There are three primary ways to lift weight with your legs, the bend/extend, squat and lunge. In daily life, if you find yourself lifting heavy objects, you will usually use either a bend or a squat. Which one you use will depend on where the weight is coming from. When lifting anything heavy off the ground with your legs the bend/extend is your most efficient and safest move. If you are holding weight at chest level, or even overhead, a squat is your best bet. Many people struggle with either one or the other, it depends on your areas of greatest tightness or dominance. Tight hip flexors, usually lead to an excessive lumbar curve and inactive hamstrings making the bend move easy, but the squat almost impossible. This represents such a large portion of our population and is therefore a great move for most people to learn.
The ability to distinguish between a squat and a bend/extend will have massive benefits for your training, as they are used for different things. They can be powerful allies when training the upper body and core in full body weight lifting. The squat assists pushing movements, while the bend works well with pulling movements of the upper body. Putting these two together will allow you to work your core as well, as it is constantly engaged.
In todays video, I am teaching you a goblet squat. The point of this exercise is to use a small amount of weight to teach you the movement properly. If you have excessive forward lean, indicative of a bend and extend, the weight will become very heavy. Only by sitting hips down and keeping your body upright will you keep the weight in the path that is the lightest. The idea is to learn how to sit into your hips without rounding your back at the bottom. Keep your feet firmly flat and rooted into the ground, keep your knees in proper alignment all the way up to your hips. Make sure you plank out at the top of the move, this is probably the most common mistake I see, people standing out of each squat only 90% of the way. Open your hips and squeeze your glutes and abs at the end of the move. Learn this movement and practice it often, I will use it in many workouts to come.
Thank you for joining me,
Peter Hirsh
Leave a Reply