 Today, we're going to talk about why we're so gosh darn pedantic about staying balanced on your mid-foot. So we're going to start today without the barbell like we've done in a lot of our squat videos. And we're going to talk about why the mid-foot balance is so important in both the squat and the deadlifts. Let's start with the squat. So what I want you to do is put your hands together like you're going to pray, eyes are down on the floor, you're going to reach your butt back, bend over and knees out. And the goal here is you're going to think about staying balanced on mid-foot. So you're going to go down just below parallel and stop, feel the balance on mid-foot. Equal between the heel and the ball of your foot. Go. Right there. Put your knees. Yep. Perfect. Now, that's perfect. Now, rock forward till you're on your toes. That's too far forward and you feel like you're going to fall forward, rock back to your heels where you feel like you're going to fall backwards. You can see that. And now settle in the middle, find mid-foot and drive up here. That's the goal, right? So the goal is that mid-foot balance. So when I'm back on my heels, I feel like I'm going to fall backwards. Something has to go forward to counterbalance. Only one of two things will go forward when I counterbalance if I'm too far back. And that's my knees will shoot forward to counterbalance or I'll bend over more and let the weight counterbalance me so I can stay on mid-foot, right? That's what happens if I'm too far back. If I'm too far forward, all I have to do is reach back more with my butt and think about staying on the mid-foot. So almost everybody, when they're an absolute beginner on squats, they'll go down on their toes, on the ball, their foot, they'll get like too far forward. And what they're trying to do is they're trying to keep too much of their body underneath the barbell. So they're like, I'm underneath the barbell. But I actually want you to sit back and shove most of your weight behind the barbell while thinking about mid-foot. That mid-foot cue is kind of a master cue that we use. All right, now we're going to do the exact same thing but with the empty barbell. So you go ahead and take your normal squat grip, low bar position, normal squat stance, take it out with authority, walk back. Good. Now, let's do the first one. We're going to go down and pause in the bottom on mid-foot. So all the way down, just below mid, perfect. Now rock forward, ooh, that's too far on your toes, rock back, ooh, that's too far on your heels, find the middle, and fire up. Just like that. So because by the time you got to mid-foot, you're going to go high, give me two reps, just below parallel, perfect squats. Just nice and smooth mid-foot, fire up. Perfect. And you can actually see your shoe compress right over the strap where it says iron eave. That strap. Let's do one more. Sorry, I know I told you to. Let's do one more. You can actually see the foot compress exactly perfect in the middle of the shoe. Walk it in, touch it upright. That looks great. Perfect. That's a really nice job. Let's put a little weight on to it. It looks like with some weight. Now we've got a little weight added to the bar, so there's a little more to push against. It's also a little easier to keep the bar itself over mid-foot because now you've got a little weight on the bar. Excellent. Mid-foot again. Excellent. Tiny bit deeper, half inch deeper, slow and smooth on the way down. High and fire up. Give me one more. A little deeper. Come on. Big stretch. Last one. Big stretch, big stretch. Fire up. Perfect. Just like that. Nice job. All right. Now the same situation applies to the deadlift. Lots and lots of beginners pull with the bar forward and they're pulling like on their toes. It becomes very difficult. They have to try to sweep the bar back. A lot of professional power lifters, guys that have learned from Westside, they actually swing the pendulum too far to the other direction and they pull and they're driving through their heels. You can actually see their toes being up off the ground. We want heavy feet. And so we're using squat shoes, even on the deadlift squat, everything because it lets us stay really solid on the floor and push right through the middle of our shoe, right? So on the deadlift setup, and again we've talked about this in many of our videos, the first step to the deadlift setup is to walk forward until you're one inch from the bar. And that's obviously sort of a generalized term, but what that one inch from the bar does, you can see it sets the bar directly over the straps and her shoes and that's basically going to put the bar directly over midfoot. If the bar is forward of midfoot, she's going to be on her toes. If she walks, go ahead and walk forward till it touches your shins. If she's there, she's going to be heel heavy. And so, okay, walk back to your one inch from the bar somewhere in that ballpark. Now from this point forward, your feet don't move, the bar doesn't move, it doesn't roll, go ahead and do your normal deadlift setup. Let's do like two reps, set it up, knees forward, shins forward, chest up hard and drag up your legs. Perfect and perfect on midfoot. Stay on midfoot on the way down, go down, just like that. Roll it back, chest up and pull, good and down. Now, we're going to intentionally screw this up a little bit. So roll it forward about two inches right there, somewhere in that ballpark. You see people do this all the time at a powerlifting meet. Now try to deadlift without rolling it back. It's going to be hard for you because you've done this for all. She's a 400 pound deadlifter, right? So this is hard at 135, chest up, pull. You can see it wants to swoop in. It's way harder, right? Way harder and yet we see people do this at powerlifting meets all the time. Down. Now let's do the opposite. Roll it all the way back to your shins and make your shins completely vertical. Lift your toes up off the ground a little bit, just like that. So we know you're heel heavy. Go ahead and squeeze your chest up and try to have the best form you can. And same thing, not so straight like deadlift, you're heel heavy, right? So back down, let go for a second, stand up, take a step back, take a step forward, and let's do two more reps, perfect. So you can see how much more efficient it is and how much more effective it is when we set this bar up right over the midfoot. So now if you set up over midfoot, take the grip, shins forward, knees out, chest up, squeeze the chest up hard, drag up the legs, midfoot, perfect, down one more, big breath, perfect, just like that. So that cue is, I always want to feel right before the lift occurs. So I've got this setup where I walk forward until I'm an inch from the bar, I grab the bar, shins the bar, knees out, chest up. The last thing I think is, can I push through my midfoot? Am I pushing the floor away through the midfoot? Like a leg press, not with my toes, not with my heels, the same way you would in a leg press, you would leg press with the whole foot. Not up on your toes, not back on your heels. It's the same thing on the deadlift, it's the same thing on the squat. When I get down to the bottom of the squat, I'm going to push through that midfoot as much as I can, make my foot heavy against the floor, and just think about pushing the earth away. Whether that's the squat or the deadlift, that will put you in the correct balance. That will again allow you to use the most muscle mass and lift the most weight. That's the key, right? So, for more instructions on how to deadlift correctly, squat correctly, from certified professional barbell coaches, click the link right up here.