Category: Sports Performance

1. 3×6 (3 sets of 6 reps) @ 70%
2. 5×3 @ 85%
3. 4×6 @ 65%
4. 4×4 @ 80%
5. 3×5 @ 75%
6. Test 1RM: 1-3 PR attempts

1. 3×6 @ 70%
2. 5×3 @ 77.5%
3. 4×4 @ 80%
4. 3×5 @ 75%
5. 5×3 @ 85%
6. 4×5 @ 75%
7. 3×6 @ 60% (deload before PR)
8. Test 1RM: 1-3 PR attempts
9. 3x4x72.5% (lighter workout after 1RM test)

If you run, jump, swing a racket/club/bat, or punch or kick – your glutes need to be maximus. When you powerfully shift your weight – your glutes are providing that power. Read on to learn how to squeeze the crap out of your glutes (metaphorically)!

First, when is glute max active? Basically anytime you’re straightening your hip. This can be done without weight bearing like kicking your leg backwards, but obviously in sports (and life in general), it’s mostly done while weight bearing. Straightening the hip in weight bearing is shifting your weight forward which is used with pretty much most standing movement. Additionally, anytime you’re swinging your arm (golf, racket sports, baseball, combat), you generate power in the hips by shifting your weight which once again comes from the glutes.

To activate your glutes, start with a shoulder-width stance and turn your feet slightly outwards. It can help to put your hands on your butt so that your fingers can feel the muscle activating. Now lean very slightly forward, just so that your head is an inch forward. From here, roll your hips/pelvis under like you’re tucking your tail. You will feel your glutes kicking on. Just follow this contraction by squeezing your butt as hard as you can, to the point it almost feels like it will cramp. Hold for a few seconds then relax. That is activating your glutes.

Now, for training. You’ll want to both get your glutes stronger as well as learn to activate them powerfully. To do this, simply perform this glute activation drill at the end of each rep of your standing exercises. After each squat, each deadlift, each kettlebell swing/clean/snatch, after each bridge – squeeze until your glutes feel like they will cramp. At first, it will likely take a few seconds to reach this amount of force because your glutes aren’t used to fully activating. After a few reps though, you will be able to do this very quickly. This will not only strengthen your glutes but teach your body to contract them fully and faster. Warning: this will make your glutes very sore the next day. You’ve been warned…

That can be done with any exercise where the feet are symmetrical. However, it can and should be done with exercises where the feet are asymmetrical as well, such as lunges, step-ups, single leg deadlifts, kickbacks, and so on. Any exercise with a split stance with both feet on the ground, you’ll squeeze the back hip at the top of each rep.

It is crucial to understand that glute max really shines when the leg is behind the midline of the body/trunk. This is important for pretty much all sports movements. Whenever you run or strike something, the back leg needs to be behind the trunk. Many runners bounce up and down which wastes energy as well as loads the knee more. Instead, pushing the body forward or pushing the ground backwards (they accomplish the same thing) with an upright posture and the leg finishing behind the body, will ensure more efficient push-off.

For any striking motion during a sport (golf swing, racket swing, punch, etc.), you can practice squeezing the back leg’s glute. This will not only add power to your weight shift and rotation, but teach your body to make this automatic.

Once you have true mastery of activating your glutes powerfully and quickly, you should then work on pulsing your contraction at the moment just before, and through, impact. A pulse being a strong, but quick squeeze. You’ll want to pulse both your core and your back glute at the same time. Don’t be surprised by the amount of force and snap this adds to your strike!

Are you tired of leaking all of the place when you run? Leaking energy that is. Energy leaks  are when you perform a movement without proper stabilization, resulting in less than optimal force transfer. Imagine trying to stand up as fast as you can from a really puffy chair. You won’t be able to go as fast because the cushion will absorb much of the force. Compare that to standing from a wooden chair – you’d be able to jump right up because the firm surface is stable and transfers all the force you apply to propelling yourself upward. In any athletic movement, a general goal is to maximize force transfer – resulting in a faster throw, a higher jump, a harder hit, etc. I call this general function of the core ‘checking’ (to keep something in place). It differs from pulsing and bracing in that it generally is an automatic function (whereas the other two, you consciously contract your core). To improve energy leaks, they must first be identified – then movement-specific checking can be addressed.

Identifying energy leaks generally requires consulting someone who can analyze your form. This could be your coach, a workout partner, or even yourself by analyzing video of yourself. Energy leaks can be spotted because a visible ‘collapse’ happens in the movement. With running, this is often apparent when the swing leg side (the side that is not touching the ground) ‘collapses’ a few inches instead of keeping the pelvis more level. With any swinging movement (golf, tennis, fighting, baseball, etc.), it’s often seen as the hand(s) contacting the object relatively too late in the swing because the hips rotated faster than the core could check the rotation (the crucial anti-rotation strength that allows the power generated in the hips to be transferred to the arms which then amplify the power by acting as a whip due to the longer levers of the arms). This article won’t go over how to identify energy leaks because it’s much too movement dependent, but it’s usually best to seek an outside perspective.

Next, the leak needs to be addressed. This breaks down into two stages: improving capacity (gaining the raw strength required to properly check) and then neuromuscular control (applying this strength to the specific movement). Your ‘capacity’ is referencing the endurance/strength of the muscles that are limiting you. Take the running energy link above. The limiting muscles are the stance leg’s (the leg touching the ground) hip abductors which are responsible for preventing opposite hip drop. The building capacity stage would thus focus on improving these muscles’ strength and endurance to be able to check opposite hip drop. This looks like traditional exercise: you would do specific work for those muscles like side leg lifts and advance to more challenging movements like single leg Romanian deadlifts and single leg mini squats, all the way to single leg hopping (with no hip drop, of course). In addition to strengthening the muscles, specific exercise can also lead to hypertrophy which also makes the muscles naturally stiffer (like having a thicker spring) which gives some inherent checking power.

Sometimes you may already have the strength required and your form was just wrong, in which case, you can skip the building capacity stage. Here, all that is required is to deliberately practice the corrected form and do some drills.

Once sufficient capacity has been built, the nervous system has to be trained to use this strength in the movement. This is through neuromuscular drills. Once you have the energy leak identified, you need a cue to correct it (assuming you now have the strength to do so). Take the running energy leak again. A simple cue could be having them place their hands on their hips and having them focus on keeping the hips level. The drills can start off very simple and then they should advance to become more and more like the sports movement.

Now I’ll discuss this process for 2 common scenarios. First, hip drop while running. Second, general checking (basically just general core stabilization).

Checking opposite hip drop while running

1. Limiting factor/weak link: stance leg frontal plane pelvic stabilizers (hip abductors, quadratus lumborum, and obliques)
2. Building capacity – all the advanced movements must be performed with a level pelvis.

• Basic: side leg lifts, hip hikes, and single leg balance.
• Advanced: loaded carries, single leg Romanian deadlifts, and single leg mini squats.

3.   Neuromuscular drills

• Basic (pre-running): march very slowly while keeping hips as level as you can.
• Intermediate (pre-running): set a metronome to 10 bpm slower than half your normal running pace (half because you’ll be doing only 1 leg at a time). Do mini single leg squats to the beat while keeping hips level the entire time. Perform sets of 15-30 reps. When you can perform with no hip drop, keep advancing the tempo until you can do a tempo that is at least half your normal running speed.
• Advanced (pre-running): Repeat the above drill only doing single leg hops instead. When you can perform without hip drop at your running tempo, place a small rope/marker down and repeat the drill only hopping over the marker from side to side with no hip drop.
• Basic running drill: run while keeping your pelvis relatively stable.
• Advanced running drill (for those whose sport includes sprinting and cutting which places even greater demand on frontal plane pelvic stabilizers): work on skater jumps (powerful single leg jumps from side to side, landing on the opposite leg each jump).

General checking: keeping the trunk stable while the arms and legs move.

1. Limiting factor/weak link: trunk muscles responsible for stabilizing the spine.
2. Building capacity

• Anti-extension (anterior muscles): supine marching to leg raises to ab bicycle to dead bug.
• Anti-sidebending (lateral muscles): side plank from knees then add reps of clamshell then reps of hip abduction. Advance to standing single arm and leg exercises.
• Anti-rotation (lateral muscles): Pallof press and any single arm exercises.
• Anti-flexion (posterior muscles): bird dog then bent over row and any style of deadlift or loaded hip hinge movement.

3.  Neuromuscular drills

• Anti-extension is used to generally control excessive back arching. The goal is to be able to maintain your low back in a neutral position while lifting your arms overhead (stretching the lats) like in an overhead press and while straightening your hips out (stretching the hip flexors) like the back hip in a lunge. Both of those movements have a tendency to pull the back into an arch which needs to be checked by the abdominals. Start by practicing flattening back into a neutral position while lying on your back. Then add arm and leg movements while keeping this position (the building capacity drills above). Once you’ve mastered that, move into sitting and practice keeping the back in neutral while moving your arms and legs. Then advance to standing. The basic functional goal would be able to maintain back position while moving around and the advanced goal would be to be able to do so under load (which includes running as well as with weights).
• Anti-sidebending. For the legs, this is checking hip drop (see above). For the arms, this is carrying an uneven load, like a heavy weight in 1 arm down at your side (suitcase carry). This can be practiced with any variation of weight on 1 side: suitcase carry, rack carry (elbow bent), waiter walk (arm overhead), or uneven carry (like 10 lb in 1 hand and 20 lb in the other). The goal with all of these is to stay completely vertical with no bending towards the loaded side.
• Anti-rotation is generally used for swinging sports. The goal in swinging movements is to generate power in the hips, transfer this power through the spine and to the arms. To maximize power transfer through the spine, the core muscles must check the spine from energy leaks by preventing excessive rotation (which would ‘absorb’ force). To practice this movement, the unit turn is used. A unit turn is when the body rotates through the hips while keeping the spine relatively rigid. This means the hips and shoulders will face the same direction the entire time. If they ‘break’ from each other, then it means the spine over- or under-rotated which would be incorrect form for the unit turn. This can be performed using a cable/band for resistance or a barbell with one end wedged in the corner of the room/landmine device. You then hold on and practice rotating against the resistance while keeping your hips and shoulders facing the same direction the entire time.
• Anti-flexion is generally used for maintaining neutral posture under weight. Pretty much any standing loaded exercise has a component of this because the weight is almost always in front of your center of gravity which means it will be acting to pull you into a slumped posture. This most obviously applies to things like the deadlift and squat, but also to exercises like curls and shoulder raises. Therefore, anti-flexion can be trained with most exercises by setting your back in neutral position and actively keeping it there. Loaded carries such as the farmers walk and the Zercher carry (carrying something in the crooks of your elbows) are very helpful, especially because they require some sort of deadlift or clean to get the weight into carrying position.

What do you think when you hear the term ‘adult braces’? You probably come up with the stereotypical image of a muscular man/woman, absorbing a mighty blow from an enemy while engaged in epic combat – the words “Fearsome adult braces for legendary battle” engraved below the scene.

Bracing your core is the second category of core function. Read the previous 2 posts to learn more about the first function: pulsing. Bracing is when you contract your core muscles to protect the spine and abdominal contents. It’s done when lifting or carrying something heavy to stabilize the spine and minimize harmful shear. The stabilization benefit also improves force transfer when lifting and carrying objects. Because many of the muscles activated (rectus abdominis, the obliques, the lats, etc.) are more superficial than the internal organs, they also can act as muscular armor for the abdominal contents. Just imagine someone was about to punch you in the stomach – you brace your abdominals in anticipation to protect yourself. Learning to brace your core is important for safety, but in order to use this method in real life, you also have to be able to breathe at the same time. If you go to take a breath and lose your bracing, then you could be more vulnerable to injury.

Learning to brace

So to start, we’ll go over just learning to brace your core, then practicing bracing and breathing. There’s a couple different methods to learn how to brace your core. First, place one hand on the crest of your hip so that your fingers are on the lateral portion of your abdominal region. Press you fingers into your stomach. When you engage your core, you should feel it with your fingers here. Keep palpating to check that your core is engaged while you try these different drills.

• Imagine you’re going to be hit in the stomach and you need to brace yourself.
• Push your deeply fingers into your lateral abdominals and then use your muscles to push your fingers back out.
• Pretend to begin to make a “k” sound but don’t actually make the sound.
• Walk while holding 20-30 lb in one hand down at your side (like you’re carrying a suitcase). Your opposite hand can be on your abdominals, palpating your obliques.

Bracing and breathing

Now that you’ve learned how to brace your core, the next step is to practice coordinating it with breathing. Below are several useful exercises you can work into your training to improve this skill.

• A classic is your coach or workout partner randomly poking you in the core with their hand or even a stick to ensure that you’re staying braced. This can essentially be done with any exercise. Your goal is to complete your set while remaining braced the entire time which will require breathing with your core braced.
• The hardstyle plank is like the above drill only x100. You get down into a plank and then tightly brace your core. Your workout partner then walks around you and kicks your core – at random times, in random places. This is obviously a hardcore drill. Your partner should start the kicks relatively light, more to check form than anything. The better you get at this, the harder they can go. Each rep of this is holding the plank only for 10-20 seconds generally and you need to breathe while doing this. If you’re in any sort of contact sport, this drill is your friend.
• This is a great functional bracing exercise you can do on your own with no partner. Just do any loaded carry (an exercise where you carry heavy weight from one place to another). Remember the goal is to both brace and breathe. The suitcase carry (carrying the weight in only 1 hand) is especially a good one.
• This final one is meant to target the crucial skill of being able to brace your core, not just while breathing but while breathing heavily (like what would be required in most sports). You start by doing an intense interval of 30-60 seconds of some exercise (could be cycling on the bike, running, bodyweight squats, pushups, etc.) – enough to get you huffing and puffing. Then you’ll immediately drop down into a side plank which you hold for 10 seconds before switching to the other side. Your goal is to maintain the side plank with perfect form – no sagging or cheating form in any way. Then rest for an interval and then repeat. In order to do a perfect side plank, the core must be properly activated so this drill is very useful because you can physically tell if you’re doing it right.

Bracing application

Now finally, specific movement application. Once you’ve mastered the drills above, applying to any movement is very straightforward. You should be able to voluntarily brace your core, keep it contracted, breathe, and move – all at the same time. Practice this with whatever movements you need – lifting and carrying, squatting, sparring, pressing, anything. The finest control comes from learning to modulate how contracted your core is. In some movements, like lifting a 10 lb box, you’ll want to brace your core firmly but you won’t need to do it too hard. On the other hand, during a max deadlift you’ll want to brace your core as hard as you can throughout the lift. You will also have movements where core tension will fluctuate within the movement. Take a clean and press: optimally, you’ll brace your core throughout the entire movement, but pulse your core at the power clean position (bar just below knees) and to initiate the press. The same situation occurs while fighting or sparring. You’ll keep your core generally braced the entire time to protect your internal organs but you’ll pulse it when striking. To master these advanced application techniques, you have to do specific training with each movement.

Stay tuned for the final part of this core series which will cover the final function of the core – checking.

Today’s post is building on the last one on pulsing. To recap, pulsing is a brief, but intense, core contraction to allow a strong force transfer through the spine for fast movements in sports, such as striking, throwing, or jumping. Read last post to learn about how to pulse your core. Today’s post covers learning to coordinate pulsing and then applying pulsing to your sport.

To train coordinating the pulse, you’ll need something to swing. You can use a long stick like a broomstick or put a ball/sand/whatever in one end of large bag and tie that section off (essentially forming a weight attached to a rope). With either of these objects, you’re going to do a continuous swinging pattern. With the stick, you’ll be swinging it behind your head – look up Indian club swinging for a video of this pattern. With the bag swing, you’ll just be swinging it over your head like a helicopter. With both of these patterns, the end of your object will be tracing a large circle so you can imagine that circle is a clock face. Pick a random number on the clock (like 2 o’clock) and every time you hit that point, pulse your core. Practice going around 5-10 times to begin, striving for consistency right at your designated time. This will help you coordinate your pulse with movement. To begin, just do a few sets with a different time to pulse each set. Once you’ve mastered that, you can then pick 2 different times to pulse in the cycle, like at 2 o’clock and 8 o’clock.

Once you’ve mastered coordinating pulsing, you can use it with any movement. Some power-based movements to train with could be sledgehammer swings, medicine ball throws into the wall or ground, or fast weight-based movements like the Olympic lifts, thrusters, etc.

Now for application to your sport. Once you’ve gotten good control, applying the pulse to your sport is relatively straightforward. Just practice the movement with a pulse timed to occur just before contact so that your core is engaged strongly as you make contact. You’ll know you’re doing it right because you’ll feel like you’re hitting the sweet spot or in the groove – you suddenly generate much greater force (ie. the ball goes farther) without feeling like you’re swinging harder. Now you just need to practice your different swings/strokes/movements to learn how to apply the correctly timed pulse to each and eventually make it automatic.

If you’ve ever watched a tennis match with women who were pro tennis players (and I mean pro as in professional, not as in they’re in favor of tennis players), you already know about core pulsing. The grunting, the screaming. But it’s not limited to tennis, any martial artist also includes the ‘power yell’. Why the yelling? Some might say it’s to intimidate or confuse (or arouse) your opponent. Really it’s just good biomechanics.

Today we talk about pulsing – one of the categories of core function. The core is used to stabilize the spine to allow optimal force transfer. Pulsing is when the movement is very intense but very brief. Imagine you’re going to a pool party and you and your friends always, at some point, get in a pool noodle war. The problem, you realize, with using a pool noodle is that you can swing as hard as you want, but the floppy foam doesn’t transfer your force properly. Having a stroke of genius, you decide to slide a PVC pipe inside your pool noodle – and it works like a dream! Suddenly, your hits are landing with proper force and the pool runs red with victory. All powerful sports movements are similar. You generate power in your hips (even if you are doing an arm controlled task like throwing or swinging) – the power must travel through your core and then be transferred to your target. If your core is floppy like the pool noodle, then even if you generate a massive amount of power from your hips, most of it won’t make it to your target.

The idea might occur, why not just keep the core solidly contracted the entire time? You can answer your own question by trying that. You’ll quickly find that by contracting your core too strongly and too long, you’ll be too rigid for fluid movement and not only lose the full motion needed in your sport but also lose the whip action that amplifies your movement. It’s also very draining to do that – physically, to maintain the contraction and mentally, to concentrate on holding the contraction. Finally, it tends to be more difficult to breathe which turns out to be somewhat important.

Learning to use your core to properly improve quick and powerful movements has 3 stages. First, just learning to contract your core voluntarily. Second, learning to generally coordinate this contraction to be fast and at the right moment. Third, learning to pulse in your specific sports’ movements.

Today we’ll talk about just learning to contract your core. There are 5 common ways to pulse your core. The scream, the grunt, the hiss, the snort, and silently. To appreciate feeling your core contract, rest a hand on the crest of your hip so that your fingers are on the lateral portion of your abdomen and press your fingers in to feel your abdominal core muscles. During these drills, you’ll feel the muscles contract underneath your fingers. The first 4 methods all involve making a noise because in order to exhale quickly, your abdominal muscles contract to force the air out. This powerful contraction is helpful due to the abdominals generating spine stabilizing pressure in the abdominal cavity as well as the benefit of the core contraction itself. It is possible to accomplish a similar effect silently (the 5th method) by using the Valsalva maneuver. This is when you close your windpipe and contract your diaphragm to generate abdominal pressure. Think of this as sealing a container (closing the windpipe) and then pressing a plunger down (contracting the abdomen) – this will dramatically increase the pressure in the rest of the container (the abdominal cavity) which stabilizes the spine (amongst other helpful things).

Going back to women’s tennis, it’s pretty obvious how to use the scream and the grunt – you just scream or grunt at the right moment (timing is crucial here). The snort is similar but instead of exhaling through the mouth, you just quickly exhale through your nose. So let’s discuss the other two methods which are more technical. For the hiss, push the top of your tongue into the back of your front teeth and close your mouth enough that when you try to breathe out, there’s resistance (because your tongue is blocking air from leaving). You’ll feel your core tightening when you do this – palpate your abdominals to confirm. Now do this quickly by making a quick hissing noise. Notice that you get a powerful pulse.

Finally, the silent pulse. While it probably sounds appealing to pulse silently to avoid making a noise in public, practically it’s not as useful when actually performing because it’s easier and much more natural to actually exhale (thus making a noise) in some form or another. However, we will go over how to do it now because it is much more useful when bracing your core (the second function of the core). To perform the Valsalva maneuver, pretend like you’re going to make a “k” sound but don’t actually make the sound. You’ll feel pressure in your throat (where you glottis is keeping your windpipe closed) as well as tightening in your diaphragm (which will be lowering down like a plunger) and contraction in your core muscles – palpate them to confirm contraction.

These drills cover the first aspect of pulsing your core – just learning how to pulse at all. The next post will cover the other 2 aspects: general coordination then sport-specific coordination.

At some point, all weight lifters must bend the knee to serve the king of exercises – the squat. The question then is, how to best serve?

First, this guide isn’t for Olympic lifters. If you’re an Olympic lifter, your only goal is to squat as similarly to the recovery phase of the clean or snatch as possible. This means your form doesn’t have much leeway – your stance should be the same as your catch stance, you should squat as deep as you physically can, and your trunk must stay completely vertical.

If you’re not an Olympic lifter, then this guide can help you. This isn’t a guide on what good form is, but rather a guide on how to find a form that works for you. It requires experimentation aka working out. To do so, you should adopt a program that switches the main squat exercise every 3-4 weeks so you can try out many different things. A very simple way to do this would be to pyramid up over the 3-4 weeks. Start with higher reps like sets of 8-10, then next week add weight and go to 6-8 reps, then 4-6 reps, then 1-3 reps. After you work up to this last week of heavy weight, change your squat form slightly and start back over.

Making adjustments

If you’re just learning to squat, you’ll need feedback to know when you should adjust things. This can be a friend who watches you from the side so they can tell you how you look. Or you can film yourself from the side. One of the best systems that will give you feedback in real time is using a phone and a tablet at the same time. Set your phone up to view you from the side and put the tablet in front of you so you can see it while you squat. Then you’ll use your phone to make a video call to the tablet. This way, you’ll be looking at the tablet which will be showing the footage of yourself squatting from the side. This will let you know if you’re squatting deep enough, how your bar path looks, and other form details.

Stance depth

This will be defined as when the hip crease is below the top of the knee. This is a standard definition.

Grip width

Grab the bar in the widest position possible. Notice the amount of upper back tension you have. Now slide both your hands in as far as you can and reassess your back tension. A lot more with them in, right? You want as much tension as you can. Most people will be limited by shoulder mobility. Get under a bar and pull into the bar like you’re trying to bend it and wrap it around your body. Gradually work your hands in. Experiment between as wide as you can grip it and as narrow as your shoulder mobility allows. Somewhere in there you’ll find a range that maximizes both your upper back tension and your pulling tension. Leave your hands here and step back from the bar. Take a note of where your hands are relative to the knurling.

Stance width

There are 2 things to account for with choosing how wide your stance is. Both of them occur in the bottom position of the squat. You want to pick a stance that is as wide as comfortably possible and that allows you to reach proper depth without your low back rounding. Proper depth and keeping the back in neutral are both important. You might be able to take a wider stance and reach depth but not keep your back in neutral. This isn’t good and you should narrow your stance slightly. Most people will end up with a stance that is 1.25x-1.5x shoulder width. The stance should also be relatively comfortable – if it feels like your hips are under too much strain in the bottom position, narrow your stance because there’s likely too much shear force on your hips.

Bar path

The bar path is determined by how you squat. There are 2 extremes: as deep as possible with trunk more vertical and as shallow as possible (while still reaching depth) with the trunk more horizontal. The more shallow squat will look like a box squat with the knees not moving forward much at all. While the shallow squat requires moving the weight the least distance, many lifters just aren’t built for this style in it’s most extreme form. Therefore, you should start with this style and then gradually experiment by letting the knees come forward a bit. Do a few cycles where you change this a little bit more each time. You’ll either find that with slightly more knee bend you can squat more or there’s a drop off in strength.

An important cue with bar path is keeping the bar directly over the middle of your foot. Often lifters will lean over too much which results in the bar being too far forward which is very disadvantageous. A good visual cue is to tie a rope to the collar of the barbell and let it hang down to the floor. It should touch the ground right at the middle of the foot.

Leg position

Many people try to push their knees out when they squat, often to prevent them from collapsing inward. This cue is fine, though often the real problem is they either are folding too far over or the weight is too heavy. First, make sure that you’re keeping the bar directly over the middle of your foot while squatting. This often means being slightly more upright that you might realize. If that doesn’t work, then there’s an easy fix: decrease the weight.

The other question is should the toes point forward or out? Pointing the toes forward improves the rebound out of the bottom of the squat because of a greater hamstring stretch, but adds more torque to the knee. So this is a matter of personal comfort with how much torque you’re willing to place on the knee. If you don’t want to do that, then most will agree that pointing the toes about 10 degrees outward puts the knee in a comfortable position.

Summary

1. Find the grip width that maximizes tension within your available shoulder mobility.
2. Find the widest stance width that you can comfortably achieve proper depth with a neutral low back.
3. Experiment with different squat styles, ranging from box squat style (knees don’t move forward, trunk more folded over) to a hybrid squat style (knees do move forward some distance, trunk more upright). Find the style that you’re strongest with.