Best Exercise You Could Ever Do: Zercher Squat Front Raise

If you haven’t heard of “The Hunger Games” by now, I’m sure you’re going to hear a lot about it in the coming months, seeing as how it grossed around the GDP of Zambia in the opening weekend alone. I’m kinda curious to see it, specifically to check out what kind of stuff they have to do to not get blown apart by other no-goodnik street punk teenagers and their rap music, sagging their pants all over the place and not filing their taxes on time.

I have to admit the training would have to be pretty bad-ass to survive, lots of parkour, streetfighting and occasional mime theatre to learn how to move silently through the surrounding neighborhood. Lots of Shake Weights, the odd Zumba class, and running through a field of bosus. You know, purely functional stuff really.

The gloves tie it all together, really.

So not only have I managed to set a personal record for most sessions in a month this month, which is probably the weirdest month of the year to do this, I’ve taught a canfitpro course, sent off an article to T-Nation, and written a few gems on this here blog. In addition to that, I’ve been playing around with some new twists on some programs for some rehab clients to see if I can get some more juice out of them without causing them to have bigger owies in their existing owies.

I’m a big fan of Zercher Squats. They pretty much kick all types of ass, and make you feel like a complete and utter beast when doing them properly. That being said, this is not what they look like when done properly.

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And neither is the second attempt:

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…and apparently neither was the third attempt:

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Seriously though, that was just a chalk fail on that one. If he used a teensy tiny bit more chalk on his upper lip, he would have nailed it.

One reason I like zerchers is they pretty much are the easiest type of loaded squat you could use for someone with pre-existing shoulder problems. It also forces the users to get a lot of activation through their T-spine extensors and allows their neck to remain in neutral through the entire movement. I’ve always felt my hips can get lower through the movement that I could on back squats or even on front squats, and the reduced distance from the weight to the centre of the moment arm coming from L4-5 makes for a reduced force being applied to the low back, which is always high on my radar.

A variation of the zercher squat that is a common staple of the strongman competitions is the Altas stone lift. This is where a massive rock is hoisted off the floor and placed onto an elevated surface.

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While this is all well and good and crazy amounts of awesome, not every facility is set up with indestructible rocks to lift and toss around like this, so unfortunately I have to make some adaptations to become uber-boss of the atlas lift, and it involves performing a zercher squat within a squat rack. Chickety-chek it out.

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This works really well for me because I can set the risers as low as necessary, increase the weight incrementally as needed in order to still work on completing the movement, and adjust the height of the surface as much as needed.

One of the reasons I like this version in comparison to a static squat is the fact that stepping forward requires a lot of unilateral stability to complete effectively, which cranks up the demands on the core that much more than a normal squat. See, you have your core demands for your squat, then you have your core demands from the step, so it’s sort of, like, double core demands, you know? WHAT DOES IT MEAN!?!?!!?