No more squats? The barbell back squat has been called the best of all exercises. When done correctly, it is tremendous for building strength and muscle. Which is why it’s been a mainstay in athletic training for decades. I personally have never felt comfortable squatting, it never really agreed with me or my lower back. When I was at Swansea Fc we didnt squat due to the number of lower back injuries, Leicester Tigers the same, when I trained Mike and Bob on the ATP pro tour we didnt because of overuse of the lower back, so you can see a pattern developing here. So why such pro teams are not squatting? Here are some of the reasons why I dont squat any athlete or client. My mentor Mike Boyle world-renowned strength coach back in 2009, said that he no longer prescribed the classic barbell squat. Bodybuilders, powerlifters, and personal trainers on Internet forums everywhere went into a frenzy, posting comments such as “Sounds like Mike Boyle is incapable of teaching the squat” and “He doesn’t look very strong.” Six years later, have we changed changed our mind? The answer is simply nope. As a strength and conditioning coach our job is to improve athletic performance and lower injury risk. That’s what I get paid to do by Pro Tennis players, Premiership Footballers and Rugby players, as well as Olympians. So to fully understand my point of view, lets go back to basics the squat isn’t a lower-body exercise; it’s a lower-back exercise. After a certain point, your lower back doesn’t allow you to transfer force to your bottom half. Thats the weak link, stopping your lower-body muscles from producing maximum work capability. So as you can imagine when this happens, it sets you up for injury, in order to complete the lift, your back may compensate by extending or flexing under the bar. Your spine should avoid extreme movement, its not designed to move, because it’s meant to stabilize your body. Say you’re squatting 180kg, you’ve not only compressed your spine with an huge amount of weight, but now you’re asking it to move in ways it shouldn’t. Your just asking for trouble and your back will pay the price. The one question I always ask is how long do you spend on both feet? The answers are pretty mixed, 3hrs, 8hrs, 58min The simple answer is, you virtually spend no time on both feet at the same time. If you think hard about it it makes sense, when you walk you are always on one leg, when you run, jump you are always using one leg (unless stationary jumping) so why train both legs together when we spend no time at all on both legs at the same time? So how do I maximise lower body training? Instead, I focus on athletes or clients to perform single leg work for example rear-foot-elevated split squats, are great. The back gets injured the most when squatting, so I train legs for size and strength by simply bypassing the back. This allows an athlete or client to load one leg to the same degree as a conventional two-leg squat, but the spine handles only half the amount of weight. For example since subbing the two-leg squat stance for the single-leg Mike Boyle says he’s seen a dramatic decrease in the number of back injuries at his gym, to even saying he has had no back injuries in the last five years. From this type of training you see serious strength gains. For instance, Spencer Bennett, of Great Britain Kyokushin training for world championships. At first he could only do bodyweight rear-foot-elevated split squats, 9 weeks later he could complete 10 reps of the rear-foot-elevated split squat with a 45-kilogram kettlebell in each hand for a total of 90kg. Therefore taking that into context It’s extremely unlikely that he could squat 180kg for one rep with two legs, this demonstrates that a person’s legs can handle far more weight than his or her back is capable of transmitting. Plus, athletes do almost everything in sports in a split stance, or by pushing off one leg from a parallel stance, so it just makes sense to train your body that way, and it minimises the risk of injury. I know that this wont change people perception of squatting because lets face it, if you like it your not going to stop. So what do you do if you’re not ready to give up the traditional two-leg squat? I recommend switching to dumbbells or kettlebells, or try using a goblet hold (in front of your chest) or simply hold them at arm’s length next to your sides. These holds cause less back stress, but still work the same lower-body muscles. Ultimately, the decision to back squat or not to back squat is up to you. Many great strength coaches still effectively use the exercise, and won’t likely change their methods or programs in the future.
Posted on: Wed, 23 Jul 2014 07:58:48 +0000
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