 In this part two, we're gonna talk about the squat and why it's not going up and why you're wasting time. We're gonna talk about it in this video, so check it out. What's up guys, it's Coach Johnson. I'm back and this is part two of the time wasting. Are you wasting your time on the squat? Now, here's what we're gonna talk about. Yes, you need to do squats and this is a tricky title because are you wasting your time squatting? What does that mean? Well, it goes without saying that technique is one of the first and foremost. You've got to have really good technique but just like we talked about in our, are you wasting time on the bench? Is it because you're not doing enough post-year chain development? Now remember, in that video we discussed, you want a two to one ratio. Squats are the same. We've got to strengthen the back. That big back is gonna help you load that squat position better. Whether we're hitting more of a front squat position, we're getting into a nice deep position here for a front squat or if we're just gonna be hitting a little bit more of a back squat or if we're gonna be doing more of a power, we need to be able to work the post-year and that means hamstrings back, upper back, low back and hamstrings. Okay, so when we're squatting as a rule, we're gonna be getting some good glute development but maybe not as much because if your technique's off because you're structurally out of alignment, that's gonna have an impact. Like we talked on the bench press video, if you're somebody who's standing here and you get up and you're standing here, well, let's see if you're standing here. When you have shorts on, hips tilt forward and the front of your shorts kinda hit on your thighs. Do you see that? If I tilt forward, sometimes what you see is the pant does this and then you see how the pants position chase. If you've got a post-year pelvic tilt, you'll see the back of the shorts hitting the pants. If you have an anterior pelvic tilt, you see the front of the shorts kinda belling out like this. Do you see the legs hyper-extending? We have some athletes who do this. We had to smash their hamstrings because they're gonna wind up with an injury. You should not be standing with your legs like this. I can barely even do it but I've seen athletes who stand there very comfortably because their hamstrings are too weak and overstretched. So if you are having slow gains in your squat and you're having slow technical gains in the ring, this is gonna be, we're gonna do three simple exercises that you wanna make sure you're including and that are gonna help you increase your squat numbers. So number one, the first thing you wanna be able to do, we talked about the supine grip. Now, some people will talk about the supine grip. We're gonna be learning control. We're not trying to set records because this position can actually create stress on the bicep, right? So what we wanna do is, even when we're rowing, we're rowing correctly. We're hitting the back. Like I said in that video, we're not gonna be overloading the biceps. We're gonna be hitting the back. Now, when we do this, I like that supine grip to teach the hinging position of an RDL because when I do this and I push those elbows in, I push that chest up, I'm creating that good extension of the spine and now I'm gonna see that hip hinge position. So now you're gonna notice here, notice how I'm kinda pushing my knees out of the path of the bar so I can come down. Now I'm getting that really nice, hammy stretch. Now if I round my back, it doesn't matter because I've already loaded my hamstring. So now as I come up, I come back to that position and now I'm gonna be able to stand straight up. I personally like to teach when you're doing an RDL, we get that slight hinge. You're pushing those hips back and you're learning how to feel this good hinge position so that it's ham load, ham load. And then if I try to reach lower, and one of the easiest things you can do is a deficit. Put yourself up on a couple of weight plates to give yourself that extra three, four inches and you'll get a really monster stretch that you have to first be able to hinge. Now this is for the hamstring. We can control the range of motion. So for a lot of athletes who have a hard time finding the hinge and then coming up, so what they wind up doing is they have a hard time loading the hinge, then they come up, then they come back and they disengage again. So the hamstrings aren't engaged. So one of the things you can do is control the range of motion, start with something light like this bar and then what I can do is start at the knee so I can hinge here, slide the bar down the thigh to the knee and then what I'll do is I'll push the knees out of the way of the bar by pushing my hips back. Notice that my spine's nice and straight, the bar's coming down and I can stay here and I can go from the shin to the knee. I can work that range of motion and stay nice and engaged, right? So this is a very simple way to be working that hinge and working those hamstrings. This is an easy thing to incorporate. Now, sometimes people are doing hamstring curls and different things like that. There's benefit, it provides some general strength and that's good, but a motion like this where you're learning to hinge and where a lot of athletes have a hard time, this is good because if you have a hard time learning this, this is gonna set you up to be the fundamentals in so many of your Olympic lifts, right? Even gonna help improve your deadlift, you have to understand how that works and now what we're gonna do is we're gonna switch to a second exercise. So now what we're gonna do is a good morning. Now I like a barbell, good morning. I'm gonna slide that down and again, we have to feel that hinge. So as I'm coming here, I'm getting that motion. You're gonna see that hinge motion. Notice me from the front cam. Now watch it from the side camera. Watch as my hips slide back and you're gonna see me hit here in nice flat position. I'm gonna hold those hamstrings and then I'm coming up, okay? So good mornings are a nice good exercise. You can load these like anything else and they really force you to learn how to feel that hinge, how to keep nice extension of the back and be able to get yourself in this position. So notice how I'm coming up. I'm not pushing here, I'm not overextending. I'm staying on a nice flex bent leg. Now one of my favorite exercises is a glute ham raise and unfortunately I think in too many weight rooms this is a piece of equipment that's lacking. I think it's a fundamental piece of equipment that's gonna provide a ton of benefit and you can do a ton of variations on. The first thing that you wanna understand is as the athlete locks in and faces out, you know, horizontal to the ground, they're gonna be bending at the waist and they're going to be extending and pulling through the glutes. So what they do is why it's called a glute ham. You wanna keep the leg straight as the athlete goes down. They're gonna flex a little bit at the knee. They're gonna pull through the glute and the hamstring. You can add this when beginning athletes, usually it's down, teaching them to bring it to parallel so that they're understanding how to properly engage because these glute ham raises usually have rollers so that as you kinda lift, there's a little bit of rolling motion and sometimes athletes are just rolling down and they're not really utilizing the glute. They need to learn how to create that extension and it's a really great exercise. So it really works that lumbar spine, it works the glutes and it works the hams which are really critical for helping that squat. As your numbers go up, you need the back strong so that you can load more weight without overloading the back, right? And if the hamstrings, the glutes and that low lumbar and even upper thoracic spine are nice and strong, you're gonna be able to carry more weight because if that upper back gets weak as you're starting to squat, everything's gonna go here, you're gonna compress. I wanna stay in extension and push up against that bar. So when we have ourselves in this position, we wanna see those scaps come down, typically the elbows coming down and that way as we squat, we're gonna keep those knees basically right on top, keep that nice straight spine and then we're gonna be coming straight up into our squat. Okay, so you can see right now, one of the important things that we always stress is that use a bar. So many people wanna show off and see how much they can do. Make sure your technique's right, making sure that when you're doing something like an RDL where you're learning how to hinge, or you're doing a good morning, a bar may be way too much for many of you in the beginning and a lot of younger athletes who don't have any experience at this. One of the easiest things you can do is put yourself inside a power rack, set the bar to a certain height so you could go from here and be hitting that safety bar. And just feeling the basis of getting the hinge, it stops and you're protected. So you can work the range of motion and then you can keep lowering that safety bar. Highly recommend that. Don't just go in and start doing this. A bar can actually screw you up if you're doing the technique wrong. Start out with a PVC pipe. Just feel yourself working through. It's a great way to warm up. So I'm gonna throw a fourth exercise in and that's our pull through. And the pull through we're gonna do with a band and a kettlebell, okay? So here we go, let's do it. And a pull through is basically just using a kettlebell. Optimally I would take something like a band and we could use different lengths but I like the red mini band. We do this at our warmups with a lot of our athletes. So at our warmups we'll tie a band to one of the poles that's around our throwing area. You can do a fence, you could do the pole of the cage. You can do that sort of thing, okay? And if you don't, this is where in the weight room I put it on a kettlebell and you'll notice I'm gonna stand. I stretch the band and I'm gonna kind of move from here. And what I'm gonna do is feel that hinge motion and then I'm gonna be pulling. So I'm gonna try to create more tension and I'm gonna feel that stretch and I'm gonna pull. Notice how I'm pulling forward, that's the key. You're gonna see me here and I'm gonna reach back and you're gonna see me try to get a big reach, load the hammy and I'm pulling up and you see me pull into this position. So I'm feeling that hamstring. Now remember, I can also play with a sumo stance. I can get myself out nice and wide and I'm gonna see myself here and I'm gonna change the pull and I'm gonna feel that hit in those hammies and those adductors and this is it. All right guys, so if you find that you're having limited gains in your squats, oftentimes it's a lot of your necessary accessory lifts with the post to your chain. Now remember, how does this correlate to your throwing? That if I'm in this position throwing-wise and this position and I'm trying to throw, I lose all that natural locking thoracic motion, right? So I need to have my pelvis closer to neutral, my upper back here. Now my core is automatically engaged and so now when I'm throwing that disc is I'm gonna be nice and long. If I'm throwing that shot, I'm gonna be able to be more torqued up. If I'm tilted, rounded, I start to do all kinds of compensations. If I start to rotate, this is gonna affect my ability to engage my core to be able to create that upper body, lower body, left side, right side sequencing and we're gonna have a real hard time and especially if you've watched our system, we talk about pillar one. We talk about how we set up the throw and if we're all screwed up right from the beginning, it's not my opinion that it's what you start is what happens, it's what physics says. If I screw up the beginning, everything else is gonna be at, the potential is gonna be decreased and amplify as you get to the finish. If I can set up the throw more correctly, I'm gonna throw further and this is what makes some athletes more natural than others. Who are some of those more natural athletes? Kids that you tend to see, younger especially, that are strong and well structured for their age. They tend to pick up the event faster and throw better and this is why you start to see things even out as kids become teenagers because everybody's starting to get on a little closer footing as more physically mature as they get older. So, any rate, this is what we're talking about. This is how you get your numbers up in the squat by hitting that post to your chain and this is also gonna help you improve your technical patterns that you're trying to develop as you learn the throw and apply it. And that's what our six pillar training system does and that's what our ultimate throw training program addresses and we tie the strength training to the six pillar system and that's how you unlock your potential. Okay guys, so hopefully you liked today's video. If you did, and this was part two, if you'd like to see more stuff like this, let us know, hit that in the comments. Be sure to hit that like button, subscribe. That's how we're gonna keep growing the channel and be able to bring you more videos and be sure to share this with somebody who you know isn't getting enough of that balance in their training. So, thank you guys so much. Be sure to check out the system in the links below and we will see you on the next video.