Super Sweet Exercises - Chapter 1, Volume 2 - Barbell Movements - Overhead Squats
David Fleming
Introducing Mr Fleming's own personal series on some of the best exercises out there. This series takes a look at a number of exercises that are brutally effective and will give you excellent value for money. Mr Fleming calls them super sweet, most would call them f*'ing hard - either way they are worth learning!
The over-head squat is not a movement you will see very often in most commercial gyms. The reason for this is two fold, firstly a lack of understanding as to why you would incorporate such a lift & secondly, those who have tried it know that it's really, really hard!
It is once again a component of the classical Olympic lift, the snatch, & requires the trainee to hold the bar with a snatch grip, locked out over head & to squat ass to grass without causing themselves or others injury by dropping the barbell. The movement can also be performed from the bottom up. You must have access to fairly high blocks on which to rest the bar & the weight is lifted from a deep squat position to standing. As you won't find these in your regular gym, we shall concentrate on the first version.
When you first attempt this lift you may experience a little emotion called humility. The strength, mobility & stability required at all of your joints to successfully train this movement shouldn't be underestimated, so whatever you do make sure you put your ego in your locker along with your training gloves because unless it's snowing or brass monkeys cold, you shouldn't be wearing gloves inside, especially little fingerless ones!
This is not why I'm demonstrating with an empty bar, but as we have the clip- check out the vid below:
How to:
As always with more technical lifts, start with an empty bar. Set the bar at shoulder height in a squat or power rack & position yourself as if you were going to do a regular back squat (bar resting on traps along the top of the shoulders behind the neck)
Once standing with the bar, adjust your hand position to the snatch grip & space your feet around shoulder width apart or slightly wider.
From here, turn your toes out by about 10-15* & spread the weight to the outside of your feet. Push your knees out slightly to the sides & stick your bum out a little by arching your low back. Your chest should be puffed up with your elbows held under the bar.
From here, press the bar up & back over head & lock your body in to position. The bar should be held roughly above the shoulders towards the back of the head. The head should be slightly forward with eyes fixed straight on, do not arch the neck & look up. Your biceps should be turned up towards the ceiling & your entire back held in a tight isometric contraction. Think about pulling the shoulders down into there sockets & holding them there. The abdominals should fire & do their job reflexively from this position.
If you've got this far with a slightly arched spine, you're doing extremely well. If you're struggling to lift your chest & position the bar & can already feel your wrists, you should be getting a good idea of how much mobility this movement requires.
With the Olympic style back & front squat variations, the hips & knees move simultaneously. In the powerlifting squat, the hips break first & drive back with the torso inclined forward. The majority of the load is carried by the hips & there is far less dorsiflexion (kness travelling over toes) at the ankles. When performing the overhead squat, the hips should break slightly first. Think about lengthening your chin & tail bone away from each other (without lifting your chin) & begin to sit back. You should feel that the bar becomes more stable at this point. To continue the descent, push the knees wide & begin shooting the knees forward over the toes. Yes, this is ok – it will not cause instant death!! The amount of people & trainers I see who continue to live in a knees behind toes world while not realising that you couldn't walk up or down stairs or bend down to tie your shoe laces, literally makes me feel weak & nauseous! Assuming there is no existing pathology the knee will only get in trouble if the ankles or hips are not mobile enough to allow the knees to move freely through a full range of motion. The tip here is to move your joints through there full ranges of motion. There will be a lot of mobility based rants from me in future articles because it is essential to the health, longevity & performance potential of your body.
Now, as you get to the bottom of the squat, you should continue to push the knees wide & forward, attempting to make space between your hips to sit down as low as you can while maintaining your spine & shoulder position. Getting to this depth will probably be quite tough for most people. You will probably feel some restriction in your mid back & wrists & possibly your hips or ankles. I will be posting a corrective exercise/mobility based program to deal with these ailments in the future.
From the bottom position you simply need to stand. Keeping the heels on the floor forcefully drive the hips back & up & stand tall returning to the start position.
How many?
Starting with the empty bar, try & shoot for between 5-10 reps for 3 sets 3 times x week! With a difficuilt new movement like this there is a certain amount of 'feeling out' & 'motor learning' that must occur, so frequency is important. Be conservative as you start to add weight to the bar. I've heard recommendations in the past to aim for 10 reps with bodyweight. I feel for the average trainee this might be a bit much, so try working up to 5 sets of 5 reps with 80% of body weight on the barbell.
Why?
I've touched on it already but the main reasons to train this movement are as follows:
1: Strength. Isometric (no movement) & dynamic (movement strength) is developed with the overhead squat
2: Stabilisation. Isometric contractions are great for increasing strength & stability. The entire upper body has to work very hard to stabilise a load overhead, even more so when you start to move the lower body.
3: Mobility. This is the big one for me. It's no use only being strong at some joints in small ranges of motion. The body should be able to decelerate force (loading of a muscle as it lengthens) through an entire range of motion & be strong & stable at the end of that range, allowing a forceful contraction (deload - unloading of the muscle as it moves from a lengthened to shortened state) back the other way.
If you can do a smooth overhead squat through a full range of motion, you are displaying good mobility at the ankles, knees, hips, thoracic spine, shoulders & wrists.
4: Muscle. Isometric contractions recruit all motor units within the involved muscle groups. In this case it means that it's good for building muscle across the shoulders & upper back. If you want bigger traps & you've got healthy shoulders, start doing more overhead work like the overhead squat. You'll get much better development than just training shrugs alone. In fact if you’re hitting enough heavy Deadlifts, High Pulls and overhead work you wont even need the shrugs to get huge traps.
Progressions & variations
To progress the overhead squat we can look to reduce the width of the grip on the bar. Attempting the lift with a shoulder width grip requires even more mobility from the spine and is a nice method to improve this motion.
Use the over head squat as both a strength movement and a warm up in your training.
In the next installment of this series I will be showing you how to perform the snatch balance. This motion requires mastery of the overhead squat and is the real advanced progression of this lift. So stay tuned!
About the Author
David Fleming is one of London’s top personal trainers. He is obsessed with helping people get stronger and helping people to get More-Athletic. He has studied and learned from the best strength coaches in the world. He is happily married and can lift heavy weights. His mother is very proud of him and he writes a good article.It took him until the age of 30 to pass his driving test, but other than that he is a solid chap.
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