The 3 Simple Tweaks For Strong Squats
Whether you're taking the first steps on your fitness journey or you're looking to stay in shape, you'll find everything you need in at Newcastle gyms. Our personal trainers believe in the philosophy for making exercise fun by fusing fitness and entertainment.
Here are 3 of our Personal Training Newcastle tips to develop the squat
1) Learn to Breathe and Brace Correctly
Take a deep breath in right now. If you did you probably have more in the tank on your squats than your core allows you to. Chest breathing creates very little stability in the core and your brain often will limit the strength output of the muscles surrounding it. Look at the best lifters in the world and they spend their time focusing on getting deep diaphragm breaths to create expansion through the midline and stabilize their core.
Take note next time when you’re getting ready for a squat how you breathe while prepping for the rep. If you feel your chest rise and very little expansion through your stomach then take a step back and work on your bracing for a little while and watch your squat build without too much effort.
2) Slow Down For Strength Gains
We’ve all seen those ugly squats where you see guys dive bomb into the bottom of the squat only to narrowly avoid their kneecap bouncing off the squat rack in front of them. These guys get out of the bottom resembling a zombie off The Walking Dead.
Not only is the longevity of your joints going to be severely compromised following this method but there is no development of eccentric strength through the squat to teach better movement mechanics, develop connective tissue strength. Likewise they might be lucky to spend 1/10th of a second in their weakpoint which definitely isn’t enough to build any strength there.
3) Stop Cutting Your Accessory Work
Honestly, this is the one I’ve been the biggest culprit of in my training when I’ve been stuck. You just worked your butt off on squats and your program calls for RDL’s, Split Squats, Core work and you just don’t feel like you have the energy for it. You just pack up your squats and head off telling yourself you will do them next time.
My 3 favorite accessory exercises for squats are Stiff Leg Deadlifts, Lunges and Split Squats of all types and Deadbug Variations. These all tend to keep me healthy and also build up my squat. The thing with accessories though is you need to find what has transfer to squatting for you.
Wrapping up
Sometimes we just need a few different methods to break through your plateaus and get moving in the right direction again. Here’s a few that we have found effective for our clients and ourselves. If you found this helpful then make sure to share this with a friend who’s struggling with their squats and hit us up if you have any questions on our facebook page.
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