What: A “Heavy Squat” Is Relative

A “heavy” squat is relative to the player. We look across the landscape of social media and it appears that everyone is bending bars on every rep. There’s music blaring, crowds cheering, and chalk flying. Lifting weights has become more of a spectacle than a tool of development.

This is deception. Weight training isn’t about who can lift the most weight or scream the loudest. It’s a tool to build confidence. That process of confidence building needs a bit of perspective added to it.

Yes, it would be great for everyone to have a 1,000-pound squat on his or her resume. But this isn’t possible, nor is it practical.

Why?

This is because some athletes aren’t built to handle tremendous loads, especially within the demographic of offensive line athletes. An offensive line room is a paradox of body types. Every player is built differently. This means that everyone in the room will be at a mechanical advantage or disadvantage in certain situations.

Generally, a tall player will be at a squatting disadvantage in comparison to a shorter player. But there are exceptions. A tall player may have short femurs, whereas a shorter player may have longer femurs than his taller counterpart, thus the taller player will have a squatting advantage because of the length of his or her levers.

There are many instances where your body type will impact your training. This has to be taken into account. The best thing for you to do is to not focus on your lifting totals, but to invest in the quality of your movements.

If you can move better, you will play better.

The greatest separation of offensive line athletes will always be the film. A heavy squat is relative, but relativity doesn’t have seat at the table on the football field. If you aren’t a good player, there’s nothing relative about that. 

What Does a “Good Squat” vs “Bad Squat” Look Like? 

 

Why: Don’t Want to Load Mechanical Flaws

 

Why: Performance Carryover

 

How: Developing Your Mindset

Lifting heavy weight isn’t something to take lightly (see what I did there).

From the first day we all started lifting weights, there was a desire to see how far down the strength rabbit hole we could travel. I remember when I first began to lift weights in high school. The squat was the first movement I learned. There were times I would look around the gym and see other players with 100’s of pounds on the bar, and there I was with a 25lb plate on each side of the bar. I was so excited about one day being able to graduate to a full 45lb plate. This eagerness is perfectly normal with young athletes. But you must be cautious to not allow your enthusiasm to bait you into skipping key developmental markers in the process of getting stronger.

One of the more overlooked elements of early strength development with young athletes is the failure to connect the mind with the body. Young athletes are so excited about the idea of lifting weights that they often fail to actually lift the weights.

There’s a distinction between lifting weights and moving weights. A young player may be able to move a weight, but that doesn’t mean he/she actually lifted it. The process of lifting weights is one that requires focus, intent, and attention to detail. This is how a player is able to feel what’s happening with their body. It’s also how the ability to self-correct is developed. If you can’t feel what you are doing, outside of someone telling you something is wrong, how will you ever know when something isn’t right? You won’t.

When you’re merely moving weights, a completed set or rep is a “good” one. But this isn’t ok when we are working towards building offensive line athleticism. A bad pass set is still a bad pass set, although you may have “won” the block. This process of “winning” with bad technique only sets the stage for a disastrous performance against a superior opponent. This is the same reality with weight training. You may be able to “win” reps with lighter weight, but as they load increases, you’re much more likely to be exposed at the most inopportune time.

You won’t just step on the field against Aaron Donald and kick his ass. You will need to be very mindful of every element of your skill acquisition, in order to give yourself the best chance to compete against him. This goes for your weight training as well. You won’t squat 500lbs by just getting under the bar and un-racking it. You better have developed a high level of focus, attention to detail, and adhere to a process before you attempt the lift. If not, things could go very badly.

Doing anything at a high level takes a higher degree of self-immersion. You have to be invested in the process, in order to get a return on the investment.

Lastly, don’t let social media fool you. I know, it looks like everyone on social media is ungodly strong. My timeline is full of big squats and deadlifts. But I have yet to see anyone’s bad reps.   I have yet to see the sets, reps, and tempo leading up to the filmed lifts. It all looks so perfect. But it’s bullshit. You need to run your race. Don’t get caught up in looking over your neighbor’s fence. Many of the people on social media are professional weight lifters. It’s all they do.

They don’t have football practice.

They didn’t have conditioning before weight training.

They didn’t sit in class all day.

They don’t have finals to study for.

They don’t have skill acquisition to focus on.

There life revolves around capturing that one perfect rep…

You’re an athlete trying to control and adapt to many elements that impact your development. Don’t let social media become another aspect of your life that’s working against you.

How: Build Through Volume & Auxiliary Work & Single Leg Work

So, we’ve learned what a proper squat looks like, we have learned why breakdown in movement during a squat is detrimental to our athlete’s performance, and we have seen how to identify movement flaws that occur when a load is added to the squat. Now we need do address how to fix these flaws.

Above all things, a coach needs to know when to tell an athlete to back off on the weight when technique looks questionable, make sure their athlete’s intent is high when fatigue starts to set in and pick auxiliary lifts that will address the source of the problem.

Building The Squat Through Volume

For the most part, movement flaws in the squat show up when an athlete is performing the exercise near max effort, and when they are fatiguing. In other words, their technique breaks down during one rep max sets, and when they are nearing failure during high volume sets. The difference between these two is that one rep maximum attempt breakdowns are caused by CNS fatigue, and high volume breakdowns are caused by muscular fatigue.

It is also important to understand that during max effort lifts, building proper movement patterns simply cannot be addressed, but fixing the movement flaws can actually be addressed during high volume squats. Movement patterns are controlled by our nervous system. These movement patterns are built through the relative timing of impulses sent to the muscles used to coordinate movement, the relative forces applied to each muscle, and the relative speed of each muscle contraction. These aspects are all relative to the forces applied onto the body. This means that the more weight that is on the bar, the more stress is applied onto the CNS to complete the movement.

When the CNS is performing at maximum intensity such as a one rep max lift, the impulses that are sent out cannot be altered or even thought about because altering these impulses will result in insufficient power output. During heavy singles it is impossible for your athletes to focus on altering their movement patterns because there is such a high stress on the CNS just to move the weight from point A to point B. This is why a squat that looks bad on set 1 at 95% of a 1RM will still look bad on set 5 no matter how many coaching cues you throw at your athlete. They just can’t afford to alter movement patterns at this load because of the high strain on the CNS.

Unlike heavy singles, athletes who are performing 5 sets of 10 have much less strain on their CNS. This means that more focus can be spent on proper movement, and while fatigue may eventually cause movement flaws to show, these movement flaws are exposed through muscular fatigue rather than fatigue of the nervous system. It’s important to observe the differences between the first rep of a set compared to the eight or ninth rep of a set, and if movement is breaking down, address these flaws with the appropriate cues to fix the movement. While the athlete may be fatigued, they still have the ability to alter the impulses of movement programming to move in a more optimal way. Once an athlete has the same squat on rep one of set one as they do on rep ten of set five, it is safe to say that they are ready to build up to a 1 rep max. So coaches, please do not start of your winter workouts with 1RM testing, all you will do is emphasize improper movement patterns that many of your athletes already have which will lead to improper movement on the field and suscept your athletes to injury. Instead, spend some time under tension, emphasize proper movement during muscular fatigue, and build your squats through high volume work.

Using Auxiliary Lifts to Improve The Squat

While building the squat through volume is a great place to start, some athletes need more than high volume work to perfect their squat. This may be because they lack development in a specific muscle group that plays a key role in proper squat. If one or two of the muscle groups used in the squat are considerably weaker than the others being used, we will see the same flaws over and over again in the squat. Not using the proper muscles to perform the squat puts unnecessary stress on other muscles and joints that over time can lead to injury. Muscle groups such as the glutes, adductors, and spinal erectors are the culprits that lead to the most common movement flaws in the squat. These movement flaws were shown by Brian in the video above. If you identify any of these movement flaws in your athletes through any range of intensity, it would be wise to adjust auxiliary work to build the muscles responsible for the improper movement.

Knee Valgus (Knee Collapse)

Knee Valgus is the action of the knees caving in towards the bottom of the squat. This issue can be a symptom of the glutes are not properly activating to abduct the hips and keep the knees in line with the toes, or when the VMO (inner quad) is underdeveloped compared to the other heads of the quadriceps. Glute emphasized movements such as glute-ham raises, glute bridges and use of the hip circle are great ways to teach glute activation. For strengthening the VMO, the VMO sled drag is the best quad extension exercise in regards to isolating the VMO.

Knee Varus (Knee Flare)

Knee Varus is the opposite action of knee valgus where the knees flare outside of the feet in the bottom of the squat. This isn’t to be confused with the natural movement of the knees to track out on the down phase of the squat, but rather the unstable movement that occurs at the bottom of a squat as the athlete redirects upwards. This movement flaw is a symptom of weak adductors which work alongside the glutes in stabilizing the knee during the squat. Some movements that emphasize adductor activation are sumo deadlifts and medball squeezes.

Rounded Back

The rounded back is a movement flaw that many athletes suffer from. Rounding of the back can be caused by improper core stability during the squat. This can be a combination of both spinal erector and abdominal weakness. Core instability will be exposed in many loaded movements, but can be most effectively built through isometric exercises such as planks on both the ground and on a GHR machine. If the rounding is occurring in the upper back, the weakness could be in the muscles that retract the scapula, such as the rhomboids and middle trapezius. While any type of horizontal row can improve scapular retraction when done right, a good exercise to isolate these muscles are dumbbell scapular retractions.

Loading The Knee

The hip hinge is a general movement concept that must carry over into both the squat and ultimately, into performance as well. The hip hinge is simply the action of loading the posterior chain prior to the torso changing elevation. In order to get into a stance, perform a squat, or even sit down, we must load the hamstrings and glutes by pushing our hips back and keeping the shin in a vertical position. Failing to do this and allow the knees to travel in front of the foot results in greater stress on the knee joint and less activation of the posterior chain. Certain exercises can be used not only to build the posterior chain, but teach effective hip hinge as well. The RDL is great for emphasizing hip hinge simply because the only movement occurs at the hips. Once mastered in the RDL, this movement can be further developed through unilateral movement such as the lunge.

How: Training Model