squat safety – Tony Gentilcore

Whenever people think of Cressey Performance, there are probably two things that immediately pop into their heads:

1. Deadlifts. And….

2. Baseball.

And neither of the two should come as a surprise. For starters, we kinda have an affinity for deadlifts. Walk into the facility at any given moment throughout the day and you’re bound to find someone pulling something heavy off the ground.

Likewise, and with respects to the latter, roughly 85% of our clientele are ~~Victoria Secret models~~ baseball players.

And while many people are under the impression that we solely train baseball players, that couldn’t be further from the truth. I mean come on: I literally just said that 85% of our clientele are baseball players. You weren’t listening were you? WERE YOU!?!?!??!

Sometimes it’s like I’m talking to a brick wall.

In fact, we’ve had every sport imaginable train underneath our roof. You name the sport, and it’s likely we’ve worked with them: softball, tennis, volleyball, football, ultimate frisbee, hockey, basketball, wrestling, boxing, field hockey, swimming, lacrosse, and you can even add fencing into that pile. Totally not kidding.

About the only sport(s) that haven’t made an appearance are ice curling, synchronized swimming, and competitive eating (if that can even be considered a “sport”).

But lets dial in the conversation to soccer. We’ve trained our fair share of soccer players at CP ranging from high school players to recreational players to even having a cameo appearance by the likes of USA Women’s team member Lori Lindsey on occasion. What what!

Given that soccer is the most popular and widely played sport in the world, I thought I’d share a guest post by both Eric and Chris Martinez (AKA: the Dynamic Duo).

I probably shouldn’t admit this, but I enjoy reading research about as much as I enjoy getting dropped kicked in the face. Which is to say: I freakin hate it.

This isn’t to say that I don’t do it: I just don’t like it. At all.

But thankfully Eric and Chris were kind enough to review a recent squat study as it relates to soccer players, and I felt I’d share here on my blog.

Enjoy!

Soccer Players: To Squat or Not to Squat?

GOOOOAAAALLL! We’ve got one question for all of you soccer players…Do you SQUAT? Although we are not expecting any answers back at the moment, we do hope you are saying yes to your computer screen while reading this.

It’s not a coincidence if you are reading this and questioning, “Well, why should I squat if I do indeed play soccer?”

In all honesty, we could sit here and explain all the great benefits of squats, but that could take a whole other article itself to school everyone on. Instead, we would like to breakdown a study that the great Chris Beardsley and Bret Contreras discovered and dissected on their fantastic Strength and Conditioning Research.

The aforementioned study revolves around how strength training can lead to increases in power and speed for elite soccer players.

So, if you’re a soccer player or coach soccer players we highly recommend you sit back, relax, turn off the FC Barcelona game on the flat screen for a bit and take some notes.

If you are a current soccer player or former soccer player, you should know that the sport involves movements that involve speed and power. Ask any Strength and Conditioning coach how important those two elements are for athletic performance. We promise they will tell you it is very damn important for sports performance. If you want to be the best, you have to train like the best!

Back to our original question: If you play soccer do you squat?

We asked this question because the study we are about to break down by Keiner et al. shows strong correlations that sprint performance and leg strength can improve by doing both back squats and front squats. Man, if only we knew this back in our days when playing futbol, aka soccer. We probably would have been bending it like Beckham 😉

So What Did the Researchers Do?

The researchers wanted to track the development of 30m sprint performance in youth soccer players over a 2-year strength training intervention. So, they recruited 134 elite soccer players, not world cup stars ladies and gents.

The players were subdivided into three age-groups (A, B and C cohorts) and the average ages of each group were 17, 15 and 13, respectively.

To be very clear here, the participants in each cohort were divided into two groups. One group (Strength training group [STG]) was subjected to regular soccer training in addition to strength training twice a week for 2 years. The other group (Control group [CG]) completed only the regular soccer training.

The strength training group performed their workouts on non-consecutive days and the exercises varied between the parallel front and back squats during the week and also performed bench presses, deadlifts, neck presses, and exercises for the trunk muscles as well as the standing row.

Squat training for the strength-training group was periodized such that following initial technique training, the subjects started with a hypertrophy training block, which comprised 5 sets of 10 repetitions with 3-minutes rest between each set.

The next training block comprised a strength period of 5 sets of 6 repetitions with 3-minutes rest between each set followed by an additional training block of 5 sets of 4 repetitions with 5-minutes rest between each set.

The researchers measured 30m sprint times, including splits every 5m, and maximum 1RM front and back squat strength after two years of training.

So What Happened After All of This?

For Maximum Strength, the researchers reported that the strength-training subgroups of all three age-groups displayed greater improvements in the front and back squat 1RMs than the control sub-groups.

For 30m Sprinting Performance, the researchers found that in the A and C groups, the strength-training sub-group displayed significantly better reductions in sprint time than the control sub-group at each 5m split time between 5m and 30m. They found that in the B group, there was a significant difference between the strength-training and control sub-groups at the 5m, 20m and 25m splits.

Correlations; the researchers performed a correlation analysis and found that there was a significantly positive but moderate relationship between strength gains in 1RM expressed relative to body weight and improvement in sprint performance in all age groups.

The correlations were highest for the first 15m of sprinting, indicating the greater importance of squat strength for accelerating rather than maximal speed sprinting.

What Did the Researchers Conclude?

The researchers concluded that a strength training program involving front and back squats led to a positive improvement in the sprinting performances of young soccer players. Pretty cool. Right?

Wrapping It All Up

As you can see the research doesn’t lie. Of course there were limitations, but all studies have limitations. And, at the end of the day if those do not agree with these findings, that’s ok too because science is always open to debate.

We can definitely tell you from anecdotal experience that squats and front squats will 99.9% of the time increase speed, power, hypertrophy, strength, and overall athletic performance. In other words, we highly agree and approve of this study by Keiner et al.

So, just too briefly recap, if you are a soccer player, coach, or just an overall jock, we highly recommend you implement some sort of squat variations into your training regimen to maximize your full potential.

Don’t get us wrong here ladies and gents, we are not asking you to go load up a squat bar and max out for 500 lbs. We are simply saying whether its conventional back squats or front squats that you chose to do, do them with proper precautions, make sure you squat deep, and don’t be afraid to progressively overload.

And hey, if you squat more often, maybe you will score more GOOOOOAAAAALLLLLSSSS than the famous “Pele” did.

“No Excuses, Only Solutions”

References:

1). Influence of a 2-year strength training programme on power performance in elite youth soccer players, by Sander Keiner, Wirth and Schmidtbleicher, in European Journal of Sport Science, 2012.

2.) Chris Beardsley and Bret Contreras, 2012.

About the Authors

Chris and Eric Martinez, CISSN, CPT, BA, also known as the “Dynamic Duo” operate a world class personal training and online training business “Dynamic Duo Training.” They’re also fitness and nutrition writers, fitness models, and coaches that love helping people reach their goals. Their philosophy is “No excuses, only solutions.”

Visit them at:

Dynamic Duo Training

Blogsite

YouTube Channel

In a word: No. Actually, much like everything…..it depends.

But before I get a fusillade of hate mail for making such a heretical comment, hear me out for a second.

There’s a huge dichotomy between the word need and want.

Need and want are too different things.

Do you need to crush beers on the weekends? No, but you want to.
Do you need to bench press three times per week? No, but you want to.
Do you need to remind your boyfriend that he’s not Channing Tatum, every…..single….day? No, but you want to. We get it ladies. Channing Tatum can dance. And he has abs that could deflect bullets. And yes, his index finger probably has more sex appeal than the entire East coast. But do you have to throw it in our face every minute of every day? We have feelings too, you know!

This whole subject was spurned a few weeks ago when, after my most recent T-Nation article about shoulder pain went up, some internet warrior decided to chime in to bust my balls and made a comment that he stopped reading once he saw that I stated my best bench press was 315 lbs.

Trust me: I’ll be the first to admit that my bench numbers are pathetic, and that I should have a few points revoked from my man-card.

I replied back with: “Yeah but my internet max is like 405. That has to count for something, right?”

Of course, this has absolutely nothing to do with squatting, but it speaks to the incessant chest bumping and bravado the pervades the internet, and the fitness industry as a whole.

Peruse any fitness forum and you’ll invariably notice one common denominator, especially when it comes to squatting:

EVERYONE squats ass to grass.

And everyone, seemingly, squats 600 lbs.

For reps.

With Mila Kunis on their back.

This, my friends, is utter bull to the shit.

What’s even more comical (or scary) is that the same people that claim to lift these world renowned numbers are also the same ones who call out people for not squatting ass to grass, or chastise those who refrain from squatting all together.

As a strength coach (and some parts meathead), I’d be remiss to poo-poo on the squat. I want people to squat as I feel they’re an invaluable exercise that helps build strength, power, and helps to improve athletic performance. Moreover, you’d be hard pressed to find another exercise which helps burn more calories. So, for those more concerned with fat loss or aesthetics, squats are unparalleled.

Taking it a step further, though, I also feel squats do a fantastic job of offsetting many of the postural imbalances we see from those who spend a vast majority of their lives sitting.

Someone who can perform a proper squat demonstrates that they have the ample ankle dorsiflexion, hip flexion, t-spine extension, core stiffness, and glenohumeral ROM (to name a few) to do so. Which is saying a lot given many people can’t sit down onto a chair without blowing out their back.

So I guess the question isn’t so much “does everyone NEED to squat,” but rather……

……..“which squat variation is the safest and most effective for that one individual?”

While I’m all for people squatting with a full ROM, sometimes it’s just not feasible, and borderline counterproductive. Make someone with chronic anterior knee pain or Femoral Acetabular Impingement (FAI) squat ass to grass, and you’re setting them up for something bad to happen.

And, you’re an a-hole.

Likewise, take someone with a degenerative disc issue or who has any number of postural imbalances, place a bar on their back and make them squat, don’t be surprised if your eyes start bleeding.

Conversely, even if someone does have crazy mobility and demonstrates that (s)he can squat to depth, that doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do.

I’ve worked with a handful of dancers, gymnasts, cheerleaders, and Yogi’s who could contort themselves into a human pretzel and could easily squat all the way to the ground, but because they weren’t able to stabilize within that ROM, I felt it was not in their best interests to squat. That low.

We still squatted. Just within a ROM that was safe for THEM.

More to the point, I place a priority on technique (regardless of depth):

– Groove a proper hip hinge pattern (learn to sit back).

– Push the knees out.

– Learn to engage core stiffness (get tight).

– Learn to engage the lats to provide more stability to the spine.

– Maintain a “neutral” spinal position.

– Try not to pass out.

And the list could go on and on.

Look at something like a Goblet Box Squat:

[Video credit to John Gaglione]

To me – and many other fitness professionals – the Goblet squat is about as idiot proof as a squat can get. The anterior loading forces the trainee to engage their core, and the box helps to keep them “honest” and learn where proper depth actually is.

Additionally, if I have to bring the box up due to any number of issues – FAI, knee pain, whatever – I can do it and still reap many of the benefits. Really, all I care about is grooving proper technique anyways.

From there, we can progress the exercise to a lower box, or to a free-standing squat (no box). Or maybe even a goblet squat with pulse:

And then we can gravitate towards more “aggressive” squat variations like front squats or box squats or whatever we deem appropriate.

In the end, I just wish more people would consider that not everyone can show up on day one and squat, let alone ass to grass – especially without taking into consideration someone’s health history, injury history, postural imbalances, compensation patterns, and experience.

So to bring this all back around again: I DO feel that everyone should learn to squat…..the right way. But more importantly, to choose the appropriate variation that suits they’re needs.

Whether or not someone wants to squat is one thing. That’s a can of worms I don’t want to open here Do we need to squat? Well, that depends. I want to say yes given the plethora of benefits that squats have to offer.

But given how a lot of people move nowadays, it might be one of those things that’s not worth the effort – at least to start, and it’s better to approach things on a case-by case basis.

I’m obviously not going to go through every squat variation and say who should be doing what. That would take forever.

If anything, I hope this post at least starts a conversation amongst those reading and it gets people to take more of an objective look at how they go about making recommendations and programming for their clients.

Soccer Players: To Squat or Not To Squat?