 If you're queuing in a way to make the lift look a certain way, that's one thing, but then you can deliver cues to make the lifter feel a certain thing. Setting the back angle can actually work really well for a lot of people by just saying, okay, now hold your back angle consistent by a third of the way down, and some people actually will do that. Sure. But then you might say, okay, I need you to feel your thighs on your belly by half way down. So you're deriving a feeling that the lifter needs to experience. That's right. You're listening to Barbell Logic, brought to you by Barbell Logic Online Coaching, where each week we take a systematic walk through strength training and the refining power of voluntary hardship. Welcome to the Barbell Logic podcast. I'm Nikki Sims here with Matt Reynolds. And today I want to talk about how your cues need to change between rep one and rep three and four and five. And by that I mean, you're queuing and how you're perceiving the cue as the lifter and how you might be delivering it to your lifter as a coach. Yeah, we're going to get into that because I've just noticed how when I'm lifting on my own, things really change from, okay, this is my first rep of a deadlift to, oh, this is my second rep. And what I thought for my first rep definitely isn't working. And wow, here's number three. This feels like a whole nother person is in my body doing this lift. What's happening? I was like, this is kind of a hard, this is a hurdle for online coaching for us that you don't have for in-person coaching because in-person coaching, you're shouting the cues while they're occurring on rep one or rep three or rep five, whereas when we queue the lifts and online coaching, we have to say, listen, next time you do this, I want you to think this on rep one and rep two. And as you start to get fatigued, I want you to think this. Right. And that's, of course, more difficult to do. And I think maybe that's where a lot of this is we think about that all the time now because a lot of times in online coaching, you're trying to say, okay, what's the most important thing I tell this person? And then at some point you get, you get to this spot where you're like, they need to hear two things. They need to hear start rep one with this and end the set by thinking this. And so I think it's really interesting. It might need to be the same or it probably does need to be the same effect, like you're trying to elicit the same response, but you need to hear it differently or as a lifter, you need to feel it differently because like what you just said, Matt, you're fatigued. That's right. Go into your first rep and like a hundred percent of your body is ready to go. But then by rep two, like maybe your position changed a little bit. Maybe the bar moved a little bit. And, you know, the weaker, the weaker parts of you, whatever, they're way more tired than other parts of you. So you need to bring more attention to specific areas. Right. You know, in a deadlift it might be like, okay, you did a good job keeping your shoulders back, but I know your lower back is going to go on the second one. So now I need you to get, I need you to feel your lower back more. Right. And I think it even does happen in person too. Like you, you know, you're, you're still there, but the lifter is feeling you feel the rep differently by rep five. Absolutely. You know, it's a completely different experience. So how can you speak differently so that you're making them feel what they need to feel when they're tired? And I think the same thing, like even when I'm not being coached and I'm lifting on my own in the gym, I'm thinking different things on different reps. Absolutely. And a lot of that I think is with experience. You kind of can feel, okay, this just happened on rep two. So now I need to think about this on rep three, which is not at all the thing I was thinking on rep one. Yes. And that's really interesting. I was thinking about this a lot is you will respond from the previous rep or respond to the previous rep. And like an example of this is when you misload a bar, right? You misload your bar. You go to unrack it for your bench press. It's five pounds heavier on one side. You're like, Oh, well, crap, that was stupid. I'm going to go fix that and get the proper weight on the bar. But then when you unrack it, it still feels weird. So you may mentally know that you're responding to it, but it's this natural response where you actually start to press a little heavier, you press harder on this side that was heavier. So now it's like asymmetrical in a different way. And so that can happen from misload, but can also happen from like a mistake that you make in a previous rep. That's right. Make a mistake. Let's say you set your back angle to horizontally. So it's like, oh, OK, well, I'm going to fix that on the next rep. And all of a sudden you're too vertical because you just happened. So yeah, these overcorrection steers happen all the time in lifting. And and it's one thing to do it as a lifter. It's another thing to cue it incorrectly or cue it. Maybe you said and the lifter actually does the thing. You know, so like one of the common ones I'll get is, you know, I'm talking about in that in the first rep or two of a squat. It's a lot of really basic foundational things, right? It's it's midfoot. It's sit back. It's, you know, controlled descent, tight hamstrings. It's things like that, right? And then as you get really fatigued in in set in rep four and five, a lot of times it's maintained the back angle lead with the chest. So again, you don't want to lead with the chest, but this is where a lot of times those overcorrection cues will come in. And occasionally you'll give that overcorrection cue as a coach, and then they'll actually do it and they'll actually lead with the chest and scoop their knees for it. And I'm like, I didn't really want you to do that. I just want you to visualize. Then you feel bad because you're like, oh, man, that one's on me. That was just, you know, you actually did what I said. But it's those are those are comp. So a squat for me, I think my most common one on the squad. I'd be interested to hear yours as well. When I'm coaching is I start to get people to think about the back angle on the squat as they get fatigued. So rep for rep five. And there's tons of ways to do that. It could actually be things like, you know, harder valve salva, you know, like really setting the back against the belt. Because a lot of times I'm actually saying, like, get more vertical on the way up, be more vertical, lead with the chest, things like that. Because I don't want to shmush down in the hole. Like you see a lot of this, you know, they'll come out and they'll do that, the prototypical good morning squat. They lower perfectly and then their butt comes firing up out of the hole and the bar doesn't move. And now their back is super horizontal. Maybe that's because their back is tired. You know, that probably it probably is because their back is tired. That's right. That's right. So what, you know, I liked, I think I'll end up queuing the upper back in those instances. Like we use your shoulder blades together hard. I want you to feel like you're pressing against the barbell with your upper back. Yeah. Right. So you're like, you're seeing in advance what where the fatigue is going to be. So you're like, okay, let me put all the, let me put all the entire queue right there. Yeah. Absolutely. I like, you know, cues, like we've talked about a million times, like if you're queuing in a way to make the lift look a certain way, that's one thing. But then you can deliver cues to make the lifter feel a certain thing, you know, setting the back angle can actually work really well for a lot of people by just saying, okay, now hold your back angle consistent by a third of the way down. And some people actually will do that. Sure. But then you might say, okay, I need you to feel your thighs on your belly by halfway down. Stuff like that. So you're, you're driving a feeling that the lifter needs to experience. Which is why we don't tend to queue the bar, right? We don't queue the bar very much. We want the bar to go a specific way and we're watching the bar as coaches a bunch. They want the bar to go a certain way. That's exactly right. Up, primarily up. And so, but, but it's what I found is especially for lifters who are not Uber advanced, they just don't know where the bar is. Yeah. So if you're like, oh, you know, that's why I think the bar over midfoot is not a very good queue because they don't know where the bar is. Balance on the midfoot, feel your midfoot. That's a, that's the same thing, but it works because they're as soon as you, I don't want the lifter to be thinking about, think about how much distance in a squat there is between where the barbell is and their midfoot. And what you're literally calling them to do is think up way up high on their body. Okay. Where's the bar and then kind of think low on their body, like where's my midfoot? And are those two things in alignment? Nobody knows where that is. I don't know where that is, right? I just know where my, where I can feel my balance. Like, where's the pressure on the bottom of my foot? Is the pressure on the ball of my foot or on my heels or is it distributed across my foot? I go, okay, this is where it's supposed to be. This is midfoot. But, and, and inevitably that's going to mean the bar is, is in the right spot generally. But I don't know where the, you know, I can't tell you if the bar is directly over my midfoot. Nobody can feel that. That's a cool way to derive a cue actually is like, how do you feel it when it goes wrong? That's right. It goes, if the bar is too far forward, you feel that by getting heavier in your toes, or you feel that going into flexion, or you feel it by your hips coming before your, before your chest. So if you're not sure, like how to cue the bar, think about how you would feel something when it goes wrong and make them feel that the correct way, same thing, like, you know, we've all had four million cues thrown at us or going out to our lifters of, you know, try and make the bar touch your forehead. It's like, okay, what else do you feel when that goes properly? You know, you feel like you can use your trap sooner. So, you know, maybe you start cueing the trap sooner. Yeah. So, so we talked through the squat. By the way, the point that you just made, this is why it's so important that coaches lift. It's why you have to lift to be a coach. You don't have to be the best lifter in the world. And as a matter of fact, I actually think it hurts you if you are the best lifter in the world as a coach, because it comes too easily to you. You need to know what it feels like when it feels wrong. And you need to know what it feels like when I'm grinding and it feels right. And then you need to be able to communicate that what right is or what the opposite of wrong is. And we typically don't cue wrong things, right? We say, we don't say, you know, get off your toes. Don't be on your toe. We don't say that stuff, right? We tell them where to be. Do this. Do this right. Not not doing this wrong thing. That's too much. Yeah, it's too it's too much to interpret and write. And then they're focused on the wrong thing and we want to be focused on the right thing. So as a coach, you have to know what that stuff feels like. You have to know what does wrong feel like in the bottom of a squat? Well, wrong feels like this. It feels like my weight shifted forward to the ball of my foot. It feels like my butt came up easy, but the bar wasn't coming with it. It feels like it feels like that sort of stuff like, OK, well, now how do I communicate that to my lifter to do it right? And what do you as a lifter need to hear when you're on like rep five of the five rep PR, right? You know, like, what is the one thing that's going to save you at that point? That's right. That's right. Special mental space to begin that you'll only really appreciate if you've done a really heavy set of five. That's right. Yeah. And, you know, even I've had discussions with my lifters who compete at meets. I well, you and I have done this a lot with your when you compete. I still want my lifters to be thinking about a form thing when they're lifting an all out PR. Because if they just grip it and rip it and do what it like, it just it that's that's not the way we trained. Exactly. It's totally different than what you've been doing in the gym for weeks and weeks. Weeks. That's right. So, you know, you've told the story before about for you Q that has worked really good for you is to hold your shoulders back on the deadlift. And so, you know, you're very long legged short torso. We know that your hips tend to when it gets really heavy. Your hips are going to tend to pop up just a little bit. Your hips are going to tend to come forward just a little bit. And both of those kind of occur as well, because you're going to lose a little bit of back flexion. And we're talking about heavy stuff. We're talking about 400 pound deadlifts and above. We're not talking about letting you do it at 315. And so what we've noticed is if those things we can't like those are almost strength deficits, not form deficits, like no matter how hard you try, you're not going to be able to hold your low back and absolutely perfect extension with the 425 deadlift in your hand. OK, but what can you do? Well, if your back starts to flexion and your hips pop up and shoot your shoulders forward, you're dead. It's not coming. So we cue the shoulders, hold the shoulders back, and we're going to let the back and the hips do what they do because you've done it 10 million times and give you the one thing to think about, which is hold the shoulders back and you'll be fine. If you tip forward and your shoulders go forward, now you're on your toes. Everything's for the bars on your legs and it all kind of domino effect falls apart from there. And so we pick the one thing. But, you know, I have seen a lot of really good lifters and I've seen a lot of coaches even that I respect that it's almost like they want to become a cheerleader at a meet and just be like just, you know, like get super effing mad and just, you know, harness all your anger and it's like that's not family name. That's right. And there's no form. That's not you're not coaching. And by the way, I don't think there's anything wrong with figuring out the psychological thing that that lifter needs to do. Like some of those lifters need to be uber focused and some of them need to get super angry and all those things are actually fine. But ultimately we're still trying to coach form because every lifter as as if you've coached them for any I mean for a fair amount of time, you know exactly where the form breakdown is going to occur on a max effort lift. It's kind of standard for that person. So we're we're queuing the thing that's going to fix that or not let that happen. And that's that's really cool. You can like when you're watching someone do a set of three even a heavy set of three. That last rep is essentially a one rep max. That's right. Well, how are you going to keep them for that one rep max and how do you think for that one rep max is like it's almost you don't want to help someone like panic their way through a rep, you know, or she's like get it up at all costs. That's right. You need to give them the one little thing that will make them survive. That's not going to be like an ask for them to have as much strength as they had for for rep one. That's right. That's right. Said it's a strength deficit sometimes by that point. So if you're asking them to hold, you know, lumbar perfectly in extension, free. You're back in extension. That'd be awesome if I just yelled that at you, you're like, oh, bro, I can't. It's not going to happen. Useful comment. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So it's like what is the one way that you will get them to like the one mechanical thing that has to occur for the bar to move, not the strength piece that has to occur for the bar to move. So what are we talked about some of the squat ones are the other ones that you use for the squat before let's actually talk about the four big lifts. You have anything else on squat that you're like here's one that I see see a lot or is it typically that fatigue is you see that you see that for most people you see the back start to die. That's really what happens right. So you start queuing the it's back angle or like you said pressing the back into the bar or leading with the chest or all of those things are kind of very similar cues. Are there other things that you see like some of them would be like we know knees are going to come in a lot. Yeah, the knee valgus I was going to say. So by the way, if you figure out how to fix that, you let me know because I haven't. I can't figure out how to queue any of that away as people get fatigued. I think what helps there because it can if it ends up if the knees valgus so hard that you lose the back angle right. So if you can queue the back angle or if you can queue the hips. Right. Some lifters if you coach them long enough like you can actually tell them okay like keep your hips like symmetrical is like an interesting one. Like interesting twist or you can just say like push your push your inner thighs away from each other. Right. And that's enough to anchor their back angle because that's what you're really trying to save. Right. Yep. That's what I've almost entirely gone to coaching the back angle with knee valgus, which I think would not be there's probably a lot of people listening to me like what I don't get the combo. But that's exactly what happens is the knees come in and the more I yell knees out, knees out, knees out. The knees never go out once they get tired. It's it's like yelling. Hold your back in extension. Like it's a it's a strength weakness at some point and we can't fix it on the super heavy, super fatigued set. So what can we fix? Well, what we can fix is we can maintain the back angle. So figure out how to communicate that to your lifter. And for some people, like you said, who are very have good body awareness, you can literally just say maintain the back angle and they'll do that. But for most people, you've got to change that queue up and give them something else that gets them to maintain the back angle without actually saying. Yeah, I think what works for me and so a lot of squatters, especially low bar squatters, they'll they'll want to be really upright on the heavy reps because it's just that much harder to lean over with more weight on your back. Yeah, that's going to ruin you. Like there's a small margin in that at that level of intensity. So you have to get the back angle set right away. So the queue might be lean the hell over right now. First thing. Yeah, first thing, you have to do it right now if you have any chance. Yeah. So I think you like you said queue the back angle and queue it immediately. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, then it's amazing again as a lifter, we know. I know that if I start the descent of my squat correctly, even when it feels like, bro, this may fold me in half, it always squats easier. It always squats easier that if I'm timid, a lot of times I'll use that term timid when I'm talking about a rep after the fact. So if I'm watching a video of a client and they start their descent in a timid sort of manner, which is that I'm a little too upright and I'm a little. Yeah, that's right. They start. So you made a motion with your hand that nobody can see on podcasts because it's but yes, you started so basically that idea if you're holding your hand straight up in this vertical sort of position, you start to lower it vertically and then you're like, I'm going to ease into this been an over thing. Like that always goes bad. Can't wait to put this on the pen. That's right. That's what you do. You just start. You go down vertically at first. And then after the first foot, you start to bend over and you just keep bending over until it's on the pins. And you're like, that was it. That was it of despair. That's right. All right. What about what about press? What if we go to press? What are some of those cues that you might use maybe either in the beginning or the ones that you would change to as they really start to get fatigued? I like to cue their elbows on the way down before the last rep. Yeah, like they're going into to rep five. Yes. Or you like point your elbows into the rack. Elbows forward on the way down. Yeah. Yeah. Super tight. I have figured it depends on the lifter. But one of the things I've noticed and we've even done podcasts on this in the past is if you look at a lifter from the side, from the sagittal plane in a in a press, especially as they get good at the press, strong at the press and they get a little more layback. And I'm not talking about ridiculous layback, but just some way back. The the the thing that a layback gives you is it allows your elbows to extend without the bar doing much work against gravity, right? So your elbows actually extend, but the bar doesn't go up. So what is actually happening while your elbows are extending because your shoulders are going back and down? OK, so what that does is then that creates this sort of big moment arm between the shoulders and the barbell. So what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to get the shoulders and the bar to get back into alignment vertically. Yeah. So that may be queuing things like again, the bar doesn't queuing the bar doesn't work like throw the bar back, which a lot of times I'll say that before the press itself, like before they actually start. That's the one time that I might queue the bar. But once that bar is moving, you're not queuing the bar, you're queuing the elbows, you're queuing that right. But I also will sometimes queue the shoulders, get the shoulders back underneath the bar. Right. So I want that layback. That's good. Do it. But as soon as you get into that layback now, now I'm trying to get the bar back over the shoulders and I'm trying to move the shoulders forward up underneath the bar. And once those things get back in alignment, boom, the bar pops back up. And they probably don't need to hear that on rep one. No, they don't need to hear that at all because it's there's usually on rep one. If they're going to do a set of five, it happens so fast. They can't they couldn't interpret it anyway. The reason you have time to queue something after the layback and before the finish is because the bar is moving so slow, you actually have time to queue something. I mean, really, that's that's what it is, right? And so you like get back underneath it quick, right? Or keep shoving it back or you'll even see sometimes it starts to work that forearm angle that elbows in front of the wrist and it's coming back, it's coming back and the shoulders start moving forward. And when they get really close to being where they're supposed to be, they push the bar either straight up or back forward again and they lose it again. And I'm like, no, no, just keep riding it back. And and this is one of those times where as a lifter, if you do a press correctly or a bench press correctly and you push the bar back like you should, to me, it feels like it floats to lock out. And and if you if you felt it, you know what I'm talking about. And if not, you're like, I don't have any idea, right? If it feels like you have to grind the top of that press to lock out, you didn't you didn't get it back. It was it was holding out in front of your shoulders still or your shoulders were staying back, right? So again, it's one of those deals where we want the bar over the midfoot on a press, but if the bar is over the midfoot and press and your shoulders are six inches behind that, things aren't really in alignment correctly, right? And so if you do it right and you throw it correctly and it grooves correctly, it feels like it floats to lock out. There's a it's literally it's almost like it's floating like, wow, that was weird the way it grooved. My head, how nice is that? Yeah. Yeah. And benches the same way. That's my life. It's neat when that. It's rare. Yeah. Well, and I'm so I'm so tight that it's hard for me to get the bar floated back, right? I mean, it's especially and have my shoulders underneath the bar and you see this all the time with guys are really tight in the shoulders, though, if they can get the bar over their shoulders, which is a big if they end up with the big pooched belly, they end up looking like, you know, they so they've got their shoulders kind of underneath the bar, but then their belly goes way out in front of the bar. And they've got this big giant arch. It's almost like a bench press arch in order to get in that position because their shoulders really aren't made to get into that amount of flexion. Yeah, that's right. Bench, this is and I think we're actually going to do a podcast about this on your idea. Like, I think you on a really heavy bench press or on the last rep of a bench set is how they're touching their chest at the bottom. Yeah. It's like some for some reason you're riding a heavy bench single or the last bench bench press down and you're just like, oh, it's a good idea to accelerate the bar now for the last two inches. That's right. And it it'll kill you like you just think you're going to get like a stretch reflex out of the bottom. You're just like feeling good like, oh, this is really fast, but it completely jostles you out of position, like you so much tension. But if you can do really just do what doesn't feel right and control the last the last inch and not let it accelerate, like you have such a better chance of finishing the rep. That's right. Yep. Yeah, I'm a huge fan of pausing bench presses and I think we may do a podcast on that. I don't necessarily think every single person should pause every single rep of every bench press ever. But the thing almost every client I have goes through some period of time in their training where I make them pause all the bench press reps because it has I want them to understand what it actually feels like to stay tight. And if you learn how to do that when you first start to pause if you if you try this at home, you're like, all right, I'm listening to Reynolds. He says pause and you pause and your bench press goes down 30 pounds, then you didn't know how to stay tight. You got tightness out of bouncing it off your chest and then your triceps taken over after it bounced off your chest. And what I want you to do is actually learn how to stay tight and utilize your pecs, your front delts and how to kind of load the lats there like use the lats of sort of a foundation to to hold against everything and then throw and you can't really do that if you're speeding through the bottom. And so that's a great place to start at this digitalization for that of like at the top of your bench press instead of holding a barbell, you're holding a rubber band. And so on the way down, I imagine that I'm like stretching a rubber band across my chest. Yeah, you can visualize that those are your pecs and you want so much. You want that length. Yeah, the stretch. And if you just like bang the rubber band into your chest, like it's you don't get that there's slack in it. But if you stretch the rubber band, you stretch your pecs the whole way, and you keep it tight the whole way, then you actually do have that much more muscular to contribute to bringing your your humorous backup. Yeah, that's that's good. I think very similar. I think of compressing the spring a lot. So if you think about a big spring, the hardest thing to do with the spring is to compress the spring right down through the middle of the spring. You keep pressing through the middle, pressing through the middle, pressing through the middle, it's harder and harder and harder. And it's building up all this potential energy right to boom explode. But what's easy to do is start to press when it gets hard, just move it to the side and the and the spring goes boing and points out sideways, right? And it's like it like it gets like it balloons out to the right of the left. And that's what people want to do a lot of times in the lifts, they want to go to where it's comfortable or it's comfortable is not tight. I want to go where it's tight. And so you know, people joke about me in my hypertensive state anyway, that if they watch me in the bottom of a lift, my face turns purple. And my face turns purple because I've learned how to get like this ridiculous amount of tightness in the bottom of a lift, because I'm trying to compress everything like a spring. And so I do almost every lift I do the the eccentric portion of my lifts personally are slow. They're slow on purpose, because I'm trying to feel the compression of the spring. It's the same thing on a squad even will use us on it. You know, people will collapse in the bottom of a squad. You talk about well like to actually be able to feel the tension and tightness in your hamstring, which doesn't get that much longer in a squat, right? It's pretty much stable. But to still be able to feel the tension in the hamstring, you you were able to figure out how to compress that. And so if you just smush, then it's no good. And so that's the deal with the bench press. I want to go down and stay tight so that the bar wants to jump off my chest. Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. Do you use that that spring analogy like in your deadlift setup? So I used to back when I used to roll the deadlift. And then I realized that was a flawed analogy there. Now, I definitely can back when I was strongman competing in strongman where you could touch and go deadlift. I was so good at a touch and go deadlift. I've never bounced a deadlift. I can touch and go where the deadlift. I mean, it barely makes noise. It goes down and just like barely taps and then goes boing and comes right back up because I'm able to get really tight and you watch people hit the ground really hard and it jostles their whole body. And if I had a client today and he was like, man, my first couple reps on deadlift it's just killing my lats. And it's like it's weird like on the so it's because the he was he's hook gripping so he can't really let go of his grip at all. And he was going down and and the bar was hitting the ground too hard. And it was jostling him and like kind of rattling him and it just kind of wrecking for those first couple reps. And so we had to talk about how to touch the bar lighter, especially with a hook grip where you're trying you don't want to reset the grip. And so yeah, that's a good I think you can get there on the deadlift. And certainly the deadlift for me in the bottom feels the least comfortable of any of the lifts. It does actually feel the most like a compressive sort of spring. But it's all I feel the pressure on a deadlift in my face more than any of the other lifts. It's just so damned uncomfortable down there, you know, whereas I don't know that I ever recognize that in the other lifts. Like I feel like the compression is in my body in a deadlift. I'm just like, why does it feel like my head's going to pop off right now? That's so yeah, it's on a bench press talk about changing cues. I I like to cue to lock out the weight superior to or north of the shoulder joint. Sometimes I say lock it out over your chin, lock it out over your mouth, lock it out over your nose. And again, I don't really want to lock it out over the nose, but I want to visualize that. And then I want a very straight line to get there. So I have to walk them through usually not during the lift. But before I said, hey, we're trying to press in a straight line from basically the bottom of your sternum. And of course, it depends on the person and how long your sternum is. But from the bottom of your sternum to lock it out over your chin, which means it's not a vertical line, but it is a straight line. And so one of the biggest problems you'll see in a bench press is the bar won't be pressed in a straight line. It will either their elbows will flare and it'll shoot back first thing and then go up, which I call sort of the stair step, right? Or it'll do the opposite. They'll press straight up from their breastbone and then they'll either keep trying to press straight up or they'll float it back way too late and they can't get there. And again, if it's done correctly, it's done. It's a it's a perfectly straight line, just not vertical, perfectly straight line at 15 degrees or something. And if you do it right, it feels like it floats to lock out. It feels like it floats if you do it right. Yeah, it's it's you can feel how your muscles are working to move the bar, but you actually feel like you're moving the bar. That's right. That's right. Now elbows, for me, I've noticed if I queue, I think queuing elbows in general on the way down for the bench press doesn't work very well for me. Like it's not like, you know, I can queue things like the knees on a squat on the way down and it tends to put the knees where I want them to back on the way up. So a lot of times I can I can have a really nice descent on the squat and it usually leads to a nice concentric portion. But the bench press doesn't seem that way. They can have a perfect lowering portion on the bench press and the concentric just falls apart. So, you know, the elbows tuck in and the shoulder blades are retracted as they just as they they descend and everything's perfect. And then they get ready to press like elbows flair straight out like they're a bodybuilder and the chicken wing and the bars over their throat. I'm like, what was that about? So so you really have to learn what I'm good. What I'm doing in the in the bottom half of the descent is I'm queuing what they're going to do in the concentric. So I'm kind of giving them enough time like there's sort of a cadence and timing here of the queue to tell them what's coming like, OK, in about one second, I need you to do this. So I have enough time to think about it. I don't say it like that, but that's that's what that's how I'm timing the wording, right? So it's I'm timing it right before they have to do it. That's so interesting as like, I think that's a couple of times now that we're trying to queue by the last rep. We're predicting for them. Oh, yes, always. How much have Andrew made fun of me on the podcast that you and Andrew did where I predict his reps on online coaching before I've seen him? I'm like, OK, here's what you're going to do on the next rep. And I'm like, sure enough, like an elbow flare. It's like, can see the future. I really well, you've just seen him so many times you can start to see the degradation. You're like, I know what's going to happen right here. Watch. I'll say watch this. Watch what you're about to do right here and I'll go and I'll do it with all with all my clients, you know, because you you've seen them enough and you can see what what happens. Yeah, so you're but yes, I think and I think being predictive in your cues is is important there. So how often do we cue on a lift the the descent of the final rep? But what you're actually queuing is what they're about to do in the concentric phase. And it might not have to do with what they just did on the previous. No, no, that's right. As a matter of fact, yeah, that's right. It often doesn't because like I know if I don't say this right now, you're going to fall apart here and they might not fall on a part there in the previous rep. So but you're trying to avoid that. Yeah, that's good. Okay, so we did any other ones for press or bench press? Um, another one that I'll sometimes run there is like, I want to make sure that their upper back and their arches really intact. Yeah, they don't have that set up. We know that that's going to fall apart and that's something, especially in the bench press, that can really kind of just like a road during the set. Yeah, make sure that that gets preserved again or like reset with the chest up before they go down. So how do you queue it? What do you say? I will tell them to bring their chest to the bar. That's right. That's what I do too. I'll say go meet the bar with your chest and sometimes I'll actually have this is where I like us like a spotto press or a pause bench press with like one inch off of your chest. And sometimes I'll actually have them in practicing this, I'll have them pause an inch off their chest, hold it there and then see if you can touch the bar with their chest. Like, can you arch up and touch it? Because it teaches them to stay crazy tight. I really like that spotto press that that that hover pause bench. Same same kind of same lift because again, it teaches you to stay really tight. Yep, you will be punished if you don't. Right. Yeah, and you'll see. Well, I see the same thing. You know, if I watch like Harry Fafudis do pause squats, that guy does not move in the bottom of his paws. It's crazy. It's like it and then you'll see lots of people that they're doing a pause squat, but like the bar really never stops moving. Like it goes maybe it continues to come down a little bit or maybe it floats backwards or forwards a little bit. But like there's something moving in the bottom of this of these pause movements. And it's same thing on bench press and whatnot. Pause deadlift. Same thing. You do somebody to pause deadlift. They pause right at the mid shin and they're all they never really pause. We're shaking because it's really hard. Oh, it's hard. It's super hard. But it's always interesting when you see somebody who can literally get into that tightness and just stop. And you're like, wow, that was yep, just like that. Something wrong with my video. Like. Yeah. Yeah, you've ever you've ever had somebody do like a pause vertical jump is interesting. Like you have them go into their bottom of their vertical jump, which almost everybody if they're if they don't know what they're doing, they'll drop way too low. Right. A vertical jump is sort of like a push press. Like you barely bend at the at the knees and and you bend at the hips more, but it's more of like you're folding over. It's almost like a low bar squat and and stop and then jump. And what they'll do is they'll often reload the jump and then jump. But people it's really wild when people can actually start from that dead stop bottom position of a vertical jump and still have a pretty decent jump on them. Even thinking about that, just that seems so impossible. I'm so unathletic that I can't even think about doing that. Yeah, it's pretty wild. It definitely tells a difference between you see the difference between your athletic clients and the non non-athletic. So did we do all four lifts? Oh, deadlift. So deadlift is. So what are the cues then as time goes on on the deadlift? Well, we talked about that one. I think the keeping your shoulders back. Yes. For you, we talked about you personally. Yep. I've been playing around with making sure that they can feel and I haven't I don't have a super concise cue for this yet. But I like that they can feel the fronts of their legs and the backs of their legs. Interesting. I know that, like, they're not like they're going to push the floor away because they're going to use their quads, but they've also like created enough extension to get some tension in their hamstrings. Yeah. And that probably is the right spot over the bar. Yep. Not just like so gas that they're like hunched over and rounded, like it makes them kind of reset themselves to start creating tension on the bar. So I'll say, like, feel your quads and feel tight hamstrings and this I've only gotten to play around with, like, online in person. I haven't really found like the little chunk that would make that work. Right. I like you just see people on the deadlift a lot of times get lazy in the set up as they get tired, including me. Like, I, you know, I do your slight you get to rep four and five years. I just want this over with. So you go down and you don't get really set up and you just pull. Because like, I know I can still pull it. I can finish this set, but not with great form. And so the first thing that I tend to have to do so I've kind of do pre-teaching to this with my clients before they get really strong or before they really have to grind, I really work a lot on on the cadence on a deadlift set. The cadence is really important, right? You pull the first one, you set it down, you roll it in, you breathe out, you breathe in, you squeeze up and you pull, set it down, do the same thing. Right. So you get this. So I want I want the bar on the ground about three seconds between reps. No, no more, right. So that whole set is it's 20 second set max, the 35, 40 second minute long deadlift set way too long. Once you get that cadence set and that is in their motor pattern before they ever have to really grind on anything heavy, then what I actually do is once they get really heavy, I actually force them to be a little more patient on rep four and five. So then I slow them down. So we're not talking about somebody who takes six breaths. What I want, I still want the same cadence. I still just want breathe out, breathe in, squeeze up and pull. But what you'll watch them do on rep four and five is they'll breathe out, breathe in and pull like, well, you never, you didn't squeeze up. You didn't finish. Show me your chest, finish that, squeeze up, lock your back and then pull. Right. So it's just it's like an extra half second of being patient, getting that chest squeeze up. And I again, I get really lazy with this too in my own lifting. You're just like, man, I can just I can pull this without really setting my back. But but yeah, so it's more about patience and and and finishing that back squeeze. Now, you you don't do that. Like you don't have a problem with your upper back is sort of always in pretty good shape. And the low back is going to do what it's going to do. And so for me, I'm actually queuing your shoulders. So you're a little different than I have other people, my brother's like that. My brother's back. He'll occasionally get a little bit lazy with setting his back for the most part, I have to cue his shoulders as well. He's somebody that he'll get pretty tight. And if his hips pop up, it lurches his shoulders forward, but he can't really feel his hips pop up. But he can feel in space where his shoulders are. So I'm like, hold your shoulders back. So again, that's one of those things like an over correction cue where we know the shoulders are going to be in front of the bar a little bit. But what I actually like to visualize is having the shoulders directly above the bar. Even though that's not right, right? But that's where I want to hold them like hold the shoulders directly over the bar, like above the bar. That's the mental over correction that you need to that's exactly right. Yep. And behind is too much like if you take. So my experience is if I if I tell me get their shoulders behind the bar, they'll sit down too low and get their back to vertical and they'll actually get their shoulders behind the bar directly on top of the bar. And then as they start to pull the butt pops up and everything jumps forward. That's what I'm trying to avoid in the first place. So and I've done that before we have screwed up the queue. So we all do. I mean, it's part of the part of this is coaching people over and over and over again to figure out what it is. And that's why sometimes I think it's frustrating for anybody because you hear the same cues over and over and over again. And as a coach, it's our job to change the queue and to find the thing that makes the light bulb go off. But once you find the queue that makes the light bulb go off, you'll often use that one over because it works. It works over and over again. I was asking Rachel yesterday, she was she was doing a thing in her squat and on her descent. And she was descending as she got into the bottom. She she can push her knees out harder in the bottom and then her back gets more vertical in the bottom. And I'm like, just stay bent over in the bottom. You know. And so I said it like a hundred times. And yesterday, I said, Hey, what are you thinking about on the first rep of squat? And she's like, I don't know, just getting it over with. I was like, what if you thought about staying bent over in the bottom? You know, and she was like, what if you thought about not nitpicking me today? That's what she said. And that's the way that one went. But that's that, you know, it's part of the deal is a lot of times is just making them like it's an accountability. Are you thinking about the thing you're supposed to think about? And that's why sometimes that hearing that same cue over and over again get frustrating. But if you're not thinking about it, and I've done the same thing, right, where somebody is like, we talked about this 10 minutes ago, why are you doing this? And I'm like, you know what? I completely forgot to think about it on that set. So it's OK to just yell it at me. And I'll be like, oh, yeah, that's right. That's what I'm supposed to do. Think about the cue and then think about how that cue is supposed to actually feel. But I think that's the kind of was like knees out and they'll think about what it looks like. Yeah. But they kind of internalize what that's supposed to the reaction that it's supposed to create. That's exactly right. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, we're we're using our eyes constantly as coaches. Visual is everything. What we see is everything we interpret, right? And then we have to communicate. But as a lifter, this is why we don't like lifting in gyms with mirrors in front of the squat rack. We don't want you to try to figure out what it looks like or what it's supposed to look like either as a lifter, as a coach. We want you to know what correct feels like. And so to look at a client as a coach, visually and then interpret that in your brain and then communicate back to them and spit something out that then they're supposed to feel, not see or not know how it, you know, looks, but know how it feels. That's that's the tough part of being a coach. Can you see it and turn it into a feel? Yeah, it was well. Yeah, cool. So there you go. So and I think more than two cues in a set gets really difficult. So the take you can't. You can't. And so this is where you have to sometimes you just kind of have to sort of big picture triage troubleshoot like one of the big things we had to fix as a lifter, the takeaway for you all listening at home. If you've got a couple of big things you need to work on, think about what's the most important thing in the first rep or two and then what's the most important thing in the last rep or two. And what I really like when our clients do is sometimes I'll just take a piece of paper and a Sharpie marker and they'll write, you know, Q one is this and Q two is this and I'll put it on the ground and they're looking at it. And so they can think to themself while they're doing the set. OK, my first one to three reps, I'm thinking about this. And then as I start to get fatigued, I'm going to switch what I'm thinking about to this thing because it'll change. So that's a good takeaway for you all at home that are lifting. Even those of you who don't have coaches, you've got things that you can actually focus on. Yeah, yeah, because you know what's coming. Yeah, everybody. Yeah, if you've done this for a while, you know where you're going to screw the rep up. And think about don't always be caught up on correcting from what just happened, right? Take yourself out of the rep that just happened and put yourself in the rep that's about to happen. That's right. Yeah, this is where previous training, not previous training, the rep that happened one second ago, but previous training, the reps that have occurred the last three to six months will tell you more about what will probably happen on rep five than what you just did on rep four. I see this all the time show you do to clients who have trained for a while, they'll they'll have some sort of form error on rep three or rep four and they fix it on the next rep automatically. And I don't even know if they know that they did it. They just felt that something wasn't right. And then they fixed what it felt like till it felt right. I'll go back and be like, did you know that happened? And it'll be like, huh, or sometimes I'll be like, yep, you know, or something just felt weird. And you're like, well, because you've squatted 10,000 times, you fixed it and made it not feel weird. So it's just ultimately the goal. So no, that's great. So good takeaways. Anything else? No, that's it. Yeah. Perfect. So not all cues are the same, not all cues are created equal. And we don't always need the same cue from rep one to rep five. So think about that. Let's find the most practical thing that gets the job done to get us to move the way we want to move. We've got a right way to perform the lifts. We have a model to perform the lifts and what we think about on rep one will refresh is most often not what we think about on rep four and five when we are very fatigued. So keep that in mind. Think about those things. Write them down and look at them before your next set. Let's see what it looks like. Thank you for listening to Barbell Logic podcast. We love for you to tell a friend or family member about the podcast. Give us a five star review. If you love the show, say nice things about us. And if you if you're interested in a topic for us to cover, you're welcome to email us at questions at barbell hyphen logic dot com and we will answer your question on a future show or do an entire show about that topic. We will see you here in a couple of days later.