We all know that the benefits of the squat for your booty to performance training. While the squat is a great exercise to do you have to ensure that you can execute the lift without any pain. With that said, if you want to squat and can squat without pain, here are a few personal training tips that can help you pump up those squat numbers.
Prime Your Hips
Primers are basically movements that help you prepare your body for the upcoming lift, usually used during the warm up or prior to your main lift. Priming your hips for the squat can help develop stability, help you lift more efficiently, and potentially pain free too! 🙂
Here are x3 movements we incorporate using a simple Perform Better Mini Band, and it’s only $3!
- Lateral Band Walks- simply place the band above, below the knees, or at the ankles and walk laterally. Each step think of stepping up and over a small hurdle. We typically do these for 3×10-15 yards down & back.
- Monster Walks: band in the same position. Step forward and far out. We typically do these for 3×10-15 yards down & back.
- Quick Feet: Simply chop your feet up and down as quickly as possible, then vary foot width from shoulder width to as wide as you possible while still chopping your feet quickly. We typically do these for 3x20sec.
Our personal training clients typically do one of these movements or all 3, just depends on what the individual needs. With that said a simple set up can look like this:
- Squat with the bar
- lateral walk down & back x15 yards
- Squat warm up 1
- Monster walks down & back x15 yards
- Squat warm up 2
- Quick feet x2 20sec
- Squat warm up 3
- Lateral walk down and back 10, monster walk x10
- Squat work set 1
As you can see it won’t take too much of your time and it’s super simple to do.
Aside from a primer, these movements are also a great glute exercise to incorporate into your active recovery or glute activation drills.
Get Tight
*make sure you know when to bail!
You’ll constantly hear your personal trainer or performance coach scream “Get TIGHT!” before you squat down. But over the years I’ve found more and more weightlifters, sport athletes, and fitness training clients do not fully understanding what “Get TIGHT!” really means.
PUSH
The reality is that getting tight is beyond just bracing your abs. It means that you should be PUSHING your belly into the belt and if you don’t wear a belt imagine pushing your belly and bracing at the same time. Some personal trainers may say to suck in the belly but in my experience I haven’t found this method to be all that effective of a cue.
Un-Racking
Since we’re talking about squatting and getting tight, it’s also beneficial to talk about how to un-rack the bar. Those new to lifting appreciable weights just go up to the bar un-rack take a few big steps back and then take in a breathe. This is all fine and dandy if you’re doing light weight but when you’re pushing 90%+ you’re going to want to set it up MUCH differently.
When approaching the bar you should set yourself up like you’re about to squat the weight up, this means feet in a good position, bar in a good position, BIG belly breathe, and PUSH. Finally when you step back you should still stay relatively close to the rack, taking x1-2 normal steps back is efficient room for you to clear the J-hooks. Doing these small steps will allow you to be a LOT more efficient with your squatting set.
SQUEEZE
This is more for the front squat but it can also be for the back squat depending on the client/lifter. For the front squat, I want my athletes, weightlifters, and NYC personal training clients to be SUPER tight in their bicep and lats, this means a nice strong grip via SQUEEZING the bar . For a majority of my lifters I’ve found this to really help them stay tight and get a super strong set up. Of course there will be some lifters and athletes that we’ll have to approach differently but for the majority I’ve found this to be an extremely effective set up.
More Volume
During my time as a strength and conditioning coach at the University and professional level, we really focused on lifting x2 a week- strength day and speed/volume day. But as I got introduced into Olympic weightlifting in 2006 I was amazed by how often the weightlifters were squatting, of course they also didn’t have to take into consideration other stresses from practice, sprinting, conditioning etc…
With that said, I strongly believe that if you want a bigger squat you need to squat more often. Now this doesn’t mean that you need squat BIG all the time, this may simply means that you spread your total volume across the week. Doing so allows the athlete or fitness client to get valuable reps while keeping their legs fresh and not beat themselves up all at once.
For instance I commonly see people do something like this:
- Day 1: Squat to a technical max single.
- Day 2: Squat x60% 10×3
If you break this down this fitness client had lifted maybe x1-3 heavy lifts on day 1 and on day 2 light with a lot of volume. But if you we broke it down like this:
- Day 1: Squat technical triple
- Day 2: 80% 4×4
- Day 3: 70% 4×5
The total reps lifted throughout this week is about the same as the previous but it allows you to lift with “fresh legs” and more often. Think about it this way, if I asked you to work on your free throws x2 a week or x3 a week, which do you think will be more effective? More than likely x3 to help you become exposed to the motion more often and help the movement become automatic.
Keep in mind that you should slowly build into a program like this and that when you focus on one aspect you’ll have to probably back down your focus on other aspects of your lifts. Meaning, you can’t expect to focus on your squats and simultaneously increase your deadlift and bench press. The latter should be in a more maintenance mode and less volume.
Train smart,
About the Author
A great video going over the squat setup/walk-out:
http://youtu.be/GtPN-ftmxG8