What's going on Nation?
I'm Scott from muscularstrength.com and today we're going to go over the three golden rules
for the barbell back squat, and I also have a bonus rule at the end
So make sure you watch the entire video
now on another important announcement guys the cheat and recover program
is live and it's on muscularstrength.com
So if you haven't seen it yet make sure you do if you would like to make some serious gains and work with
overloading fuse with high-volume. This is the program for you. It's gonna change your life also
the app is dropping relatively soon, and I've made a page where you guys can go and register
so as soon as the app comes out, I'll email a link to you and you'll be able to download it right away.
So without any further ado, let's get to those golden rules. Golden rule number one guys
You must always go ass to grass on every single repetition.
Now we've all seen the quarter squats in the gym and they look like this
usually there's like seven plates on each side of the barbell and you got dudes doing this for their squats.
This is doing nothing. And then for those of you who only go down halfway and come back up believe it or not
you're actually placing more tension in your knees stopping and then having to get things going at halfway
versus going all the way down. If you want to avoid acute or chronic pain in your knees guys
you need to teach your body full range of motion and full range of motion is
going all the way down
keeping your chest up ass to grass and then coming
all the way back up to the top like this on every single repetition.
Now if you're not able to go full range of motion yet. Obviously you might have some flexibility issues
I do have some articles on my website that can help you with that
I'll link to them down the info section below, but I'll tell you what guys when I first started going true
you know ass to grass squatting all the way down all the way up
I had to
significantly lower my weight in order to be able to do that and something that you guys can do right now
to try to see what it feels like to go all the way down is put some weight on the bar
so 135 like 95 to 135 pounds depending on how strong you are and then
what you're going to have to do is
go down to the bottom like this
and then try to like move your feet around and see what feels the most comfortable
to stay in this position.
Because your form is going to change when you go ass the grass and for me
I used to squat with my feet a little too close and that was preventing me from going all the way down.
So what I had to do was try different foot stances and go all the way down and then when in the bottom position
kind of adjust my body and then get used to that to perform my reps.
So Golden rule number one guys, ass to grass every time. Golden rule number two guys.
You cannot push through your toes when you squat you need to push through your heels
proper range of motion once again, ass to grass
but as you come up you push through the heels
so your feet stay flat the entire time.
What often happens when people squat and it's usually do in the beginning to having tight ankles or poor ankle
flexibility is that as you come down your heels start to come off the ground
like this and then you push through your toes
to get back to the starting position.
So if you have poor ankle flexibility, then you should probably address that before you start squatting heavy.
Now what can also happen is maybe your ankle flexibility is good now
but because you were squatting wrong for so long pushing through your toes
you've developed a faulty recruitment pattern where basically your body is used to
recruiting certain muscles more during a squat so you should be recruiting a lot more glutes and hamstrings
but because you're pushing through your toes you're
recruiting a lot more quads and that's pushing your knees in causing valgus knee collapse.
Which can lead to a meniscus tear and your knee and a lot of other injuries
so you definitely want that to happen
especially as you start squatting heavier and heavier weight.
If anything when you squat you should be focusing on
pushing your knees out and then keeping your knees pushed out as you perform the
movement to avoid valgus knee collapse all together.
So, how can you correct this issue if you're starting to do it?
Well
the easiest way would be to get a pair of lifting shoes
because those are going to elevate your heels a little bit off the ground
so
the
problem here is when you push through your toes. It's elevating your heel
So if you don't have lifting shoes, you can get a pair of five-pound plates
I wouldn't go to tens
I try to stick with like two and a half's two fives
but you can put your heels on these and what that's going to allow you to do is
basically stay in that same movement pattern where if you were pushing through
your toes your heel would already be this high off the ground.
But the difference is gonna be is now that your heel is that high off the ground naturally from the start
you can focus a lot more on pushing through your heel
because you're still in that basically that same movement pattern
but now we've transitioned the movement from pushing through the toes to pushing through the heel so
rule number two guys do not push through those toes
and the third golden rule guys is knowing when to breathe now breathing it
might sound confusing to some of you because it can change
per exercise.
But the basis is always the same if you guys are doing circuit style workouts that don't require heavy lifting
you can pretty much just breathe regularly throughout the whole workout
it doesn't matter what range of motion you're in or what part of the movement you're in just just breathe normal.
But when it comes to lifting heavy weights whether you're doing a heavy squat a heavy deadlift.
Even if you're doing a heavy bicep curl, this is what you want to keep in mind.
You always want to have a tight strong core as you perform the movement.
So if I was doing a squat, I would be at the top like this
I'd breathe in through my nose and I want you guys to breathe in through your nose and
then as soon as I breathe in that air, I'm gonna keep my core nice and tight
I'm gonna flex everything and then go all the way down
All the way back to the top
I'm not gonna reset my breath until I get back to the top of the movement now
you can hold your breath and do a few repetitions in a row, or you can do them one at a time. Everybody's different
However, the one thing you never want to do is breathe out at the bottom of the movement
Your core is the only thing that is keeping you upright. So if you take in that breath
and you go all the way down to the bottom and you have like 300 pounds on your back and you breathe out
this happens you go into spinal flexion and now you're shit out of luck.
Unless you have some racks there to help you get it.
If you don't have them you're gonna have to drop the weight on the ground because in this position
you've lost all your core control and you've lost all that power that you need to
get back to the top of the movement.
Lucky for me. It's 135 so I can just get back to the top. So guys breathing take in breath to the top.
All the way down
All the way up
Reset your breath and continue for reps. Alright guys now it's time for that bonus tip, but before we get started
be sure to smash that like
button and let me know which exercise you want to see next
down in that comment section below and this tip guys is you have
to always make sure you're warming up your shoulders before you start squatting granted
you should have your shoulders warmed up before you do any type of exercising
but especially when squatting now, you might say Scott
I'm not working my shoulders when I squat. So why should I warm them up?
Well for me, I can only bring my hand back here naturally
Okay
and this isn't proper position when squatting
when you squat your hand has to go back another like four to five inches
maybe maybe more like three or four inches.
But regardless it has to get pulled back really far in order to hold that barbell in place.
Which means is a lot of tension on the shoulders
and if you have tight shoulders it's gonna cause a lot of discomfort
especially as you start lifting heavier reps
heavier weight for reps and what that means is that you're probably not gonna be able to do as many
because you want to get rid of that bar as fast as possible, but we can solve
all of that with a simple shoulder warmup
and as you guys know, this is my favourite shoulder breakers
and all I do is go forward and back ten to twelve times and
then I rest and then I do it again and then I actually also will do my warm-ups in
between my sets a lot of us have this mentality
that we do our warm-ups before we work out and then we never warm up ever again, believe it or not
you can actually increase your flexibility even more
especially if you have tight muscles by doing more warm up reps and warm up sets in
between all of your squats. So if you
have tight shoulders guys do a quick warm-up before you get started
but don't be afraid to do one extra set in between all your squat sets as well.
And with that being said, I hope you guys enjoyed the video
be sure to check out my cheat and recover program
if you're looking for something new it combines high volume with
overloading and it's gonna give you a workout like you've never seen before
and you're gonna love the gains. No gimmicks guys
just straight to the point training and as always
more good stuff coming soon
See ya