How’s the squatting going? Lose the skinny jeans yet? For the sake of generations to come, let’s all hope so.  I know it may seem slow moving, and light weight at five to seven reps may seem like you’re going nowhere fast, where in reality you’re going somewhere great… just slowly. But you’re on the right path. Remember, anything gained quickly, is lost quickly. Let’s build a wide base and a tall tower.

This lil fella has it right

Tip #1

Let’s start putting some weight on the bar. Those sets of five to seven need to be stepped up and now is the time to do it. Since you’ve been practicing on a box for quite some time now and know how to land gently, let’s up the weight and box squat. Set the box to 90 degrees or just below, and if your options are limited, lower is better than higher. You never know when you might compete in the IPF. What would be ideal here is to pick a tough weight that’d be very tough for five sets of five at a deep box squat where you “tap and go”.

**Tap and go meaning your ass taps the box and you come up with the weight.**

If you’ve made it through four sets and gotten all five, slightly increase the weight for the fifth set and hit your five reps. The following week increase your reps by about five percent and proceed the same.

Sit back… way back

Keys with the box squat:

Keep a vertical shin angle. Using the box allows you to sit back more than you usually would with a free bar squat. Get used to sticking that ass out. It’ll help you grow one.

Spread the floor. I also like to coach “press on the outside of your shoes” or “spread your knees”. This helps engage your glutes, which help with hip extension… this means more muscles helping you squat!

Drive your heels! Don’t roll up on to your toes and try to squat with your quads. They’ll be recruited as necessary, try to press your whole foot through the floor and use your hamstrings and glutes to extend your hips.

Tip #2

Have a higher rep day in your program with no box. I like to squat on my deadlift day, even if it’s just two or three sets. Take about 60-70% of what you’ve been using for your heaviest set of successful five reps and do it for two or three sets of 12 reps.

Familiarize yourself with proper depth without a box there to cue you when you’ve hit depth. Also start getting some reps to condition your erectors.

These reps will not only help you correct yourself as far as depth goes, but help build some mass on your stems. Nobody wants to walk around with legs looking like they should be hanging from a nest.

Tip #3

Train your low back! Every body new to squatting, or avoiding squatting is concerned with either their knees or low back. By sitting back we focus the bulk of the work to our posterior chain. In doing such, we take care of the knees. But what about our backs? We have to train them to prepare to be awesome (awesome = huge squat)!!

Start by doing either 45 degree or parallel back extensions with a long hold at the top, 6-8 seconds. Once you can successfully do three sets of 12 reps, start adding weight. I start most by holding a weight at their chest. Once they get to 25lbs or so, add a barbell to your back. If you have at your disposal use a safety squat bar, if not, get comfortable holding a regular barbell on your back.

Work up to three or four sets of eight to 12 sets of weight back extensions and watch your squat go through the roof! Generally when focussing on my squat my low back feels like (insert graphic adjective here) every day of the week. By the time it starts to feel better, I’m training it again.

Keep working hard. Remember, squatting cures 87% of the world’s problems.

I get a lot of emails and text messages daily. Facebook messages and updates… tweets even. And amidst all that connectivity I somehow missed the memo that you must immediately warm up on the bench press with “a plate”… that is 45lbs per side, for a total of 135lbs. Somehow where ever I go I see this phenomenon… and it doesn’t even matter what your rep scheme will be, or more importantly what your max bench is… but you march to that bench, throw on a plate per side and bust out 10 to 20 half reps as fast as your body will let you move. And from there you are clearly ready for your work sets.

(I googled “bench press” to look for images for this and virtually every pic displaying how to bench press, or selling one has 135lbs on it. Maybe I really did miss a memo.)

If only it were that easy

Now, all sarcasm aside, I understand that not everyone knows or has been taught a proper warm up, but for some reason the bench press “135 phenomenon” has always irked me. So that leaves me with two options, I can sit around and bitch; which is essentially like using a rocking chair, it gives me something to do for a while but really gets me nowhere; or I can try to help those who are willing to learn. I suppose, given my profession of choice, I shall do the latter.

Now, there are a ton of great warm ups and uncountable mobility exercises out there. Most all of them worth giving a shot. Generally though, if I am to do any of those, I prefer to do them on an off day. If I’m coming in for a good lift though, I prefer to get a quick warm up and get into it.

Start with some light rotator cuff work, personally I like cable external rotation. Minimal set up, keep it fairly light, and get a good range of motion. Two or three sets of 8-12 and I move to the bench.

The key with warming up for the bench, and partly why I pick on the “135 phenomenon”, is that the goal is to warm up, and not get into a state of fatigue. You want to gradually increase the weight, get a feel for it, let your muscles know what they’re dealing with, and to do that no more than a couple reps are necessary. My goal is to get 5 or 6 good warm up sets in before I start to do work. The first set I always do is with the bar alone. I think this is important whether you’re a 120 pound presser or a 600 pound bench monster. I do this one for 8 to 10 reps since it’s virtually weightless it doesn’t tire me at all, but it gets my blood going a little and gets me settled on the bench. Also try not to fly through these reps, they can be quicker than a regular tempo, but keep some control, maybe even a hold or two at the bottom to stretch your pecs a little.

From there I know where I’m trying to get weight wise and I try to break up my warm up sets accordingly. 2 light sets, 2 medium sets and one heavy set. For these warm up sets I keep the reps low. I’ll do 5-7 reps for the two light sets, 3 reps for the medium sets and just a single for the heavy warm up set. Again, the idea of this is that I’m just getting a feel for the weight, and getting some blood flowing to the area… but staying out of a state of fatigue. Let’s say my working sets were going to be at 315lbs, my warm up would look something like this:

Cable External Rotation 2 x 12

Flat Bench

• 45 x 10
• 135 x 7
• 185 x 5
• 225 x 3
  
• 275 x 3
• 315 x 1

This warm up can be applied for a lifter at any weight, an example of what a lighter presser may do is:

Wall Ball Pushups

• 2 sets of 10

Flat Bench Press

• 45 x 5
• 60 x 3
• 70 x 3
• 75 x 1

It seems so simple yet is so oft overlooked, and a proper warm up can be the difference between getting all your reps, setting a PR, or even just getting your workout off to a great start. Just remember, start light, work slowly and start your work only once you feel ready.

Great warm up tempo

Just the numbers: First meet. Mens open raw division, competed at 83.1kg (183lbs) in the 93kg group. 28 years old, 175cm (5’8”) . Totalled 465kg (165, 105, 195) going 8/9.

Hi, Shawn here. I’ve been in the gym for about a year and a half – after way too many years of lazy office work. I started at a 24-hour gym and for the past 6 months have been lifting at McDoles. When I first wandered back into a gym in 2011, I was lost and just wandered from machine to machine. After one or two trips like that, I said “screw it” and ( thanks to overwhelming opinions online) got started with a beginner program, Starting Strength. That got me from the empty bar to weights that started to seriously beat me down, and when I couldn’t maintain that progression, I switched to programming based on Jim Wendler’s 5/3/1 and for the few weeks before the meet adding in more singles. I’m not sure where along the way I decided to make the jump from “going to the gym” to “training” to “training for something.” It might have been the day one of the coaches at the gym asked me, “What are you training for, anyway?” I think I answered, “life,” and felt proud of my clever answer for a few minutes but knew that couldn’t be my only reason for pushing myself. So this fall I looked up powerlifting competitions in Manitoba, found out that one was happening this winter, and told Coach Beaks about it – he helped me with a few things to focus on before the meet and tapped a few of the others in the gym who might want to compete. One of them, Ryan, decided to compete too and totalled almost 650kg as a Junior.

Having everything ready to go was part of the plan – I hadn’t competed in anything athletic since grade school and the last thing I wanted was to be nervous about forgetting something. The meet was being held across town at the Air Force Base with a 2-hour weigh in, so I was up at 7:30 to double check by bag, throw together one plain water bottle and another of pre-workout, and get there a little before the 9:30 weigh in calls. I didn’t worry too much about weight going in – I knew I’d place better if I made it into the 83kg class, but when I was on the scale and the lowest I could get it to was 83.1 I just shrugged and accepted that I’d be lifting with the 92′s.

Heading into the meet, my best gym lifts were 350lb squat, 230lb bench press, and about 420lb deadlift. Yeah, that makes for a nice round 1000lb total but it’s nothing to write home about, and those were all on separate days so I didn’t know what to expect at the meet. The last time I’d tried to max all three on the same day, I ended up about 25lbs below that total of single 1-RMs. I decided to open with weights that I could comfortably triple (do for a three-rep set) on any given day at the gym, then push for a small PR as the second lift, and finally go ‘all out’ with my last attempt. I wrote out all my opening lifts on the booklet of ‘cards’ and jotted down some possible 2nd & 3rd attempts depending on how those went. If you’re coming from a gym with weights in Pounds, remember to bring a LBs/KGs chart! It’ll make your life so much easier, since everything at the meet is called in kilos.

The warmup room was small and didn’t have much in the way of equipment. A few barbells, an angled rack and a set of squat stands that felt like they were about to topple over. The other guys in the flight all cooperated to load & unload the bars for the next person, so things went relatively smoothly but the only time the room ever felt adequate was before deadlifts. With two or three bars we alternated between 1- 2- and then 3- plates, and then the bigger lifters took one bar while the smaller ones shared the other. Definitely felt nervous before finding my place in line for the first squat, but once they called “Shawn McCarthy on deck,” I finally started feeling like this was going to happen, I wasn’t going to bomb out, my family & friends who’d crowded out one whole side of the folding chairs wouldn’t have to tell me it’d go my way next time.  Stepped up on autopilot, unracked 140kg, took it for a ride and racked it. “The lift is good!” Thankfully I didn’t see the video of that lift until much later in the day. My knees were caving in and I looked like a fawn learning to stand up. Jumped to 162.5, and nailed it but felt something tweak in my hip and opted for a conservative 3rd instead of swinging for the fence, 165kg (365lbs) which was still a decent PR.  Bench press is my relatively weakest lift, both for strength & technique, and part of what I’ll be focusing on this spring. Opened with what looked like a silly-low first lift compared to most of the other guys lifting, but it felt like I was just punching the clock and one step closer to being on the board. So, success at 95kg, then bit more of a fight with 105kg but still good. I picked 115kg for my 3rd, which would have been something like a 25lb PR but unfortunately I got pinned. By the time deadlifts were starting I was already feeling pretty beat-down, but I just ran with the math I’d done ahead of time instead trying to pick numbers in the moment. I wanted to start a bit closer to my max here, so went with 175kg, just stood up and felt good. 185 (405lbs) was a weight I could comfortably single in the gym and that felt tougher but I knew I was on track. Finished with a 195kg pull and managed a small smile at lockout which means I really should have just gone for broke and pulled 200+.

The only other lifter in 93kg has been lifting for a while and totalling 600+, so I basically ignored the weights he was moving. However, if I’d squeaked into the 83kg class, there would have been a great 3-way race: all three of us were at 265-270kg after squats & bench press, so in dramatic style it would have all come down to the deadlifts and I would have had to throw another few kilos on.

As for the meet itself, it’s under IPF so they’re pretty straight-laced. Suits, strict equipment rules (gym-mate couldn’t use his wrist wraps because they weren’t an approved brand), and no music, but you can tell they love the sport and want it to grow. There were no sidetracks once the lifting started and everything flowed quickly between lifters, flights, and events. The spotter available for bench handoffs was excellent, and the sides/back were in at just about the right time for a few squats that needed a catch. It’s hosted by the Air Force but oddly enough, nobody lifted in the Military classes and only one guy did Bench Only; everyone else was Junior or Open. A ton of my family and friends showed up which was really encouraging and gave me somewhere to reset between events. And most importantly for me, I now have an official total well clear of my original 1000lb goal.

Aaaaand now I’m hooked. I’m setting new goals for this summer and for the rest of 2013, laying out the next month of programming, and getting back under the bar.

As you may, or may not have seen, for my birthday Chris made mention of my potential country music career, and in true nature to our friendship he may have even teased me a little. Normally we both take jabs from each other and move on, but seeing as how I’m an artist now, I’m deep thinking and emotional. So I figured I had to get to the root of Chris’ pain. So I sat down and tried to think, why would my best friend try to derail my dreams? Why would he not want to have to hear my voice more than he already does? Then it hit me!

You see, Chris has also always had a musical dream of his own. Watch him in the gym next time Godsmack or Metallica comes on. He will air drum the sh!t out of anything in site and if you watch closely enough it looks like he knows exactly what he’s doing. So what would Chris’ lifelong dream of being a professional drummer have anything to do with my country music career? Well I could tell he was a little hurt that I didn’t ask him to be on my potential album. I mean… after all, we do have the look down:

I’m just not so sure present day McDole would work as a drummer. I mean, the guy is 270 pounds, pretty big for a drummer… although, if he were to cut down to his basketball playing weight, he could go back to the “ripped” look that inspired one of today’s notorious drummers Travis Barker:

Now, I won’t throw Chris’ actual age out there, but I will say, he is old enough, that if he practiced hard as a kid, Lars Ulrich might be an unknown, and they might be called McMetallica:

Even better he could have spent years honing his skills instead of shooting hoops and lifting weights, headed out west and took over his favorite band Godsmack:

But for those of us who know McDole well we just know it wouldn’t work. Not only does he possess to many front man qualities to sit behind a band and bang his drums, but Chris has to eat often and concerts are long. He can turn into a real Animal when he gets hungry:

So trade one dream for another and I say we come out on top. I’ll take a business partner, coach, mentor and best friend over a drummer any day. Besides, I’m a lead singer, what do I know about drums right?

Happy Birthday Chris!

So you want to get under the bar and do some squats but you’re just not sure where or how to start? Maybe you’re apprehensive because you don’t want to hurt your back? Or for years it’s been drilled into your head that squatting is bad for your knees? Sure getting under the bar can be intimidating, and yes injuries may occur if nobody has shown you how to do it properly… but with the right guidance, and taking the proper steps squatting can be a fast and effective way to reaching your goals in the gym.

Tip #1
Before even getting under the bar, I like to teach people what I like to call “learning to sit”.  To do this set a box, or adjustable step up behind you. Should be about mid calf height or just slightly higher. Stand a couple inches in front of the box with your feet shoulder width apart and pointing straight or turned out about 5 degrees. From there extend your arms out in front of you and sit back onto the box, focusing on keeping your feet flat, and pointing straight forward.
It sounds very simple but there are a few keys:
As you sit back make sure you don’t crash at the bottom. It should be a gentle landing.
On both your descent and standing back up keep your arms extended. They should be pointing straight out. If they aren’t you are bending forward too far.
Focus on keeping pressure with your whole foot. Humans tend to be very quad dominant and with that you’ll find you’ll naturally roll on to your toes… keep those heels flat!

If I find someone is having a very difficult time with this I have them face a wall, one inch from it, with the bench behind them. Having the wall there ensures your knees can only go so far forward, as well as preventing you from leaning too far forward. At first you’ll find you have no choice but to crash at the bottom, congratulations, you have gluteal amnesia, but it’s curable. After a couple sessions, or maybe even sets, your body will learn to fire up those glutes and you’ll have a lot more control.

Tip #2
Getting under the bar. It may sound like such a simple task, but I’ve seen so many people do it so carelessly you’d think it was advanced kama sutra. Part of being a good squatter is repetition, doing it properly over and over until it’s second nature, and that all starts by how you get under the bar.
To start figure out where you’re going to put your hands. Every bar has various markings on it, use these to help you put your hands in the same position every time… and after enough time it’ll feel so natural that no matter what bar you use your hand placement will be perfect every time. If you’re of slighter frame and don’t have any shoulder issues, try putting your hands just outside of shoulder width. This should keep you nice and tight for your squat, and in turn keep your back nice and flat.
Once your hands are placed, set your feet and straighten your arms. This will help center you perfectly on the bar, which is often problem number one for people. At this point I personally like to have my feet set under the bar, but I know a lot of people like to step in under the bar. Both ways work, I just trust myself to stay centered more when I don’t move my feet.

Tip #3
Keep your chest up, and elbows under the bar. These two go almost hand in hand, whereas if you can keep your elbows pressing forward and thus directly under the bar, it will keep your shoulders from rounding froward, which will in turn keep your chest up and back flat.
Now when you’re  told to keep your chest up, it doesn’t mean you can’t have some forward lean. Some people hear this and try to stay completely erect. there’s no need for that, but you want to avoid folding like a wet piece of paper. If you’re just learning to squat, you should be keeping the weight light enough to hold your form 100% for every rep. As you start your squat, begin by bending at the waist, but keeping your back tight. As you stick your butt out start to bend your knees and sit back and down. As you get lower and lower this is where your elbows are going to feel like coming back and shoulders will roll forward. Focus here and push them forward as you hit the bottom of your squat and drive up through the bar to complete the squat.

While just learning the squat I’d suggest starting a couple days a week with 3-5 sets of 5 reps. These would be very light sets, nowhere near fatigue. As you get more comfortable with this move your sets up to 5-7. Continue with 5 reps as you don’t want to, and aren’t ready to be squatting while tired yet. Remember, while learning the squat, or any new movement for that matter, repetition is king. If you were to do 4 or 5 sets of 12, which would yield the same total number of reps, you would have a lot of reps where your form were slipping a little and you’d be practicing the wrong way. This way you do 5 solid reps, rest and recover, do 5 more and so on and so forth.

Try these three simple tips to getting under the bar and you can be the first of your friends to not wear track pants to the gym every day!