When I started this blog I promised myself I was going to write about the good and the bad. The internet is filled with people that are willing to rush and out talk about it every time they have a good day or break a PR, there are very few people who are completely transparent with everything that goes on.

Not everyday in the gym is good. Heck, not every training block is good…

So… How did I mess up my low bar squat and how am I fixing it?

For starters, I just finished a training block and within it, I’d tell you my squat was moving awesome the whole time. For example, off a 14″ box I started by maxing 385 with orange bands, 6 weeks later hit 405 with oranges, then 3 weeks after that hit 405 with silvers (Figure 100lbs on top for oranges, 150 for silvers). This is not only improvement, but good improvement, I was happy with this.

During this block, I also did speed work with weight up to 345lbs and at no point in time did I find it difficult, my squat was flying and I wasn’t going to look back. So two weeks ago I went to do an AMRAP with 365lbs thinking it should be a set of 8-10, 3 reps in I felt pulling in my left hamstring and had to cut the set. I tried again, no better… The next session I was able to push this to 6 reps then was right back to the pulling in the left side. Oddly, I didn’t get this anywhere else but squatting, specifically low bar squatting.

Last night I tried again after changing up what I do for recovery in between squat sessions thinking it was likely that the “pulling” feeling was just me not being recovered.

Warmed up feeling fine, got to 365 and guess what, 3 reps then pulling in my left leg. Ugh…

I did 3 more sets and couldn’t get past a triple, so I did what anyone else would and took a quarter off to see how things felt at 315. Got under the bar and guess what????

I hit 3 reps then felt pulling in the hamstring…

2 more sets, same thing. Now I’m mad, at least I’ve set a record in the belt launch competition as I’m frustrated and launching things around the garage. I’m sure the neighbors got a good laugh, I’m happy to provide some entertainment…

I walked upstairs, ranted to my wife and finally said “I’m going down there, getting under the bar and squatting as many reps as I can even if my hamstring tears off the bone”. I think she was saying the words “please don’t do that” as I was walking back down, but I’m not sure, getting more reps was all that was in my head. I went down and after rep 2 told myself I’m just rushing the next few reps and running past number 3 and I’ll take it from there. So I rushed reps 3, 4, 5 and 6 before 2 things happened:

• First was the feeling of a notable pop in my left leg…
• Second was the realization I went past rep 3 and had more in the tank

Rep 7 came, then 8 etc… until I wound up with 12 reps after trying to get past 3 and failing the 2 previous sets.

Weird how that happens…

I went back and watched the video and something stuck out to me, I was a solid 4″ inches deeper on my last few reps than I was on my first few. I know I film from a bad angle that always makes me look a tad higher, but take a look at below:

Bad angle or not, this is high. This was the lowest I got on rep 1.

VS

This is rep 12, even from this angle my knees are higher than my hip crease. While a side angle would show this lower than you think, its a good squat even at this angle.

You’ve seen the problem, you’ve seen the end result, the big question is what happened and how did I fix it?

How I got screwed up?

Everything was out of whack after being “in whack” for the preceding 9 weeks, so how did everything get so messed up so quickly?

This is where the “admitting my errors” comes in. I took a look at my programing and a couple of major things stuck out to me:

• The bulk of my work was with a SSB which puts you in a completely different posture than a low bar squat
• The majority of my work was with a box

Cut to the first session of low bar squatting without a box, while I was saying to myself “my squat is going great” the reality was that I hadn’t done the variation I was trying to do. Of course my form was going to break down when I tried to put a decent amount of weight on the bar.

If you want to get good at low bar squatting, at some point you need to low bar squat… On top of it, as a raw lifter you need reps without a box and if you over use bands, you lose strength in the hole.

How did I go from 3 reps to 12 so fast???

For starters, there was clearly something mental going on. It happens. Get comfortable with the answer “sometimes you just have to push harder”.

With that being said, there were differences in depth and speed, so something was clearly different. If I had to give an answer it is that I felt like I learned to brace properly somewhere between reps 4-7. Since I’ve been doing so much work on a SSB, it turns out I forgot how to brace in a low bar posture.

And yes, a proper brace will 100% make that big of a difference. I just needed to re-practice the movement.

How will I prevent this moving forward?

I made some alterations to my next program that are rather simple:

• Speed day is done low bar, not with a SSB. This is where you hone your technique
• 1 of every 3 speed days uses a box, the other 2 are free squats
• I’m trying 9 weeks of straight weight rather than band for speed day, I’ll still use bands on max effort day…

I don’t want to make this all seem overly simple, but the reality is its pretty simple… If you do a movement more you’ll be better at it. If you do it less you’ll be worse.

Conclusion:

I’d love to never make an error again but I’m not so naive to think that’s possible. I’ll screw something else up and pay for it. The good news is that all of you have the opportunity to learn from my mistakes so you don’t have to make them.

Oh, I’ll try to beat my belt launch record next time too…