Working the Pole – No, Not That Pole

Here’s the funny thing about a simple movement like a squat. Everyone thinks they’re an expert, but very few people can do them right. Hell, I’ve been working at them for over a decade and I’m just over the stage of Your 7-year-old sister is going to kick my ass and bordering on the stage of I can hold my head up in the air with a confident swagger, yet still so far away from the stage of BOSS. That is all, minions.

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The biggest deficit I have for my squat is an old ankle sprain that occurred during basketball season back in 11th grade, which resulted in me rockin the metal-growing-out-of-my-armpits look, coupled with a hard cast for the entire summer. Yep, the ladies were all over me back in the day. As a result, my ankle mobility is similar to an 80 year old mans, which works great for running and deadlifting, but not for deep squatting.

So it always amazes me when I hear of some trainers going on and on about how great squats are, how amazing their squats are, but then follow up with really bad recommendations on how to do them, and then show off some bad demonstrations of squat technique. Believe it or not I’ve even heard one trainer constantly use the quote “if you don’t know how to squat, you don’t know squat” and then quarter-squat 3 plates a side like a champ.

The funniest is when people try to show off their squat and go through some form of an overhead squat that looks something like this:

Oh sweet baby Jeebus where do I begin. Sure, it’s great that you can contort your body to get the bar overhead, but I’m sure the burning numbness radiating down both arms and the inability to turn your head is a valuable result of your sheer awesomeness, right? RIGHT? right.

Conversely, let’s take a look at someone who knows how to dip it low, pick it up slow, and work a doweling like no one’s business. Meet legendary strength coach Jerzy Gregorek.

You know you’re a mobile son of a bitch when you can squat to the floor with your feet touching, and your hands next to each other overhead. On top of that, his neck isn’t sticking out like a turtles and his back is straight like a razor, which makes it even more impressive.

Also, notice how his knees are past his toes? Looks like his ACL is going to shoot right across the room, doesn’t it? I bet he has all sorts of knee problems. And monkeys are going to shoot out of my butt.

The funny thing about a lot of recreational squatters is that their depth is nowhere near as low as they think it should be. Most of the time this is simply because there’s too much weight on the bar, too little time spent working on ensuring proper mobility through the major joints, and too little time involved in grooving the movement pattern itself. Think of it like shooting a free throw: you should have a few thousand practice shots in the bag before the ref tosses you the ball.

Most people when starting out would benefit from performing basic deep squats with an unweighted dowel for a few sets, just trying to get as deep as possible, keeping the heels on the floor, and feeling comfortable with the movement. Oh, and overhead squats are an advanced movement that most beginners just can’t quite grasp, so it would be best left to intermediates who have mastered a basic squat pattern. I can assure you, this gal was hitting some doweling squats like crazy before she loaded some weight on the bar.

I don’t know too many guys who can deep squat 120 kgs with a front grip like this. Oh yeah, and her knees are past her toes, and her knees are collapsing in a valgus stress. But hey, I guess that means she must have weak glutes, right? RIGHT? Also, she shouldn’t lift that weight or she’ll get all big and bulky because she’s lifting something heavier than a purse with a tiny dog inside of it. Ever get the feeling the world is trying to screw with you and everyone’s drinking the Kool Aid, or is that just me? Sorry, kinda got off topic there.

Most of us learned about squatting from bodybuilders, who learned a bastardized version from watching olympic weightlifters and decided to take their techniques and make it their own. We saw them as the big guys in the gym who obviously knew what they were doing, had them teach us, and it became like the childhood game of telephone. You know the game, where your best friend Timmy whispers something into your ear like “I enjoy a nice bowl of ice cream after playing dodgeball,” and then you whisper it into your other friend’s ear, and so on and so on until the last guy in the line has to say what he was told, and stands up and says with great certainty that what he heard was “My mom has a scar on her right leg from when the milkman dropped the bottles on her.” Oh, the hilarity that comes with a lack of communication skills!!!

These were the same people who said not to squat below 90 degrees, or that your knee should never go past your toes, or that you should stand on your heels with your toes in the air and scream out “WHAT!!” like Little John after each rep.

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For the vast majority of clients, if they can’t squat well, and I mean BULLETPROOF, they have to start with a lot of work using a doweling or other unweighted pole (see where the title comes from?). They should start with front squats, drop down and don’t stop till they hit Fragel Rock. Once they have the movement, they can start with weighted squats. If they don’t have the mobility, work on it with corrective exercises and specific stretching, then use box squats to teach the depth, again with light weight. Once they can consistently squat to below parallel with a front squat, then they can get into a back squat. Once they can drop it like it’s hot on a back squat, they can work on increasing the loading.

So once someone can pick up cherries without their hands, they can start to work on loading. If they decide they can start throwing weight on the bar and don’t need to worry about getting the right mobility because hey, they’re awesome like that, they may wind up looking something like this.

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