Overhead Squats
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Marilou Dozois-Prevost
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Coach Glassman explains this so well! Read on.
By Greg Glassman
August 01, 2005
The
overhead squat is the ultimate core exercise, the heart of the snatch,
and peerless in developing effective athletic movement. This functional
gem trains for efficient transfer of energy from large to small body
parts - the essence of sport movement. For this reason it is an
indispensable tool for developing speed and power. The overhead squat
also demands and develops functional flexibility, and similarly develops
the squat by amplifying and cruelly punishing faults in squat posture,
movement, and stability.
The overhead squat is to midline control, stability, and balance what the clean and snatch are to power - unsurpassed.
Ironically,
the overhead squat is exceedingly simple yet universally nettlesome for
beginners. There are three common obstacles to learning the overhead
squat. The first is the scarcity of skilled instruction - outside of the
Olympic lifting community most instruction on the overhead squat is
laughably horribly, wrong - dead wrong.
The second is a weak
squat - you need to have a rock-solid squat to learn the overhead squat.
We strongly recommend you review the December 2002 issue of the
CrossFit Journal on squatting before attempting the overhead squat; you
could save yourself a lot of time in the long run. The third obstacle is
starting with too much weight - you haven't a snowball's chance in hell
of learning the overhead squat with a bar. You'll need to use a length
of dowel or plastic PVC pipe; use anything over five pounds to learn
this move and your overhead squat will be stillborn.
