POWERED BY GOATA: MOVE LIKE THE GREATEST OF ALL TIME ATHLETES: Bulletproof your joints and spine by using the same injury resistant movement secrets of the multi decade super athletes. by Singer Reid & Boesch Jose

Author:Singer, Reid & Boesch, Jose [Singer, Reid]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2019-06-08T16:00:00+00:00

5

DRILLS AND EXERCISES FOR GOATA STRENGTH

Front Bar Squat

F

or decades, barbell squats have been an essential tool for athletes in the weight room. In addition to improving range of motion, building the quads,

calves, and hamstrings, and strengthening the ligaments and connective tissues that give the lower body structure and balance, these offer all the advantages of anaerobic training, which improves the body’s ability to access energy from fat. With all these benefits, it’s a shame that squats have led to so many hip, knee, and back injuries, most of them attributable to improper form: standing with duck feet, collapsing the legs inward, lifting heels off the ground, allowing the knees to bend in front of the toes, and so forth.

What I like about front bar squats is how they tend to take many of these mistakes out of the equation. If you grip the perpendicular handlebars, you’re unlikely to draw your shoulders into your chest, lean too far over your feet, or hunch your back over, as if you were doing a good-morning or a deadlift. This is a quintessentially back-chain dominant exercise, and rather than working the lumbar spine—which was never the point of an effective squat anyway—the real work is done by the haunches and hip abductors.

The head should be up, the neck should be comfortable, and the feet should be planted about shoulder-width apart. You’ll know the bar is at an appropriate height if you can lift it off the rack by straightening your torso, and pushing off with your legs, though it shouldn’t be necessary to stand on your toes. To keep your form clean, it can be helpful to work with mirrors, or an attentive spotter, since you won’t want to look down once you begin to bend your knees. But an even better indicator should be your own back: if you can’t keep your spine long and strong, without the use of a belt, then the weight is too heavy.

Other signs that you should reduce the load are buckling in the knees or quivering in the ankles. Squats, after all, are as much about working stabilizer muscles as they are about building the leg muscles that are already big and strong, so once you start to drop in, the movement should be smooth and controlled. The rear end should be sticking out and the knees should flex outwards, moving at the classic 22.5 degrees away from the navel, and either the big toe or second toe of each foot should face directly forward. Continue to keep to keep your eyes up and lower the bar until your legs are bent at an angle slightly sharper than 90 degrees. Remember to breathe deeply and explode upwards—pushing off from the fourth or fifth metatarsals and the outside of the heels. Continue to straighten your legs until you are standing normally, and activate the glutes, which should be doing almost as much work as the quads.The back, by comparison, should feel little or no fatigue, no matter how many reps you do.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.