What might it look like and what are the benefits of training your squat from the bottom position? I asked my buddy Erik Blekeberg of squatmore.org and Head S&C coach at Army Navy Academy in Carlsbad, CA and here are his answers.

Erik: The zercher squat is the perfect example of a bottoms up squat. You deadlift the bar, set it on your thighs, hook your arms underneath it (now in the bottom squat position) and then stand. The zercher has the benefit of increased core activation and posterior chain loading. It is one of the perfect examples of a grind lift. Working with high school boys I often see them rely on their speed and the elasticity of their young muscles. When they miss a lift (squat, deadlift etc) they will squirm, wiggle and go limp fast. This gets corrected when we teach to grind. In the squat we teach it by doing pause squats or bottoms up. We start the bar in the bottom position and teach you to tighten and drive up.

Clifton: One of my favorite options is heavy punching bags or sandbags which are placed on a picnic bench/table where you squat down and pull the bag onto a shoulder or in tight to a bear hug then stand up with it.  Now, before you trade out your back squats for nothing but bottom up squats please understand that you’ll be missing out on some specific benefits, again, Erik provides some excellent answers.
Erik: Bottom position squats are a useful tool for teaching and training but, when looking at physical development, both for life and athletics we need to look at the benefits of loading the eccentric portion of the movements. The benefits of eccentrics have shown injury reducing (1) as well as performance enhancing (2) effects. Seeing as how sport and life consist of both a concentric and eccentric phase, one would be hard pressed to say training one is somehow superior to the other. Same with top and bottom squats. Use both when appropriate because balance and well roundedness are often the goal…oh yah and to get stronger.

In summary: don’t be a Paleo knucklehead. That is a term I just made up for a dogmatic Paleo groupie who doesn’t use all the resources he/she has available (technology, improvements in science and understanding of physiology) to make intelligent decisions and instead bases everything on an idea/ideal which doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. On the other side, don’t be an anti-Paleo dickhead…that’s a term for someone who dismisses ideas just for having a title attached to it, which means you’ll miss out on potentially good stuff just for being obtuse.

And lastly: Squatting is #BA and #PAF, so go squat something.

This jubilant fellow squatted that stone…but did so from bottom up!

1. Eccentric exercises; why do they work, what are the problems and how can we improve them?
Rees JD, Wolman RL, Wilson A.
Br J Sports Med. 2009 Apr;43(4):242-6. Epub 2008 Nov 3. Review.

2. Using Additional Eccentric Loads to Increase Concentric Performance in the Bench Throw

Sheppard, Jeremy M; Young, Kieran
Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research. 24(10):2853-2856, October 2010.

Today I start training clients again in San Diego.  The Be Able group class is at 8am Mon-Thurs at Mission Bay.  It looks like a women’s only class may be in the works based on some demand…would like to hear feedback on that.

The classes have been put off for a couple reasons: getting settled back in San Diego, assisting instruction at the CK-FMS the first week of June, and dealing with an injury or two.  In fact, today at 4pm I have an MRI on the right knee which looks like it may be a meniscus tear….we’ll see.  Additionally in June I have another kettlebell certification with Jason C Brown of KB athletics which I’m excited about, and also the Chicago Perform Better Summit which I’m really pumped about because I’ll learn a ton and see some pals such as Mark Fisher, Charlie Weingroff, Gray Cook, and more.  The PB summit means I’ll be gone 5 days, and so starting July 2 the regular schedule will be up and posted.  I appreciate everyone who shares these posts and this link to the BA training Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/batrainingSD

In July I am only traveling once to take the Sandbag certification with Josh Henkin.  August will see me travel to OK City for the Summit of Strength, to Long Beach to assist Gray Cook at the perform better summit, and to NYC for Level 2 sandbag and to teach a workshop.

I’ve also taken on a handful of online coaching clients, which is proving to be very cool.  I have space for a couple more if you are interested!

Cheers

If I had one problem with the TGU, it would be that it involves no explosive element. Well, the good news is you can add a 1 arm snatch to the beginning and solve that problem.  I happen to prefer the DB snatch to the KB snatch, because I like the snatch for 1 explosive effort vs repetitive kb snatching (just my preference).  You can also 1 rep from the ground a KB, of course.  Try this one out!

I would like to ‘blog’ more…but I don’t like sharing just for the sake of sharing, instead I want to only blog cool/smart/interesting/funny stuff…well, I am feeling like none of those things right this minute, and since it’s been two weeks of no updates due to enjoying a little time off, I am going to share a couple of Bad Ass articles by other studs I read.

1. Patrick Ward. Like the smartest dude you don’t know about, and according to this post he’s just getting more smarter and therefore doesn’t blog that much, but when he does its golden: The Complexity of it all.
2. Julien Smith. He has written about how to be Bad Ass, and as this blog was briefly called the Art of Badassery, you probably know I have a bit of a thing for Mr. Smith. Today he wrote about Growing Some f*c^!!g Balls.
3. I love stuff that’s seriously geeky and sciencey like #1 Pat Ward, but even more I like someone who can take that and deliver in a totally awesome package…and the best example I’ve seen of that is Mark Fisher at www.markfisherfitness.com seriously go check it out and watch   This video should be at about 1,00,000 views it’s so damn funny. Gray himself is just rolling laughing when he shows it to me.
4. Movementlectures.com is an unbelievable resource of affordable (cheap) lectures by all sorts of smarty pants in the health/fitness field.  Somehow they asked me to contribute, and I did here.
5. Thanks to everyone who has reached out congratulating me on the site updates, and the training services offered.  Depending on how many of the interested people who emailed today decide to purchase online coaching, I may have to close that down for a bit due to the requests. Very cool.