will be useful to fellow lifters out there!

Training 12/10/12

Haven't updated in a while, I'm currently training for a meet in November. Training is going well so far, yesterday I squatted 182.5kg x 5, and deadlifted 220kg 2x3. I'm doing Smolov jr for the bench press at the moment. It's a 3-week routine that involves benching 4 times a week It's a great program to use if your bench press has been stuck, however it is not to be taken lightly, if you have any shoulder or elbow problems this routine may aggravate them.

Training 13/9/12 and 14/9/12

Bench 106kg x 3
Squat 172.5kg x 5
Deadlift 210kg 2 x 4
Deadlift 140kg x 21

Not too happy with the bench PR, feels like I bounced it too much. Need to make sure I control the bar more next time.

Very happy with the deadlifts, recently threw in speed deadlifts on Tuesday (100kg for 10 singles, 30 seconds rest) to train my explosiveness, and it has helped my speed off the floor for heavy weights.

Training Update

Just thought I'd share how my training is going at the moment since it's been a while, this was done today (105kg x 3 bench, 70kg x 3 press):




My current routine is different to what I posted a while back, it is now like this:

Monday
CG Bench Paused5x5
Press 3x5

Row 5x5
Curls 5 x 5
DB Press 3 x 10
Lat Raises 3 x 10
Grip training

Tuesday
Squat 5x5
Power Cleans
Abs

Wednesday
Light High Bar Squat 3x3
Weighted Pull-ups
Abs

Thursday
Bench 1 x 3
Press 1 x 3
Reverse Flies 5 x 12
DB Bench 3 x 10 elbows tucked (recently started doing weighted dips too so might alternate between these two or something)
Lying Tricep Extension ss. Curls 5 x 12

Friday
Squat 1 x 3-5
Klokov Press
Deadlift

Abs
GHRs
Grip training
Conditioning

The problem with the old routine was that I was only benching and pressing once a week which was not enough. The program is pretty shit now that I think about it haha

I've instead adopted Texas Method style programming where you have a volume day and an intensity day, which seems to be working well. I have seriously upped the upper body volume (compared to what I was doing before anyway) because I feel like it needs to take a beating to grow. For the higher rep stuff I do, I'm not too concerned about how much weight I'm handling, its just to get in more volume. Getting stronger on the big lifts are still the meat and potatoes of my program.

Ever since that meet I competed in at the end of June, my squat wasn't really improving because I tried to get back into it too aggressively. I should've instead started out light and worked my way back up. Now I'm a month behind where I would like to be, oh well lesson learned. I also got rid of power cleans which was a mistake, because I think the extra pulling volume helped both my squat and deadlift. I've recently started doing Glute Ham Raises (you can use a leg curl machine if you don't have access to a GHR) for more hamstring work too.

The bench has been going up which I believe is due to the higher upper body volume, as well as eating more. My bodyweight is around 82-84kg at the moment (would like to get to 90kg for now).

Deadlifts are going alright, just need to figure out how to taper it for the next upcoming meet (sometime in November).

I also did a run of Smolov Jr for the bench press, which increased my 1RM by an easy 5kg. I programmed the numbers quite conservatively since it was my first time doing it and it paid off. Will plan to do Smolov Jr. again soon, I don't want to abuse it too much because it involves benching four times a week. Might do an article on how I improved my bench once it is less embarrassing.

Testing a conservative 1RM after doing Smolov Jr:

Also in regards to that overhead press article I wrote not too long ago, I found it easier to have the bar touching my chest it turns out, so you should try both ways to see how you prefer it.

Modifying Your Routine When on Linear Progression

Note: If you're just starting out on linear progression, stick to the program as written. Your first priority is nailing the technique on the main lifts. Now is the time to get it right, it will cost you later down the track if you don't put in the effort now. This definitely set my bench and overhead press back and now they're playing catch up. Don't be lazy.

Plateauing Lifts:

The first lifts to plateau will be the squat and deadlift. What I mean by plateau is that they will no longer progress from this style of programming. This is because you are handling a heavy enough load that the body now needs more time to recover from it. Plateauing is different to stalling; stalling is where you stop making progress but when you deload and work your way back up you can continue to make more progress.

The bench press and press will see more stalling compared to the squat and deadlift, but won't plateau as early.

There are people who have started on 5x5, and people who have started on Starting Strength so I will consider both cases in terms of how to modify your routine.

If You Started Out With 5x5:

Once you stall on a lift that you are doing 5x5 with (squat, bench, press, row), you should switch to 3x5. This will reduce the volume, and still allow you to continue to make linear progress. You will switch to 3x5 on the lifts at different times, because they will plateau at different times. Just because things stop working for one lift doesn't mean you need to change things for the other lifts if they were still progressing.


In essence you'll end up doing Stronglifts 3x5. The following sections will then also apply to you.

When the Deadlift Plateaus:

Eventually deadlifting heavy twice a week will be too much for the trainee (make sure the deadlift has plateaued first, if you are unsure, deload and try again and see if there is much of an improvement). What they can do instead is reduce deadlift frequency to once a week. The routine might look like this:

Monday
Squat 3-5x5
Bench 3-5x5 (will be switched with Overhead Press in the following week)
Row 3-5x5

Wednesday
Squat 3-5x5
Overhead Press 3-5x5(will be switched with Bench Press in the following week)
Chin-ups

Friday
Squat 3-5x5
Bench 3-5x5(will be switched with Overhead Press in the following week)
Deadlift 1 x 5

Note: I have written 3-5x5 because the deadlift may plateau before you need to switch from 5x5 to 3x5 on the other lifts.

Now deadlifting will occur every Friday. The reason I prefer to leave deadlifts on Fridays is so that you can still squat on Friday will 100% effort. I found I could get away with deadlifting on Wednesdays for a while, but eventually I had to move the deadlifts to Friday because my lower back would not recover in time for Friday's squatting.

When the Squat Plateaus:

Eventually squatting 3x5 will be too much for your body, because you are handling a heavy enough load that it takes longer than 48 hours for your body to fully recover from. What you can do in this case is change Wednesday's squat session into a light day. What you can do is instead substitute Wednesday's squat for front squats, with a load that is lighter, say 75-80% of the load you handled on Monday, for 3x3.

At this stage, you should be familiar enough with the back squat, that you can try to learn the front squat without it affecting your ability to back squat (i.e you can UNDERSTAND the difference between the 2 squat styles). If not, you're fucking up. Put in more effort to understand how the different squat styles work.

 Put more effort into your squatting

This light squat day serves to give you more time to recover from Monday's squat session, and also pumps blood through the muscles involved in the squat to help reduce DOMS which was incurred from Monday's squats. On many occasions my legs felt less sore after I did light squats on Wednesday.

The routine will look something like this:

Monday
Squat 3 x 5
Bench 3 x 5 (will be switched with Overhead Press in the following week)
Row

Wednesday
Front Squat 3 x 3 (80% of Monday's session)
Overhead Press 3 x 5(will be switched with Bench Press in the following week)
Chin-ups

Friday
Squat 3 x 5
Bench 3 x 5(will be switched with Overhead Press in the following week)
Deadlift 1 x 5

Eventually this way of squatting will stop working too and you'll need to switch to another way of programming, known as intermediate programming (or weekly programming). I'll save this for another post.

When the Bench Press and Overhead Press Plateau:

Once you have exhausted your linear gains on the bench press and overhead press, I would consider that to be the end of your time on linar progression and it would be time to move on to a different style of programming (since you have already plateaued on linear progression for the squat and deadlift already).

Remember, to get the most out of your linear progress for the bench press and overhead press, you should use fractional plates (they weigh 0.5kg). They will allow you to take smaller weight increases than 2.5kg and will reduce the likelihood of stalling.

You may also wish to switch to 5 sets of 3 reps for the overhead press which worked pretty well for me. Don't be lazy with the overhead press, train it hard and you'll have healthy shoulders.

Power Cleans:



Power cleans are great. They are highly technical and force you to perform a forceful hip extension at just the right time and position in order to get the bar onto your shoulders. If I get better at them I'll do a post on this exercise :P There are plenty of useful resources on the internet though, Don McCauley and Glenn Pendlay are Olympic coaches who would have some good articles on the interwebs.

If you want to do power cleans, there's a few ways you can implement them into your routine:

Monday
Squat 3 x 5
Bench 3 x 5 (will be switched with Overhead Press in the following week)
Row

Wednesday
Front Squat 3 x 3 (80% of Monday's session)
Overhead Press 3 x 5(will be switched with Bench Press in the following week)
Power Cleans 5 x 3
Chin-ups

Friday
Squat 3 x 5
Bench 3 x 5(will be switched with Overhead Press in the following week)
Deadlift 1 x 5

Note that power cleans are performed much differently to deadlifts, in that they are eased off the floor in a controlled manner, and using the lats you sweep the bar inwards to keep the bar close to your body, then you accelerate as the bar passes your knees. This is much different to a deadlift where you drive your legs hard into the floor at the start to break the bar off the floor.

Assistance Exercises:

One final thing before I forget; assistance exercises. This includes pull-ups, dips, ab work and curls.

You can implement them into your routine like so:

Monday
Squat 3 x 5
Bench 3 x 5 (will be switched with Overhead Press in the following week)
Row
Curls
Ab Work

Wednesday
Front Squat 3 x 3 (80% of Monday's session)
Overhead Press 3 x 5 (will be switched with Bench Press in the following week)
Chin-ups
Ab Work

Friday
Squat 3 x 5
Bench 3 x 5(will be switched with Overhead Press in the following week)
Deadlift 1 x 5
Dips
Ab Work

You might want to superset the ab work and assistance exercises to save time.