Squatting Wrong For 20 Years? Jujimufu

planted a and this wasn't necessarily your plan but I watched a couple of you're squatting videos recently and I'll tell you a quick story when I was up training a few years ago with me Kyle cochlea Russian National Champion famous lifter me Kyle says to me says the stand this would be the best I can do for a Russian he says it I watched your video many many times and every time I watch a video I want to fix your [ __ ] forum in thinking of that when I watched your video on your squad I thought there's a couple things I think that that you could benefit from okay and when I talk to you about it you mentioned that you had had some knee problems and you had gone from a high bar to a little lower bar and it helped your knees I had the same issue when I competed I used a little bit of a higher bar seven seconds I counted and it doesn't really falter at all there used a wider stance or hip in the movement what's Ryan on the dudes 905 right it's a big weight and you can see the speed and I ended up with knee problems kind of throughout my career and then after I was done competing and I wanted my knees to feel good and I wanted to enjoy squatting mm-hm I went about finding a different form that worked better for me and the one that I settled with is for mark repeat toes starting strength form and that uses a little bit of a lower bar and a little more of a break in the hips using a hip drive stop trying to keep my chest up so high and actually started to put myself in a position to where I was loading more glutes and hips and it put a great relief on my knee other I'm all about saving knees right now 100% knee problems up until past year and there's still a key sometimes that's great well this has really helped me I had chronic tendinitis for ten years half the knees and then when I went back to squatting with this new form I got back up to squatting north of 600 pounds for reps with no knee sleeves and no wraps and I have no need P oh gosh so and this is from somebody who had ten years of chronic tendinitis wait were you this was probably when I was 45 is when I stopped competing and maybe it was only two years ago that I finally decided to start listening to my body and to get my knees healthy because I wasn't enjoying squats I was doing them because I wanted to do them because I think they're the best exercise but they were constantly causing me recurring pain hmm so I fixed my form I fixed my knees and now I can squat pain-free so I wanted to kind of try and give you this method and see if it works for you sure high bar squats are fine keeping an upright torso is fine if that's what folks want to do I want to show you another option that's very safe it also helps to shorten the moment arm so it gives you better leverage it recruits more glutes and hips into the movement one thing I noticed with your squat your most recent heavy squat I think you did a 570 or there abouts recently [Music] and you had knee wraps on one thing I noticed I'll stand back here far enough away so you can see is that when you broke to do the squat you broke with your knees first you kept your chest and head high you were looking up and it caused a lot of instability in the midsection yeah [Music] yeah I feel that okay well if we get that bar a little lower and we try and break a little more of the hips and load the glutes and start putting the chest here and the head and eyes here you'll find that you're in much greater control of that load first feet about shoulder width apart toes turned slightly out your typical squat stance you were a little wider because you kind of had to be to stay in this position yeah I feel like this this feels more comfortable but it was more comfortable and you need okay if you're keeping chest up and head up yes that feels more comfortable that's the way I squatted when I competed okay but you can bring your feet just a little bit closer because now what we're gonna do is we're not going to keep our chest up in our head up we're gonna break it the hips the way we're gonna do that is hands together yeah drop down and put your elbows inside of your knees like this and notice where your position is now he's got this obvious slant to your back you're looking here about six feet in front of you your chest and nipples are pointing to the ground this is the position I want you to squat in and when you come out of this position the drive is gonna be here push up towards me you could do better is that you want to push up here there you go hips and shoulders come up together uh-huh just as you did there but the drive is here go excellent okay so sometimes I have to sit people down and have them just stand up out of a chair and notice my position this is your strength position oh yeah I guess if it's not here right you couldn't even stand up if you tried to keep your chest up you'd have to be way over your your knees way over your toes to do that yeah but if you go here that's the position I'm gonna get that hip drive a little better okay okay so again hands together elbows inside the knees I've got a good slant and I'm gonna view you here once you push here there it is you feel the difference yeah feel a powerful still try and stay Center foot I know you came a little on your knees but that's okay we'll try and keep the weight over Center foot on your shoelaces Drive here okay what's the position if you'll have an hour full that was it's like a standing leg press yeah okay that's a powerful yeah yeah it feels more like a leg press looks more like a standing leg press this is interesting too you said about yeah yeah perfect that's natural it's natural yeah okay yeah and you can sit down now and I'll try and cue you here but as you lean forward I'll look you up now you're trying the last thing what you don't want to do is get your hips under your body and start pushing the knees forward and driving with your quads I want you to push loading the glutes again huge up there it is powerful that is yeah yeah it's a standing leg press so now we'll try and walk through the squat utilizing those same techniques notice with the bar position is that I thought you could have gotten at least another inch or two out of lowering that bar down on to your rear delts okay if you feel the corner of your scapula out here the bony portion of the scapula yeah you lift your arm up you'll you'll feel the rear delt pushing on that you want to be on the fleshy portion of the rear delt okay not on the bony portion [Music] and that's fine if you have to release the hands like that the fingers like that some people do to flexibility may end up with two or three fingers but the pinky under when you get that bar up on your back you don't want your ribs up you want ribs down I'm going to lock this down into position perhaps here so that people's tag people's tendency is to be ribs up head up okay yeah and that allows them to relax their abdominal wall and their back starts to arch and they tend to stick their butt out did you see LeBron James squat recently where he was he was sticking his butt out like this if your abs are tight and your ribs are down like somebody's punching you in the stomach locked down you can't arch your lower back and so when you break at the hips it's all through the glutes there's no rounding of the lower back and then I won't stand straight up I'll be slightly pushed leaning forward see I'm already bent slightly forward some people trying to stand straight up and then it gets awkward wow you got a really low bar position so I'm on the rear delts they're pretty low bar I'm going to keep this over Center foot and I'll exaggerate the break at the hips first so I can load the glues yes you are going to break at the knees but people who break the knees first tend not to be able to get their butt out far enough and so I want to break at the butt first until you get used to it break at the hips use that bar over Center foot now you'll see if you stand next to him he keeps that bar in a straight line for the entire I'm going to exaggerate the hip drive here but this is what should be happening when you get to the bottom his hips should be pushing out and back as the weight gets heavier you'll be pushing the ass up and met okay dips down the abdominals tight staring at the floor yeah wiggle in there you go there wiggle in nice and wiggled yep nice good very powerful really powerful here a no 90 Sperry battle down he's actually keeping his ass landing leg press standing leg press there you actually keeping everything that's got to feel good it looks only the only a fitness book I've ever read is its market much starting strength falling more you go if anybody wants to pick one up that's the one again do the volume to is really yeah feel more powerful like you own the whole there I don't think it works unless I lowered the bar a little bit you gotta keep the bar down because I don't I yeah I think of it if the bar was just a little bit higher I would have definitely felt like it was growing forward as soon as that bar gets over your toes this whole thing goes to [ __ ] yeah okay you got to keep that bar low and you got to keep it over your shoelaces or their Center foot but I noticed the hip drive was really powerful yeah now when you get into the hole here I could I could jump on your back on top of your heaviest weight and you would just sit there now you might not be able to squat it but you certainly wouldn't fail like you would if you were doing this and somebody jumped on your back you you know you'd lose your your coil okay your your support all right let's go up a little yeah this is the wild part I think in my opinion about this whole endeavor of your squat is how much has changed in the last year yeah and also how much stronger you can be in it yeah his PR was what was it 550 in your garage when they turned off the power who's going to go for it they turned up the power on accident but that was like a big deal cuz you had in PR Dan a long while and you've changed a lot and and you can change more well I just noticed that what's the potential top in what's the weakest link and whenever you're squatting and you're braking and there's shake and there's there's the core isn't stable and the knees are already out over here how much more weight can you add to that you know you're already having to wrap really tight just to take care of this knee problem there's nothing this can do yeah more time to let you load more we don't limiting factor yeah and your glutes are stupid strong dude yeah my glutes are strong a squatter you see big asses big bunch of things constantly outsourced my squat confidence yeah yeah yeah yeah from from him from Tom and from others like I had to start over from scratch yeah you know focus that no I've set a world record 854 pounds of noni wraps I said a world record in the squat yeah and I didn't know how to squat like this without pain and I had to totally relearn I had to start with a lot lower weights and build myself back up but now I squat I have absolutely no pain cool feeling nifty - oh wow the body's regenerative not degenerative so if you allow it to do this correctly and load the muscles and the joints then I think there's a lot more long-term you're a young man you got a lot of use for some power lifters like John hack for example who do do high bar very well and you know do their body type or other circumstances but do you think if you didn't have pain using that style of squatting would you have tried to adapt into something different you know it really depends on the individual kind of depends on your your limb links as well some people have short legs long torso and so things change based on your what's that anthropometry yeah if I got all the right arse and O's in there but you think John's could fit well with low bar I think so I think it's worth trying it's like people try that conventional they try the Samoan right with the squatting try a few different things you see long-term what the limiting factor is what the weakest link is whether or not you can improve that last thing I crossed her does keep that bar over sanderfoot yeah this is a great position because you feel so confident in the bottom most people get lose confidence in the hole that's where they feel like they're the weakest that's where I feel like I'm the strongest you're probably right here the strongest is the hole when I get down that's where I feel confident that's really powerful it's like being coiled up in the bottom of a leg press one if that pain comes down and your abs are pushed into your thighs right that's where you feel powerful is right down there at the bottom of the moon anybody who's ever done a heavy leg press and has to felt yields right down here when when the ABS are pushing into the thighs that's kind of what I get out of the bottom of this movement I'm gonna try to go for that feeling then because if you feel that in squat that's insane yeah mm-hmm you know the very bottom the leg press yeah you feel that way I feel that you never know because because we're too upright and so there's there's a lot of movements here in your core and your knees yeah and it's like it's like loading a spring if it flips out like that when you lose all that tension I want to keep the tension on I want to keep those muscle groups as I can involved in the movement yeah when I get in the bottom of that movement my Springs compressed abs are in my thighs I'm really powerful right did you just put on Olympic shoes you sir you just have a solid foot pad so they're just like wood I think if they're it's only a half inch yeah it's slightly elevated it looks more than it is okay nice that looked really powerful nice what it looks strong I'm seeing wiggle in the midsection anymore that's really strong a little better I really like it yeah we're solid okay wait those last three things everyone said I feel like I just walked out of a dressing room wearing something yeah yeah you don't have to lose ten pounds for the wedding it's a difference between a squat that's better for maximum poundage 'iz versus carryover into athletics or this the same thing I think it's the same thing okay I know I've even said myself in the past that a high bar squat gives more quad if your knees Bend you're working your quads yeah so the low bar squat actually recruits more total muscle yeah in the movement so I think it's probably preferable if you consider all the pluses and minuses in terms of the knees yeah loading the glutes having a more stable core I think the low bar is preferable that's not to say that you couldn't high bar and get great results as well it's probably minimal difference but for me the big difference was the potential injury problem and this will allow me to load the muscles instead of the joints so in general a high bar and what you're saying a lot of people are saying you should only high bar if you're focused on Olympic weightlifting or if it's generalized but I think that everybody should squat yeah and if you enjoy the high bar and it feels good for you then do the high bar but I don't think that the low bar is any less beneficial for specific sports performance and I would contend that it's even a little better I think you recruit more muscles and potentially make those muscles stronger yeah and then use obviously sports specific in terms of John getting used to the movement what would you suggest just just reps and reps and reps just keep hitting your fives and fives and fives it's just time under the bar you know it's it's neuromuscular education you know anybody who starts a new movement you'll adapt really quickly because it's just a slight modification of a squat but your body learns any new movement over time through repetition and you get this dramatic increase in strength which isn't necessarily what is it's all correlated to muscle hypertrophy it's about neuromuscular education is my grip good I like it now if you have any problem with flexibility you can free up the pinky and allow your Tate a little more it's up to you she's nice to do it this flexibility nice I feel like I'm balancing I'm still learning the balance of it but it's fine there's a couple reps in there like the last one goes all my butt okay okay that's what I wanted yeah it was like one of the reps I was like okay I'm falling forward that bar gets over your toes that's a problem so just keep it to remember to keep that bar over your shoelaces Center foot Center for the center foot the whole time well can't I be on the heals when you initiate that press out of a hole there may be a little rock baton but generally speaking you want to keep that weight over Center for you certainly don't want your toes coming up okay don't get don't get yourself positioned like that all right but I thought that looked great I just feel like you you own the whole knot is what I like to see is that you're powerful in the bottom of the movement it doesn't feel like if I put another hundred pounds on that you could you know yeah shoot out or blow up yeah I mean just holding that weight are your knees they're fine yeah that's the goal long term and again you know the first goal is how does it feel does it feel powerful confident you know can you you know build on this and that's what's most important to me when I watched your max squat I saw that that's probably gonna be about as far as you can go you've started to crank knee wraps on really tight to compensate for that weak link that shouldn't be the weak okay the knees should never be the weak link you should the ass should be the weak link because we can build that over time I can't build your knees over time okay cool Thank You Stan yeah if you like it you don't have to do it but I just wanted to throw it your way all right try it out I'll work for a little while see I see awesome [Music] you

Channel: Jujimufu

Views: 1,154,314

Rating: 4.9480104 out of 5

Keywords: jujimufu, juji, tom boyden, squat, powerlifting, stan efferding, stan efferding squat, bodybuilding, strongman, deadlift, larry wheels, world's strongest man, strength, fitness, worlds strongest man, bodybuilder, thor bjornsson, squatting wrong, squat form, squat technique, startinng strength, mark rippetoe, alan thrall, alan thrall squat, best squat, squatting, squat powerlifting, training, powerlifter, powerlifting program, squat program, low bar squat, high bar squat

Id: 8EyfgOpAilM

Length: 20min 10sec (1210 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 26 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/ronswansoneatssteak]

To each their own BUT...

High bar/Olympic style squatting requires more time put in out of the gym working on mobility every day, that’s the truth people don’t want to hear. I think a lot of people automatically default to low bar because high bar is initially more demanding mechanically/mobility wise.

I have worked on my mobility EVERY night for a year and a half now and my high bar squat is just starting to feel smooth and comfortable, however the payoff has been enormous.

[u/Austin_925]

In the video Stan gives a “one size fits all” response to squatting, and honestly I think it’s irresponsible for him to do that. As an experienced lifter I’m sure he would recognize that anatomically squatting low bar isn’t optimal for every lifter out there. But besides that it’s a fine way to squat for some individuals who have knee issues and want to power lift.

[u/IAMTH3BANE]

Looks good, but I don't think I can do it yet. I can barely get my hands on the bar for high bar squat. My shoulder mobility is terrible.

[u/conhis]

when I do this it turns into a nasty goodmorning. I have a tendency to cave my chest to begin with so better I think for me to go a little higher-bar and keep my chest not vertical, but up.

[u/thereclaimedsnatch]

If you’re built for it then do it, nothing wrong with it. Some argue less quad involvement but Greg Nuckols debunked this.

[u/89ShelbyCSX]

Squatting like this to help your knees is akin to sumo to help your back. It very well can help you, but it's a bit different of a movement. Nothing wrong with any of it, all depends on your goals and what your body is telling you.

[u/Coyrex1]

I know people always say low bar is worse for your back but high bar honestly feels worse on my back. Theres something about it that just doesn work. I do low bar and fronts only.

[u/jmeure]

I much prefer spending time reading things like Greg Nuckol’s take (https://www.strongerbyscience.com/how-to-squat/). Going through this will leave you better served in the long run as you’ll understand what you’re actually doing when shifting from one squat type to another. Basically- it boils down to altering external moment arms and changing the torque experienced at different joints. If the goal is to simply move the most weight- opting for low bar is probably a smart choice. If not, do whatever you want.

As a physical therapist as well. I’m never high on the blanket sentiment that “X” is worse for the knees (or the like). Stress is neither good nor bad, simply dosed correctly or not based on the desired adaptations.

[u/hurtsthemusic]

Game changer. No only do my knees feel better, but I have more power out of the hole and bracing is better because my back angle doesn’t change. Disclaimer- I’m a powerlifter, so my goal is to squat as much as possible.