Late December, I switched to the high bar back squat, after spending six months trying and never quite "getting" the low bar position. (Remember the back squat portion of my CFT, during which Struck said I was in serious danger of getting taco-ed?) So I started playing around with the high bar position, and immediately fell in love. My form immediately got better, and I'm increasing weight with decent mechanics pretty quickly. Trouble is, my form is still pretty inconsistent from one rep to the next.
I haven't been able to meet with my Trainer in the past month, so he hasn't been able to actually coach this new high bar position. And most of the tutorial-style material I found on CrossFit and You Tube relate to the low bar position. So I've been relying on my Trainer's video coaching and our telephone talks about how the high bar position is different. It's tough, however, because I have six months of low bar burned into my muscle memory... and low bar CUES burnt into my brain.
That was why I was SO excited to find this Squat Rx #21 video clip. For those of you who don't know, Squat Rx is an amazing series of You Tube videos, designed to address every aspect of the squat (and related exercises). The videos demonstrate proper form, common form issues, corrections and assistance drills. They are genius, and I've watched many of them several times.
Trouble is, there are a TON of these tutorials - 26, to be exact. So I hadn't worked my way up to video #21 until yesterday. After watching it, I cursed myself for not having sought it out sooner. In this short clip, Boris talks about how the "sit back" squat cue works very well for a low bar position... but not so hot for a high bar. And damn if I haven't been trying to FORCE that cue to make sense with my last two squat sessions.
My Trainer has been trying to talk to me about proper high bar form, but I am very much a hands-on learner. If you physically put me in the correct position, I can then duplicate that form consistently. Barring that, if you can show me a "this is good" versus "this is not good" demonstration, I'll have a decent shot at picking it up. So while he's been trying to get me to "see" what I need to do during our phone conversations (essentially telling me exactly what this video demonstrates), once I SAW it, I feel like it totally clicked.
Check out yesterday's squat session below. My form is still inconsistent - one rep is good, the next, not so good - but I can SEE myself trying hard to "sit back" and not being able to make it work. And when I forget about that cue and just focus on maintaining tension and getting my ass down (like the first rep of the second set)... I think it looks MUCH better.
Take some time to review Boris' squat series - starting from the beginning. Because I'm pretty sure no matter how good you are, everyone could use a little Squat Rx from time to time.
P.S. I have received some complaints that black pants make it difficult to check out my "form" in these videos. I am going to generously assume that these are legitimate concerns by those attempting to assess my lumbar curve, hamstring tension and squat depth, and will address this issue in future videos.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
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9 comments:
Looks decent Melissa. Your knees seem to be tracking over your feet. It's hard to tell with the angle, but it looks as though your stance might be a little narrow. I'm thankful I don't have to travel that far in squats (being minus multiple inches from Byers-Height).
Ya...Black pants....it seems to be easy enough in THIS video to see your hip crease going below your knee....but perhaps we've found something that the lululemons are NOT good for? hmmm?
Ps.....the security words for comments are getting weirder by the day...."debort"
Silly question, but do you fill your torso with air before every rep? My biggest hurdle with back squats was keeping the back angle, aka no-taco! By keeping a HUGE breath this helped me a ton. I agree, your knees and hips are fine, just try to keep that back angle consistent on the way up before full extension... but what do I know.
Hey, Melissa!
Always enjoyed the blog, and was disappointed I wasn't back home at CFNYC/BK when you were around, always wanted to meet you.
Anyways, Re: HBBS, it helps to do several things to get a "feel" for it. One thing that you can do is just drop into the bottom of an air squat and adjust yourself so you have a very low hip and high chest position, as you get accustom to that, you can add a bar and then gradually more weight to stretch your groin out. Get a feel for pushing your hips forward at the bottom.
Some cues I use for HBBS is: "chest up", "look [slightly] up", "sit between the legs", and several others. Make sure to push the knees out REALLY wide, it's more important in HB I think because it opens the hips up much more to sit between them.
Greetings Melissa,
I like that you are strength training. Your squats look pretty good.
My two cents:
Looks like your stance could be wider.
You have a minor butt wink.
Watch the bar path out of the hole - the bar pitches forward on some of your squats.
Stay in control at the bottom, i.e., don't drop too fast.
Here are the cues I find most useful for my own training.
High bar: "CHEST UP!"
Low bar: "HIP DRIVE!"
For both: "GET CENTERED!" or "MID-FOOT!" (i.e., get weight over mid-foot)
Some good discussion and links:
The Olympic Squat - Tommy Kono
the way is in training: Low-bar versus high-bar back squats
How I get psyched on high bar squats:
Ivan Chakarov - Amazing Squat!
Aimee Anaya has a nice high bar squat. I recommend modelling yours on hers. For example:
aimeeBSHeavySingle.mov
I have found front squats to be the best thing for my high bar back squat form.
Regards,
A fellow squatter
Hey Melissa, it looks like you are low-bar squatting, just with your bar in the high position. The high-bar back squat in some ways should look closer to a front squat than a low-bar back squat. You want to think about the same tight, vertical arch in your thoracic spine (the upper part of your back) that you have in the front squat. Basically, vertical back. You'll feel more quad recruitment, like in the front squat. You still want to squeeze the glutes and use the posterior chain, but don't let your hips kick back as much.
The thing is, to do that your knees are going to need to track a lot further in front of your toes, especially since you have such long legs. So your ankle/calves are going to have to be more flexible if they aren't already.
Also, go down further if you can. Those look parallel, but only just and on a few of them you skirt above parallel.
- Emily
Melissa,
One thing I tried (with a bit of success) to try to "wean" myself off low bar and big hip drive is to alternate between back squatting and front squatting in the same workout ... do a set of BS, then do a set of FS and then back to BS - using FS as my reference point for how my BS should feel
Jason
Jason,
That is GENIUS, and I love it... especially since my FS and BS are in the exact same place right now.
Based on this post, and some feedback I've received, I think we're going to be seeing some quality HBBS training videos and instruction coming out in the near future... stay tuned and I'll keep you posted.
When you come down to NYC, let's spend some time working on your squats.
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