Diagnosing Weaknesses
Now that you understand the basic demands of the squat, it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out your weaknesses to improve your squat.
1) Quads
Remember, the demands on your quads are at their highest point at the very bottom of the squat.
If knee extension demands exceed your quads’ capacity, they have a “safety valve” – your hips. Your knees kick back (shortening the knee extension moment arm and decreasing knee extension demands), your hips shift back, and your torso leans farther forward.
Instead of maintaining a constant back angle between the hole and the sticking point, you tilt farther forward, winding up in a “good morning squat” position because your quads weren’t strong enough to pull their weight, so they shifted more of the load to the hips.
In the good morning squat, the knees and hips shift back, decreasing demands on the quads and increasing demands on the hip extensors, indicating a quad weakness – your body is naturally shifting the effort away from the quads toward the hips.
To correct a good morning squat, most people need dedicated quad work. It’s been my experience that just doing more squats rarely corrects the problem. Front squats can help, since you
can’t shift the load excessively to your hips. If your torso starts inclining farther forward, the bar will just roll off your shoulders, so front squats force you to keep your quads heavily involved in the lift. Leg presses and machine hack squats are also great options. Finally, unilateral work like split squats, reverse lunges, and step-ups can help as well.
65 cm armen en 39 cm benen o.a.
