Overhead Squat: "Death on a Stick"

This is a great video from Glenn Pendlay and Jon North, both formerly with Cal Strength.  The latter  provided the subtitle for this post, "death on a stick."  Funny.

The overhead squat is a useful diagnostic tool for assessing an athlete's mobility as hip, ankle, thoraic, shoulder and even wrist flexibility all come into play.  An added benefit is the limited margin for "cheating" this movement due to its emphasis on positions.  Other benefits stemming from the overload squat include strengthening the trunk and overhead position, reinforcing the vertical torso position, challenging maximum depth on the squat and building confidence for heavier snatches.  Despite the value overhead squatting provides, I rarely see people in the gym training this movement, let alone going heavy.

Critics argue the overhead squat is a poor movement for building strength as a result of the lighter loading when compared to the back or front squat.  I agree with this argument.  The overhead squat is inferior to the aforementioned squat varieties.  However, that does not mean the movement should be discarded completely.  It still has its place in a well-balanced training program.  For instance, the overhead squat fits nicely into a four-day-per-week training schedule (Monday - back squats, Wednesday - front squats, Friday - back squats and Saturday - overhead squats).  This is the way I organize my own squatting when training four times per week.  I want to reiterate greater emphasis is placed on the back squat days.

Much like the front squat, I think fives or threes are a good place to start once an athlete has developed a working competency with the overhead squat.  More advanced athletes can progress to, and benefit from, singles or doubles as the lower number of repetitions allow for near-maximum loading.  Taking a page out of Bill Starr's book, I think an athlete should be able to overhead their bodyweight for a set of five before progressing to lower rep schemes, but this standard is not set in stone.  "Supers” – men weighing over 105 kilograms (230#) and women weighing over 75 kilograms (165#) – may need a lower benchmark, but it all depends on the athlete and their mobility.

Some years ago, Dan John challenged athletes everywhere to try and overhead squat their bodyweight for fifteen repetitions.  The best way to train an athlete for tackling this challenge is to push up their back squat and press/push press numbers; continue to improve their thoraic and shoulder mobility and perform higher-repetition sets of overhead squats once a week.  This can be accomplished as either "back-off" sets after training the snatch or as part of a Crossfit-style "couplet."  My favorite couplet is pairing overhead squats with strict toes-to-bar, possibly three rounds of ten overhead squats plus twenty strict toes-to-bar (I don't have a problem with an athlete kipping the latter movement, but I, personally, suck at kipping due to lack of coordination).  The load for the overhead squat should be challenging, but not too heavy, as the athlete needs practice staying tight during higher-repetition sets.  Something like 75 percent of a three-repetition-maximum strikes me as reasonable.  I have also found Prilepin's Chart to be a valuable tool when self-programming.



Road Trip!

It’s summer time here in the Nation's capital and that means two things – humidity and road trips.  And as much as I love sweating through my dress shirt before nine in the morning, this post will focus on the latter.



Road trips pose obstacles for the nutrition-minded athlete, but all are surmountable with proper preparation.  The recommendations below are divided into two categories: training protocols and steps that can be taken outside the gym.

Training

Do Your Homework.  Before departing, check to see what facilities may be available to you. Crossfit gyms are great, especially if you want to continue Olympic lifting, but a run-of-the-mill Golds Gym can suffice in a pinch.  Commandeer a squat rack and get in a higher volume of strength work.  A few extra sets of squats and presses are good for the metabolism.  Should you choose to drop-in at a Crossfit affiliate, though, call ahead and ask about the daily schedule. Don't be "that guy" who shows up and interrupts a class.

Prioritize Strength.  This point dovetails, to some degree, with the one made earlier, and is especially relevant for the athlete who is pressed for time.  Focus on barbell lifts (squats, presses and pulls), and leave the conditioning for another time.

If you want to kill two birds with the one stone, try one of the following workouts: (1) one snatch (or clean) every minute on the minute, for twenty minutes (you can either start with 75% of your maximum and work your way up or you can attempt all twenty singles with 80-85%) – try two reps per minute if performing either of the power variations; (2) timed squats (see pgs. 83-84 in Bill Starr's "The Strongest Shall Survive" for discussion of this training protocol); (3) power cleans complimented by max repetitions in the front squat afterwards – I have found a 5-7 minute-time domain with 80% of your maximum to be optimal for skinning both the “strength” and “conditioning” cats (a good goal is 30 reps total) or (4) barbell complexes (my personal favorite is 1 Power Clean + 2 Front Squats + 1 Push Press + 1 Jerk).

Trade Intensity for Volume.  The stimulus provided by a change in training environment can have a peculiar effect on the athlete's workout.  A different backdrop for snatches or cleans, larger J-hooks in the squat rack or the simple math of converting kilograms to pounds can all affect that day's training.  Having learned these lessons the hard way, I have found success in trading intensity for volume.  By reducing the percentage used for working sets, the athlete can compensate for the additional stimuli while continuing adaptation.  Five-by-five across is my preferred set-rep scheme for squats and presses.

Take Advantage of Your Surroundings.  Time spent lifting weights or conditioning indoors is great fun, but sometimes you need to go outside and mix it up.  Go for an open water swim.  Hike a mountain pass.  Traverse a new rock face.  Pitting yourself against Mother Nature is "fitness" in the most primal sense.  In the immortal words of the band Alabama, "Swim across the river. Just to prove that I'm a man."

Outside the Gym

“The Best Damn Cooler in the Business.”  John Welbourn said it best in his "2010 Recap" when he wrote, "Don’t be lazy.  Pack a lunch .  . . We are adults and can plan ahead."  Indeed.  Here are a few prepared items I have brought with me on assorted road trips: 

(1) Cheesy Bacon Egg Cups.  (Insider Tip: pre-cook the bacon for ten minutes in an oven at 350 degrees.  Food poisoning is no dice on a road trip).

(2) Grilled Flank Steak. (Insider Tip: once cooled, cut the meat into bite-size strips to allow for hand-to-mouth feeding.  Be forewarned, this style of eating is not always popular with female passengers).

(3) Paleo Meatballs.

(4) Spinach Salad with Red Onions, Grape Tomatoes and Blue Cheese Crumbles and dressed with Extra Virgin Olive Oil. (Insider Tip: pack the dressed salad in a gallon-sized ziplock bag and use a plastic fork for eating. The plastic fork will not puncture the bag, unlike a metal fork).

Water Consumption.  Water consumption is important, too.  Urine should carry a diluted lemonade color, nothing darker.  The best way to stay hydrated while spending hours upon hours in the car is to pace your liquids consumption with the gas gauge.  The closer you get to an empty tank, the more you are allowed to drink.  Be sure to drink an extra glass of water before bed that night.

Multiple Choice is My Jam. Aside from the aforementioned prepared items, here are some store-bought foods that are most excellent for travel: (1) whole milk cottage cheese (my "go to" brand is Kalona SuperNatural, it’s the bomb-diggity), (2) any of the hard cheeses made by Kerrygold, (3) berries of all kinds (Insider Tip: remove the tops of the strawberries to avoid a mid-drive nuance), (4) raw nuts (cashews are my favorite, but almonds and macadamia nuts are good, too) and (5) extra virgin raw coconut (it’s more solid than oil).

Additionally, if you are spending six-plus hours in the car, be mindful of your carbohydrate intake, and stick with low-carb foods like cottage cheese, raw nuts and raw coconut oil. A full belly is your best defense against junk food snacking.

Re-Mobilize. Spending hours upon hours in a static, seated position can wreak havoc on your hip and thoraic mobility. Shortly after arriving at your destination, go for a short walk and then spend a good twenty minutes un-fucking yourself.  I keep a thick pvc pipe and lacrosse ball in the trunk of my car to avoid last-minute packing debacles.  Mobility is an everyday task.  There are no excuses.  It is easy.

The Bacon and Egg Breakfast

Disclaimer: This post has nothing to do with the Paleo Diet and everything to do with life.

I graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 2007, one of the premier educational institutions in the United States and a place where every twenty-two-year old is overly convinced of their own brilliance.  The graduation speaker that year was Brian Billick, the then-Head Coach of the Baltimore Ravens.  Many of my classmates, particularly the "intellectual ones," scoffed at this choice, believing there was nothing they could learn from a football coach.  They would have preferred the Director of the National Institutes of Health, or some other academic, give the address.  After all, athletes are stupid, meatheads, duh.

Billick's speech centered around the bacon and egg breakfast, an analogy emphasizing the commitment of one animal verses the lack thereof of another.  As you might expect, the pig is committed whereas the chicken is not.  Consistent with their biased expectations, the majority of my classmates dismissed Billick's speech as the thoughts of a simple-minded football coach.  I did not share their view at the time, and over the years I have become more convinced of the speech's wisdom. 

Commitment is difficult to define, yet it is divining rod for success.  An athlete either demonstrates a willingness to pursue success, or they make excuses for their "less-than" performances.  I see this contrast every day at the gym where people put forth the minimum amount of effort yet expect the maximum of return.  They feel entitled to success, because they "showed up."  The Woody Allen adage states, "Showing up is 80 percent of life,” but people have paraphrased the quote to state, “90 percent of success is just showing up.”  I think that's crap.  Showing up earns an athlete a "C" in my book, because they met the minimum requirement.  To earn a higher mark, they must show me more – did they arrive early to perform a complete warm-up? did they take care of their dietary needs between workouts? did they prioritize recovery outside the gym, i.e. go to bed before midnight? did they spend time addressing their personal weaknesses? Positive responses to these questions reflect an athlete's commitment; negative answers reveal their lack thereof.

 

It took me years to define "commitment" and apply the lessons, but Billick's words still ring true today – "In a bacon and egg breakfast, the chicken is involved, but the pig is committed.  Be that pig."

A Boy Named Sue

 

Straight Cash, no chaser.

Growing up I had the good fortune of swimming for tough coaches.  They recognized my abilities, challenged my mental toughness, and kept their approval just outside my reach.  Their approach paralleled John Broz's teaching that "a minnow can never become a shark."

 

But growing up this way was hard.  My innate talent lent me to swimming with high school kids when I was just 12 years old, but I was not ready physically or mentally to handle the training environment.  Exacerbating the situation were my training partners – the high school boys, in particular – who picked on me mercilessly, both in and out of the pool.  Their idea of fun after practice was pushing me in the handicapped shower, and throwing my clothes under the running water (Thank god Facebook had not been invented yet, for I may not have survived.).   Nowadays people frown on "hazing," but all of it, much to my chagrin, helped in my preparation.  To quote Johnny Cash, ". . . I grew up quick and I grew up mean, My fist got hard and my wits got keen."  I never forgot those guys, especially the ones who were mean to me, and I made sure to kick the crap out of them later in life.

 

Another dark side of my coaches’ philosophy was my feeling like an underachiever.  The best race of my high school career came at the national meet my senior year, but the most disappointing race came the following morning.  Of course my coaches harped on how I bungled my best event, never mind I swam lights out in my second best event.  This was a bitter pill for me to swallow, and it took me the better part of two years to recover from that disappointment.  My situation did not improve in college where I felt the weight of lofty expectations starting on Day One.  I went on to win 13 NCAA All-American honors, but my worst championship meet came my senior year when I swam terribly.  This was a difficult way for me to end my career, and I still suffer from swimming-related nightmares from time to time.

 

It was this disappointment that I think fueled my pursuit of weightlifting.  I did not want to end my athletic career "a loser."  I wanted a chance at redemption, and I saw weightlifting as my ticket.  Maybe that's why I have never felt a desire to compete in the sport.  Knowing that I did not end my athletic career on a low-point has been enough for me.  I've conquered my demons . . . or locked them in a closet . . .  at least for the time-being.

Weightlifting Platforms: The Dance Floors of Strength

 

An 18th century map of anciet Boeotia.  This is where the shit went down in Ancient Greece.

Warfare in Ancient Greece, circa 700-650 B.C., was dominated by hoplite soldiers, heavily armored infantry who took their name from the hoplon, a bronze-covered wooden shield that stood approximately one meter high and weighed upwards of 15 kilos. Individual hoplites formed a phalanx by standing in a series of rows with their hoplon shields overlapping, thereby allowing each soldier to protect not only himself but also the right side of the man standing to his left.  Advancing, fighting, and holding this formation amid a chaotic battle required precision and discipline.  In one of history’s great paradoxes, the phalanx formation emerged as the national tactic characteristic of the Greek poleis despite a scarcity of level, unbroken land suitable for set-piece battling.  Thus, geography explains why Epaminondas, a Thebian general writing later in the 4^th century B.C., called the Plains of Boeotia, a large fertile plain in central Greece, the “Dance Floor of Ares,” i.e. the Dance Floor of War.

Weightlifting platforms are reminiscent of the Plains of Boeotia in that success there requires both precision and discipline.  Footwork is where it all starts, and weightlifters would be well-advised to take a page out of the boxer’s playbook and jump rope for several minutes before moving on to dance with empty bar.  Jumping rope “wakes up the feet,” and gets a weightlifter thinking about moving fast in all three lifts – the snatch, clean, and jerk.  However, weightlifters should not confuse jumping rope with rolling onto the toes in the lifts, for, as Donny Shankle says, this is “the cancer” of weightlifting.  Instead, stay back, be patient, and pull through the heels. 

Wait, “dance”?  Yes.  Weightlifting is a dance more than anything else, a ballet between an athlete and the bar.  Watch any great weightlifter, and see how they move in tandem with the bar.  It is beautiful.

Several Greek poleis fielded hoplites during this time period, but history remembers the Spartans as the premier fighting force on the Peloponnesia, and possibly the finest heavy infantry anywhere in the world.  Sparta’s victories at Marathon and Plataea – plus its eternal last stand at Thermopylae – support this claim.  Sparta also defeated Athens in the Pelopennesian War, a victory that turned the polis into region’s hegemonic power.  Why were the Spartans victorious time after time?  Because they trained the hardest.  Case in point, all Spartan boys deemed physically fit for military service were sent to the state-sponsored military training school, the Agoge, at age seven, and it was there that they learned the skills, both mental and physical, required of a hoplite warrior.  Surviving the Agoge was no cakewalk, and it was not until age twenty that Spartan men were allowed to move into the military barracks and become full-time soldiers.  Their military service lasted until age forty, after which time they were held in the reserves for another twenty years.  (Fun facts: (1) Sparta was the only Greek polis without a city wall, inspiring the phrase, "Our men are our walls;" and (2) neither Alexander the Great, nor his father Philip II, ever tried to conque Sparta, fearing its marital skill and not wanting to risk heavy casualties.).

Aspiring weightlifters – and athletes of all stripes, come to think of it – need to learn it takes years to “master” their craft, not weeks or month.  Years.  Just like the Spartan warriors before them.  And channeling that inner grit on the tough days is what separates athletes over the long-run, with weightlifters being no exception.  If an athlete has ever found themselves standing alone in an empty training hall trying to lift a heavy, innate object they know what I am talking about.  It is these athletes who are continuing the dance that started several thousand years ago.

There's Something About Mary...and Fives

"Hey, you want to go upstairs and watch SportsCenter?" into my garage and front squat?



Why do I advocate fives for basic barbell movements, like squats, presses, and pulls?  Because they work.  Plain and simple.  To paraphrase Burton Malkiel, an economist at Princeton University, strength training should not constitute a random walk down the training hall floor. Instead, athletes' training should be modeled on the successful protocols of those who came before them.  And what former lifters/coaches advocated the use of fives?  The list is impressive, to say the least (listed in alphabetical order): Aita, Furnas, Gallagher, Karwaski, Koan, McCallum, Pendlay, Rippetoe, Starr, and many others I missed.  They all used fives to some degree or another.

Mark Rippetoe put it best when he said, "Fives are almost too powerful.  They should be reserved only for those who want brutal strength."  Fives can indeed be used for a wide range of barbell movements -- back, front, and overhead squats; presses; bench presses; and Pendlay rows.  Not many people use fives for the front squat, but Starr recommends using fives until an athlete can front squat 300# for a set of five, aka until they are damn strong.  Starr also calls for fives in the power clean, a recommendation some in the weightlifting community would consider a cardinal sin.  I, myself, donned weightlifting's scarlet letter by performing fives in the power clean and front squat during my last training cycle (For reference, my 5rm front squat was significantly more than 137 kgs prior to this training block  My best was 164 kgs for three sets of three).

Having never performed front squats or power cleans for fives before, I started my progression at 80 percent of my best triple in both exercises.  I figured this would afford me at least a month to adapt to the increased training volume.  The lighter weights of the first few weeks also provided me an opportunity to work on positions and speed, two points that should never be far from an athlete's mind.  Fast forward six weeks, and the fives are starting to pay dividends.  The musculature in my back has never been more pronounced, particularly through my spinal erectors, and my "yoke" is...well more "yoke-ish," albeit I'm still a ways away from Jim Wender level. A second benefit I overlooked originally was cardiovascular conditioning. Fives in the power clean can definitely get an athlete conditioned as well as help them shed some bodyfat, assuming their diet is locked down.  My rest heart rate, taken first thing in the morning, fell from an average of 43 beats/minute in Week One, to 39 beats/minute in Week Six, an almost 10 percent reduction in the absence of traditional “aerobic” conditioning.

In conclusion, I would encourage athletes to use fives in a wide range of barbell movements, including the front squat and power clean (I would, however, restrict the use of fives in the power clean to intermediate athletes who understand positions, speed, tempo and proper lifting technique, in general). Who knows, an athlete might even grow a pair...of spinal erectors that is.

Fishin' in a Crawfish Hole

Developing comfort in the bottom of the squat, aka "The Hole," is very important for a weightlifter, as the snatch, clean, and all variations of the squat (back, front, overhead, and even the squat jerk, if performed) require the athlete to spend time down there.  This much is accepted by all members of the weightlifting community – athletes and coaches, alike.  Where these respective parties differ is how to build this comfort.  Some coaches prescribe exercises such as pause squats to build strength and emphasis speed for driving out of the hole, believing such work as a hand in producing heavier lifts.  This may be true, and I have several friends who advocate the use of pause squats.  Others, like Donny Shankle, for one, shun the use of pause squats, arguing they make a weightlifter sticky in the bottom.  And I can understand this line of thinking, too, especially when it comes to the clean. 

In my own training, I try to strike a balance between these two diametrically opposed positions. When performing strength-building exercises like back squats and front squats, I bounce out of the bottom as quickly as possible, for any time spent down there only robs me of kilos on the bar (and the whole point of strength-building exercises is to add weight to the bar).  The same is true for cleans.  I always seek to bounce out of my cleans.  After all, the jerk is my goat (In the event a weightlifter consistently fails to catch the bounce out when recovering on the clean, there may be a fault with their pull line, possibly a coming onto the toes or not finishing through the hips). Conversely, when performing other exercises like snatches, overhead squats, and squat jerks, I try to "stick" my lifts and hold the bottom position for a few second.  This serves two purposes: it affords me the opportunity to regain my balance, and it strengthens my truck and overhead position.   After all, I stopped “doing abs” years ago.

This approach has served me well – and I think it would work for others, too – but everyone is different when it comes to training.  What works for one person might not work for another. Experimenting with cycles of pause squats might help a weightlifter who continues to get pinned at the sticking point by heavy cleans, or sitting in the bottom of an overhead squat might alleviate fears in another.  But the only way to learn is to try it for yourself.  At worst, you will probably succeed in strengthening your spinal erectors and improving your mobility.  That's a pretty reasonable risk, if you ask me.

My words of caution are this: a weightlifter must have the prerequisite mobility before performing movements such as the pause squat.  Holding a valgus knee, i.e. an inward collapse, for a prolonged period of time would most likely, if not certainly, wreak havoc on an athlete's knee structures (ACL, MCL, etc.).  Therefore, it is essential for a weightlifter to continually improve their hip and ankle flexibility, as well as strengthen their glutes, so that a valgus knee can be avoided.  Strive to have the femur track the toe angle.