Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Open joint vs closed joint lifting – Part 2

In part 1, I talked about the concept of the open joint lift and how it can be used to move big weights. This post will be about taking that concept and using it to manage and prevent injuries at the knees.

When talking about loads on the body, there are two kinds that we will worry about: compressive forces and shear forces. Compressive forces can be described as putting a load on your back, such as a squat. The weight pushes you down into the ground. Shear forces are a bit more confusing. The easiest way to think about shear forces is to imagine a joint moving further away from the mid-line of the body. An example would the leg extension machine. The knee and ankles are far away from the mid-line of the body, and this would put a lot of shear stress on the knees. Our body can handle a lot more compressive force than shear force. As proven by Stuart Mcgill, “the spine doesn't buckle until 12,000-15,000N of pressure are applied in compression, but as little as 1,800-2,8000N in shear will get the job done” (Cressey). This same idea applies to the knees. It’s very rare to see somebody who has knee pain when squatting get the same knee pain when standing up with the weight. It goes to follow that the more open the knee angle is, the less shear stress on the knees. This is why a deadlift will almost never hurt an injured knee, while a full squat will kill a person’s already injured knees. (Note: I am not bashing on the full squat, some people find that it helps their knees, some find that it kills their knees. More often than not, I find that it kills a person's knees. Your results may vary.)

Andy Bolton with 1000+lbs, spine not collapsing yet

Another way to determine if a leg exercise will create a lot of shear force is to determine shin angle, or knee travel. In a full squat, the shin angle will be as acute as it can possibly be, while in something like a box squat the shin angle will be more perpendicular. The more acute this shin angle, relative to the feet, the more shear stress will be placed on the knees. The above principle still applies - the knee is far away from the midline of the body. This is also a reason why people with long femurs will find squatting painful, their knee has to travel a lot further than a person with short femurs.

So how do we use this information to keep our knees healthy and pain-free? Here are some guidelines:

1) The obvious solution: strengthen the back of the body. The reason knee pain is so prevalent in today’s society is that people are just plain weak through the posterior chain – the lower back, glutes and hamstrings. These muscles are very important when it comes to preventing back and knee injuries. The quads pull on the patella and if the hamstrings and hips are not strong enough to offset that pull, there will be problems. Ok now that we’ve got that out of the way…

2) Use the open knee angle to work around the knee problem. The conventional deadlift is a great way to strengthen the back of the body and stay pain free through the knees. Other exercises that work great in this regard are the box squat and Romanian Deadlift. They both (done right) involve very minimal knee travel and so place very little shear stress on the knees. Great for rehab and for getting stronger with bad knees. 

Notice the shin angle

3) Give up squatting for deadlifting variations. Hear me out before you form a pitchfork mob. Squatting will always entail a more vertical spine than a deadlift. This automatically makes the knees travel. Deadlifting during a bad knee period will provide the same training stimulus on the legs, and make sure you remain strong during the injury. Chances are you will come back from the injury with a stronger posterior chain and climb to a higher squat.

4) Front squat or low bar squat in the presence of knee pain. They both have been shown to reduce shear stress on the knee, and will give you a squatting stimulus.

5) Stay off the leg machines. The leg muscles are never meant to activate in isolation, and forcing them to do so will lead to problems down the line. Using these machines once in a way, or in addition to compound movements on the feet like the squat and the deadlift is fine. Exclusively using them is not.

6) Deadlift. Seriously.

Less shear stress than the back squat
The next part will be about the spine and how to use the open concept angle to prevent and manage back injuries.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Open joint vs closed joint lifting – Part 1


I was watching a video of Tony Kono where he was explaining why squatting into the deadlift is wrong. The reasoning behind this struck me as extremely simple but powerful. He explained that the more open a joint angle is when lifting a weight, the more force can be exerted. In the case of the deadlift, the optimal alignment for open joint angles are hips inbetween the shoulders and knees, while the shoulders should get on top of the bar. 

Notice the relationship between the hips, shoulders and knees.

Based on a person’s anthropometry this could change where the hips would be closer to the knees in case of a long torso, or the hips would be closer to the shoulders in case of a short torso. But this doesn’t change the fact that a person should strive to create that perfect relationship between all the joint angles where they can remain as open as possible, to ensure maximal force production. After all, everybody can stand up with more weight than they can lift off the floor. This is the reason why a person can lift the most weight in the deadlift – it’s a lift where joint angles can be kept as shallow as possible. 

Powerlifters, whose very sport depends on maximal force production, are masters of the open joint angle. Look at a powerlifting squat vs an Olympic lifting squat – the knee angle of a powerlifter is kept as open as possible while the Olympic lifter flexes the knee as much as possible.

Shallow knee angles let you move massive weights.

Or the powerlifting bench. To keep shoulder flexion down, the bar is brought as low as humanly possible. If your intent is to move massive weights, you must master the shallow joint angle concept.

Stay tuned for part 2, which will be about injury management and prevention using the concept of open and closed joint angles.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Deadlifting cues for the long limbed lifter


A very popular cue for deadlifting is “hold on to the bar and push the earth away”. While this is a great cue for people who are natural squatters (usually below 6 feet with short femurs and a long torso), it often doesn’t work for people who aren't natural squatters (usually above 6 feet with long femurs and short torso).  I had a 6 ‘7 basketball player at my gym come up to me and tell me his deadlift is terrible because  “I don’t understand what it means to push the earth away”. When I checked on his form, he was literally treating his deadlift like a squat, the bar got too far away from him, he got his hips almost down to knee level, and it was a squat. The quickest way to muck a deadlift up is to treat it like a squat.

Proportions matter


As a 6 ‘4 lifter with extremely long femurs, I never understood the ‘push the earth away’ cue either. Reason being that squatting is a very foreign concept to a long-femured individual. Ask a tall person to squat and it usually looks like a giraffe trying the limbo. If this is you, and you just can’t seem to get the ‘push the earth away’ cue right, try the opposite. Treat the lift as a pull. Imagine yourself as a human crane and you’re lifting the weight up to put it somewhere else. I’ve found that this typically resolves a lot of issues with longer limbed lifters. When a long-torso person deadlifts, the hips will typically be lower - almost like a squat - because the shoulders have to be over the bar. However, a long-femured person would have higher hips because it doesn’t take much to get the shoulders over the bar. As soon as I told the basketball player to stop pretending it was a squat, and just pull the bar up, his lift looked picture perfect. Long limbed individuals are natural pullers off the floor. Stop pretending it’s a squat and think of yourself as a human crane. Try it out and see if it works for you.

Be like the crane

Monday, September 3, 2012

Tools for perfecting your squat: The squat-to-stand

The overhead squat is the most difficult version of the squat because of the mobility required through the joints to produce the full squat movement along with the overhead movement. It demands complete mobility through the ankles, hips and the thoracic spine. Mastering the overhead squat will make the basic squat movement a breeze.



Enter the squat-to-stand. Introduced by Gray Cook, the squat-to-stand is probably the best way to teach the overhead squat. Cook prefers to teach the movement from the ground up, referring back to when we were babies and learned to stand up from a squat. The squat-to-stand consists of 4 steps:

1) With a shoulder-wide width, or slightly wider stance, bend down to grab the toes. If your flexibility doesn’t allow you to do so with straight legs, bend the knees as necessary. Don’t worry, your flexibility will catch up soon enough.

2) While holding on to the toes, pull yourself down into a squat stance while keeping the elbows inbetween the knees and shoving the knees out. Really focus on getting the chest up and staying relatively straight through the spine. Do not over extend the neck either, look at a spot around 6 feet in front of you.

3) While remaining in this squat position, extend your arms over your head and try and reach for the ceiling. Focus on keeping the arms in a slight Y shape, not necessarily straight over your head. You may not be able to get into this position, and that’s a sign of restricted thoracic spine mobility.

4) Keeping the weight on the heels, stand up.

Here’s a video that explains the above 4 steps. 



If you have very restricted mobility (and a lot of people will fall into this category), focus on only the first two steps for now. When the first two steps have become easy, add the last two.


Adding the squat-to-stand as a warmup movement before some heavy squatting is a great idea. An even better idea would be to perform 3 sets of 8 of the squat-to-stand every day to remain mobile and keep the hips healthy. Try it out, stay consistent with it, and your squat form will feel amazing