Overhead Squats: The Core of the Matter

by LARRY PASTOR

Have you hit a plateau with your back squat or your front squat? It is very possible that there is something about your (air) squat that needs fixing. If you need a lift that will help you troubleshoot what part of your squat needs fixing, then the overhead squat is that lift. Find out the finer points of performing a good overhead squat; how to improve your mobility for an overhead squat; and how the overhead squat makes you a better athlete.
As Greg Glassman describes,

The overhead squat is the ultimate core exercise, the heart of the snatch, and peerless in developing effective athletic movement.

How to Perform an Overhead Squat

Got tight ankles? If you have tight ankles, hips, and shoulders, you may want to stand with your heels on 2.5-, 5-, or even 10-kg plates.  You can also use a piece of 1-inch or 2-inch wood if necessary.  This helps beginners squat with a more erect posture and have better balance until their flexibility improves-Jim Schmitz

CrossFit Rockwall presents a good summary of the mechanics involved in the overhead squat. In their blog, they list some points of performance regarding proper set-up and execution:

Set-up

• Review the air squat for the basic squat mechanics
• Grip the bar such that when placed overhead, it is 6-8″ above the top of your head
• Push your shoulders and the bar up as high as you can (“active shoulders”)
• The bar should be perfectly aligned with your heels
• Maintain a tight core through the entire movement

Squat

• Pull your hips back and down while keeping your weight on your heels
• Pull the bar back deliberately as you squat to keep it directly over your heels
• DO NOT let the bar move forward of or behind your heels at any point of the movement
• Make sure your hips reach a point below the top of your knee (below parallel)
• Keeping your weight on your heels, stand to full extension

Famed Olympic Lifting coach Jim Schmitz also gives some of his own tips on performing an overhead squat:

• With the barbell over your head, get set and taut in all parts of your trunk, arms, and legs
• Squat down slowly and deliberately; at the same time, push up and slightly back on the bar, thinking deltoids to the ears and reaching UP
• You want your torso to be as erect as possible, but there will be some forward lean (that’s okay), and the hips will go backward a bit
• It is very important that when you stand up you keep pushing UP and slightly BACK until you are standing erect

What do these OHS performance notes have in common? Strong active shoulders, a vertical torso, and open hips.

In their blog, The Mighty Mix, the author presents six tips for performing an overhead squat:

1. Stick your butt out.

It goes against everything you’ve striven for in general decency, but it’s going to go out – way out. Focus on moving your backside backwards, away from your midline, and then focus on curling your lumbar up into extension, like a scorpion raising its tail. What this does is set your center of gravity, so you don’t end up tipping forward or backward. Do it sideways in a mirror and try to keep your knees in line with/in the same plane with your toes; don’t allow them to move in front of them.

2. Press into the bar.

This is one of the biggest things that can improve your performance. One reason the OHS can be so counter intuitive is that the body wants to move as a unit through the dynamics of physics – in this case gravity – which means that as you descend, the muscle groups involved in keeping the bar raised tend to relax, hold, and depress. So the scapular group tries to switch from elevation to depression. The upper traps try to switch from concentric contraction to bigger balance with eccentric, to brace the body to catch the overhead falling weight. Use the cue to beconstantly lifting/pushing the weight, never just holding it.

3. Keep your chest, neck and head up, while bending over.

Building on the reasoning above, it’s easy to let the chest and head fall slightly forward on the way up. Actively focus on keeping these up throughout the movement, especially when hitting bottom and beginning ascent. Fix your eyes on something straight ahead or slightly higher. Be aware of what your neck is doing. In order to keep everything tight, retract and elevate the scapula.

4. Stabilize in the hole.

Keep it vertical: The bar should be situated in line with a point just behind the ears. As the body moves through the vertical plane, each joint must make slight adjustments to maintain this fixed point.

When you descend in the squat, don’t rush out of it too soon. Be sure you’re ready to go. That means stabilize yourself and bar. Be sure you’re flatfooted, shoulders and elbows turned out and locked. Then and only then will you be able to rise with minimal risk of losing the bar. Once you start back up, think of your hip flexors as springloaded. By shifting your focus from taking your cue from the glutes to the hip flexors, you’ll get a faster cue from your nervous system and be better able to detect the “bounce” point.

5. Use your wrists and hands.

It takes every muscle involved in the OHS to maintain the proper trajectory of the bar for balance. The bar should be situated in line with a point just behind the ears. As the body moves through the vertical plane, each joint must make slight adjustments to maintain this fixed point. Be actively aware of what your wrists and hands are doing, for they are primarily responsible for holding and positioning the bar, so hold onto it!

6. Push with your feet.

Your feet are your foundation. Assume your starting position by positioning your feet first. Your stance should be slightly wider than your shoulders, toes angled out. Throughout the movement, be actively aware of the load on your feet, and when you transfer into the bounce, push your feet “into the floor.”

Video Demo: Jon Gilson Breaks Down the OHS

Did we mention staying vertical? If your body tips forward during the squat, you will automatically push the bar behind your head for balance… and put unnecessary strain on your shoulders.

In this video, Coach Jon Gilson presents some points of performance and explains how the overhead squat, in and of itself, is not a functional movement. What makes it so valuable is its ability to train midline stability in an athlete, because  it requires an athlete to resist a tremendous amount of torque on the shoulder and the hip. If an athlete is able to resist this amount of torque and perform an overhead squat well, they will be able to resist anything that will try to flex the midline in a range of athletic activities inside or outside the weight room.

• Use a snatch grip behind-the-neck push jerk to unrack the bar and get the bar in an overhead position. Grip is 8-9 inches outside of shoulder.
• Bar should be directly above shoulder, hips, and heel at the beginning of the movement.
• Stance should be shoulder width and weight should be on her heels.
• Her shoulders are active as she pushes the bar up.
• As she descends, she sits back and down onto her heels.
• She ascends by driving through her heels.
• Back is arched during ascent and descent.
• Torso stays upright during ascent and descent.

Gilson’s most crucial point? The bar stays above the heel throughout the movement. If the bar deviates in front or behind the middle of her foot, it places a lot of undue strain on the shoulder girdle; a vertical bar path is critical to the proper execution of the lift.

How can you improve your squat position? Mobilize your hips & strengthen your adductor muscles to drive the knees out.

During an overhead squat, you want the load to be directly bearing down through the athlete’s spine in the same direction as gravity. One common problem when performing an overhead squat is when the athlete’s torso is canted forward when squatting. When this happens, the athlete is forced to push the bar back. As a result, this puts additional strain on the shoulder and puts the spine in rotation instead of compression. If this is the case for you or an athlete you are coaching, Gilson recommends going back and working on your air squat and getting your hip girdle more open and upright. With proper midline stability and torque — thus allowing you to keep your torso upright during an overhead squat — you are minimizing the amount of torque being placed on the bar by gravity.

Mobility for Overhead Squats

The overhead squat is a good barometer for checking out the quality of your basic air squat; the better positioning you maintain in a bodyweight squat, the more likely you are able to perform any kind of weighted squat more comfortably.

K-Starr presents some good drills for improving the flexibility required for an overhead squat, starting with the band distraction stretches for the shoulder girdle. In this brief (sub-3 minute) video, he also demonstrates two other exercises to improve your overhead squat position:

1. band distraction tricep stretch
2. opening up the hip capsule from a high kneeling position (2+  minutes per leg/side)

Both of these pieces of “homework,” as he dubs them, can help you maintain a more upright (and therefore more stable) torso in the overhead squat.

Need more fun mobility drills in your repertoire? Check out this mWOD episode filmed atCrossFit Copenhagen with K-Starr and Jami Tikkanen of CrossFit Thames.

Part 1: External rotation work for the hips

Open up: You need strong external rotation in the hips at the bottom position of the overhead squat — which, if you haven’t long ago noted, is the same as the receiving position for the snatch.

Homework #1: Lie on your back, place feet (toes pointed up toward the ceiling, not angled out) onto the wall, then place the elbows inside the knees and push each knee out. The bonus of this position is that it keeps your back in a perfectly flat, neutral position — that is, what your not-yet-perfectly-upright squat should look like — and helps lengthen your adductors.

Homework #2: The K-Starr pseudo-Pigeon Pose variation — he calls it “pigeon sweep” because of the freestyle exploration of the hip

Part 2: Addressing the upper body

Homework #1: (Improve thoracic extension) Lie down with a keg drill placed under the middle of the back and reach overhead for an empty barbell; keep the arms straight while keeping the butt raised. Load from the top by dropping the butt down while pulling down the rib cage. The barbell allows you ” to lock off and fulcrum” and will improve your overhead position (you should be able to see your ears when you re-test).

Hardest ab work ever? The overhead position of the bar makes much of the stability work go to the core, most predominately the lower back.

Homework #2: (Improve internal rotation of the shoulder) Set up the bully stretch (arm twisted behind the back) using the band and make sure you maintain a strong shoulder position — avoid letting your shoulder pull you forward into K-Starr’s dreaded hunched “DB” position. Bonus points if you catch when K-Starr mentions “fascia.”

Overhead Squats Make Your Squat Better

In this T-Nation article, Lee Boyce describes the overhead squat as “a phenomenal tool for correcting the imbalances that lie among the hips, glutes, and lower back”:

[Overhead squats] have a threefold benefit. First, the overhead position of the bar makes much of the stability work go to the core, most predominately the lower back. Since the bar is held overhead, for most lifters, it will severely limit the depth achieved in the reps, and rounding of the lumbar spine will happen earlier in the rep.

Having this weakness exposed can tell you just how much stiffening/strengthening the lower back may need, and on the other side of the body, it’ll tell you how much blockage your tight hip flexors have over your hamstrings and glutes, limiting their flexibility.

In other words, the overhead squat is a good barometer for checking out the quality of your basic air squat; the better positioning you maintain in a bodyweight squat, the more likely you are able to perform any kind of weighted squat more comfortably.