“It’s easier to fool people, than to convince them they’ve been fooled” Mark Twain
In our first portion of this series, we talked briefly about walking the tightrope of maximal strength driven performance training. Although the former myth can be a tricky area, this next myth is a relatively easy one to discuss, and its incorrect usage is one that costs thousands of athletes their highest possible performance. That next myth is that the “competition standard” barbell lifts (deep squat, deadlift, etc.) performed with typical cues (push through the heels, lock down, big chest, hold breath, etc.) are the primary way to train athletes in the weightroom. Let’s hop right in to this fire.
Cueing squatting, deadifting, etc. through the heels might be just as evil as select corporate management from a well known film
Myth #2
The classical lifts, performed to competition standards, are the best way to train all athletes for maximal performance
Lifting for athletic performance is pretty simple, right? Squat deep, and perform your Olympic lifts to technical perfection.
The competition standards exist in lifting for the primary purpose of establishing guidelines as to who is the strongest in a given lifting discipline. Nobody ever said that those standards were also the only, not to mention the best, way to build athletes.
First, a fun anecdote that will help to set the ground for this article: the evolution of the barbell squat.
The “Squat Through the Heels Debacle”
Probably, the aspect of barbell lift technique I’m most passionate about is the “lift through the heels” cue that is so prevalent in our coaching society. I’m not saying that a beginner athlete with little barbell experience can’t initially benefit from this cue in gaining a working knowledge of basic lifting movement, but for anyone who has a general idea how to squat, lifting “through the heels” is a nice way to hurt their highest athletic potential.
Back in the 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s, a very common way to squat was with the heels completely off of the ground. Arnold made squatting with a 2×4 under your heel to push the knees forward and fry the quads a popular image in the 1970’s.
Most notions of squatting with the knees forward, and the heels anything but firmly planted on the ground started to go out the window when the advent of powerlifting started to take hold of the general public’s view of squatting mechanics. Clearly, one can’t squat 1,000lbs with their heels a few inches off the ground (unless you have the DNA of Ed Coan and a silverback gorilla) so, in interest of pushing maximal weight, leaving the heels off the ground fell out of style, and with that came the dogma of “through the heels”.
I used to be a big “through the heels” guy, until I came across this article by Zig Ziegler (the coach, not the motivational speaker).
Here is a golden nugget from the blogpost:
“In Biomechanics and Kinesiology, in order to push through the heels a person must first shift the weight backwards. To do so, requires a contraction of the muscles on the front of the lower leg. In EMG research testing in my lab, the entire anterior compartment of the lower leg (shin) contracts once the weight shifts behind the mid point of the foot.
The gastroc/soleus complex also contracts but only acts more as a stabilizer than a primary mover. This means the calves neither receive nor deliver any force to the middle of the foot or the big toe when pushing through the heels. In other words if the weight is in the heels and the lifter pushes through the heels, the entire front of the leg contracts to help with the squat. NOT THE BACK OF THE LEG!”
Yes, you heard that right, squatting “through the heels” actually puts more stress on the anterior compartments of the lower leg, vs. the posterior aspect. It essentially severs positive force transfer from the hip through the foot and big toe.
Even upstream in the posterior chain, heel loading can cause kinetic problems. A nice visual for you that Ziegler mentioned in his article is to look at the non-existant posterior chain of distance runners (who often run striking through the heels) vs. the large, functional posterior chain of sprinters (who run off the mid-foot and the big toe).
I spent 4 years prior to that article as hardwired “through the heel” coach, because I figured it was the best way to “train the posterior chain” in squats, deadlifts, and the like (more on the posterior chain in a bit). What I reaped from this practice was an eventual decimation of my foot function and stiffness that took away from things like my stride length and overall elastic function. I also managed to have back issues all the way through my mid to late 20’s, until I discovered a combination of hip thrusts, squatting through the mid-foot, and muscle activation.
As soon as I read Ziegler’s article, I started to look at which athletes at my day job had the most knee pain, and the worst vertical jumps in relation to their barbell lift numbers. The culprits: athletes that did all their lifting through the heels. Whoa, scary! I knew then it was time for a quick change.
We can assume that the posterior chain will likely get loaded more in “push through the heels” situations, due to the fact that doing anything “through the heels” is going to force an athlete to “really sit back” in their lifting movements, but the over-cueing of sitting back has some evil ramifications as we will get to shortly.
Along those same lines, the whole “don’t let the knees over the toes” myth will generally refuse to die in most athletic performance circles. Look, squatting with your knees over your toes doesn’t injure your knees. Having shitty hip mobility, poor rectus femoris function, and tibialis muscles that lock up whenever you need to extend your knee (Douglas Heel’s “3-3-3” leg scenario) injures your knees.
Why do we pin the blame on squats? I’m not really sure, but people sure like to hang on their beliefs in the weightlifting world, and unfortunately, this is completely synonymous with the athletic performance world.
I’ll leave you with one final thought on the idea of “through the heels”, and it is this: If you really want to optimize the posterior chain, then utilize a band around the hips to switch the force vector of your training movement. This way, you don’t have to revert to poor lower leg mechanics, and you’ll get a posterior chain stimulus that is more specific to the vector and timing that you’ll engage the glutes with in sport. See the video below for a good example of this setup.
Lower Back Training: Hijacked from the World of Powerlifting?
Generally speaking, coaches and trainers prescribe competition standard barbell lifts in terms of the maximal weight that can ultimately be lifted. The limiting factor in many of these full range lifts is not the legs or glutes, nor the rectus abdominis.
No, it’s not often the phasic muscles of the body that are critical for generating powerful athletic movement, but on the side of barbell training, the weak link for success in the powerlifts is often the tonic (postural) lower back and spinal erectors, especially on the higher level of barbell performance.
Ask most powerlifting coaches where the weak link to their lifters breaking through to the next level on the platform is, and the answer you’ll get is “low back strength”. For the legendary Kaz, to Louie Simmons, you’ll hear that improving lower back strength is key to reaching your highest platform potential.
Strength legend, Pavel Tsatsouline has even referred to the lower back to the powerlifter as “biceps” to the bodybuilder. Trying to be a successful powerlifter without having an iron lower back is like being a bodybuilder with an undying aversion to arm curls. Not going to happen.
The low back is a critical link for powerlifting and Olympic lifting strength, but athletic patterning is a different story
Low back muscles are mostly slow twitch, and designed to improve spinal stability, and counteract the hamstrings by keeping the pelvis from rotating too far posteriorly during sprinting and similar locomotive movement. Dorsal (the anatomical term for low back) muscles offset the hamstrings in terms of pelvic rotation. Like the rectus abdominis, they must fire/work at their optimal length in rapid athletic movement. Many athletes, in order to reach competition depth will compensate their way down to the bottom of a squat, particularly once you get to the 70-80 degrees of knee flexion range and beyond. Loads of athletes have to bend their shoulders so far forward to “hit parallel”, if entirely defeats the purpose of the exercise. How many athletes do you see who look good in a squat until the “almost parallel” range, only to have an unsightly knee or hip wiggle to “get depth” in those last few inches of the lift?
I’m not saying that athletes shouldn’t be able to deep squat at some point, as a sign of a healthy, functional athlete is to be able to do an ass-to-grass squat with minimal compensations, but many athletes aren’t even close to being able to perform this properly.
According to Frans Bosch (author of Strength Training and Coordination: An Integrative Approach), once an athlete squats to a depth at which their pelvis starts to tilt posteriorly, the source of critical tension in a lift becomes the muscles of the dorsal region. Additionally, hinging barbell movements that heavily load the spinal erectors in their extended position (think a full-range barbell goodmorning) are training those dorsal muscles outside of their typical athletic function, which is to transfer force in a relatively isometric position, and maintain posture. If an athlete has very strong glutes, and good length in their hamstrings, they may be able to maintain good length and function in a full-range goodmorning, but for most athletes, this function is unlikely.
You probably don’t want to assess your technical ability and 1RM in the low-bar back squat as the holy grail of athletic development. When you get guys with 450lb low bar squats and 22” vertical jumps (come at me Mark Rippetoe!!), you know something is terribly wrong with the model that maximal strength in a slow, shin parallel, low back dominant (a rare position in which to actually produce force in sport) position is ideal for transfer to contextual (applicable) sport transfer.
Tell me how many Olympic sprinters and high jumpers have low back developments that resemble Lu Xiaojun on the cover of Milo magazine. Not many. None, to be exact. Yet, it is lower back development that is preached and practiced by a broad brush of strength professionals, not for the sake of getting faster and more athletic, but rather, for the sake of having better squats, deadlifts, and cleans with a hope of a subsequent “transfer” to athleticism.
Lu Xiaojun is a weightlifting beast. His back and spinal erector development helps him lift superhuman weights.
Performing the classical lifts to competition standards repeatedly, can lead to altering the timing of the hamstring, glute, lower back chain firing. One of the poorest firing patterns (as far as speed is concerned) in this chain I found in a pro-level Crossfit athlete (which I acutely remedied through activation). She had built a pattern of hip extension that was completely driven by her low back and hamstrings pairing together. Funny enough, she had a great standing vertical jump, but she couldn’t go any higher with an approach (an approach allows an athlete to take advantage of energy transfer, but that transfer only works if it goes through the glutes). Endless reps of deep squats, thrusters, full cleans, and the like have the potential to rewire the order and magnitude that the body recruits phasic muscles to produce force, not to mention the dampening effect they have on the elastic and reflexive mechanisms of the body.
Stay tuned for Part 2.5!
Free Training Guides!
Sign up for the newsletter, get your FREE eBooks, and receive weekly updates on cutting edge training information that will help take your knowledge of athletic performance to a new level.