How I Cured My Squat Woes (so You Can Too) – Part 1

As a powerlifter, progress comes in waves. The other day, I was telling one of my clients (who’s preparing for his first powerlifting meet) that, unless you’re a true beginner, you’ll rarely see all three lifts go up steadily at the same time. That’s why powerlifting takes patience and grit – you’re never met with instant gratification.

It’s common to see one or two of the lifts go up while one stalls. When all three are climbing, you count your blessings.

No matter how well or poorly your training is going, you’ve got to constantly attack your weaknesses. At one point or another, all three of my lifts have developed bad habits that limited my progress. I’ve been open about my deadlift issues over the years, but more recently, my squat gave me lots of trouble. So much trouble, in fact, that at my last meet I only squatted 505 – a full 5 pounds under my all-time best from March 2014.

But lately, thanks to expert coaching from Greg Robins and my fellow CSP coaches, I’ve reversed many of my squat woes and am back to squatting pain-free with better technique. In the first part of this multiple-part series, I’ll start at the top and talk about how changing my hand position helped fix my squat.

THE PROBLEM – HAND POSITION

Many of my squat issues originated from where I put my hands on the bar. In an attempt to get my upper back as tight as possible, I placed my hands very close together. I’d put my hands a thumb’s-length away from the knurling changed from rough to smooth, which you can see is only about a foot apart on a Texas Power Bar.

The first problem this caused was that it pushed my elbows too far behind the bar. My upper arms ended up almost parallel to the ground instead of underneath the bar, which is the ideal position. It takes a solid amount of shoulder and thoracic spine mobility to get in a good position with the hands that close, and I certainly do not have pristine mobility in either department.

When you get under the bar to squat with a narrow hand position, the tendency is for your scapulae (shoulder blades) to tip into anterior tilt. Basically, if you were looking at someone from the side, the top of the scap would tilt toward the person’s face while the bottom of the scap would tilt toward the person’s butt. To illustrate:

 

This in turn pushes the humerus (upper arm bone) into extension. When the scap tilts forward and the humerus rides into extension, it causes the chest to cave forward. This of course makes it extremely difficult to stay upright during the squat.

So in order to get my elbows in a better position, I’d wrench my elbows under the bar as hard as I could. There’s a right way and a wrong way to do this, and I can tell you with supreme confidence that I did this the wrong way. The scap and humerus need to move TOGETHER to get the elbows under the bar. This requires a posterior tilt of the scap (opposite of the anterior tilt you see when the hands are too close together). If only the humerus moves, the elbows might move under the bar, but the chest still stays dumped forward and you’ve now put tremendous stress on the inside of the elbow.

Big surprise, after years of squatting with a narrow hand position and pulling my elbows under the bar without getting my shoulders and chest in the right spot, I’d chewed up my elbows to the point where I couldn’t squat without pain. I’d irritated my multiple aspects of my medial elbows, including the ulnar colateral ligament (also called the UCL, which pitchers have repaired when they have Tommy John Surgery). And it’s hard to move big weight when you’re in pain.

THE SOLUTIONS

I attacked this issue from several angles. To fix my hand position, I:

• Moved my hands out wider

This was a “well duh” moment. I discovered that simply moving my hands out wider (index fingers on the rings and adjusting out or in as needed) actually let me pull my scaps and elbows down more, letting me get my upper back even tighter without pain. As you can see, my elbows still stay under the bar even though I’m out wider.

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• Improved scapular mobility

A focus on improving scapular motion through mobility drills and positional breathing allowed me to get more posterior tilt, putting me in a better position from the get-go. Two drills that helped immensely were Quadruped Extension Rotations and Bear Crawls.

• Improved thoracic spine mobility

My inability to get my scaps to move well was largely due to my inability to get any flexion at the thoracic spine. I was basically “stuck” in an extended position, which seems desirable to keep one’s chest up during the squat, but if you’re always there, you’re in trouble. If you’re “already inhaling” even when you’re not, you can’t get a big breath, which explained why I felt like I could never get tight. Breathing drills that drove thoracic flexion, especially All Fours Belly Breathing, helped a lot here.

• Changed the way I pulled my elbows under the bar

Instead of cranking my elbows under the bar my only moving my arms, I learned to pull the bar down into my back with my lats and scaps, as if doing a lat pulldown. This cue really clicked for me and did wonders for my upper back and shoulder positioning.

RECAP

To summarize the issues created by a too-close hand position:

• Putting the hands too close drives the elbows too far back and forces scapular anterior tilt. Get the hands out wider.
• Cranking your elbows under the bar without scapular movement is a recipe for elbow pain. Learn to pull the bar down into you instead of moving your elbows around the bar.
• Extending your back to keep your chest up is important, but if your scaps don’t move well because of a hyperextended movement strategy, you might have to back off a bit in your setup.

In part 2, I’ll move down the chain and talk about how I learned to set my back and hips for greater success.