How Low Should You Squat?

My answer may surprise you.... It depends!

Trying to set a powerlifting world record? You should probably know what the required depth is and be sure to uphold that standard.

At GAIN, we have a simple standard for squat depth, and it can change each and every day for each person.

Your should squat as low as possible while maintaining good technique, stability and control.

That means no funky spine movement, no heels lifting off the floor, nothing weird going on with your knees and that you're able to breathe throughout the set.

If we want to be effective, capable humans, we should be able to get into a nice low squat and hang out - or least be able to get off the couch and the toilet without too much trouble.

Depth will be a moving target. Overtime, as your skill and strength improves, hopefully your mobility will too. That means better ownership on the bottom, resulting in a more impactful, bigger range of motion squat.

Not there yet? Not a big deal at all. In fact, who cares. I would even argue that a half squat is far more effective in building strength and movement competence that no squatting whatsoever.

So how low should you go? As low as skill allows, but always chase more depth through sound movement and consistent strength and mobility training.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

How Many Reps

As you progress in your strength training career, it's helpful to remember that you don't always have to strictly follow the prescribed rep scheme.

The reps we choose have a specific intent. Either to build strength, promote muscle growth, improve coordination and skill or challenge your stamina. The reps have a counterpart they rely on - how hard you're working. In strength and conditioning terms, volume and intensity.

Generally, the last two reps of something should be substantially more difficult than the first two. If you're doing 8 goblet squats, and they're all relatively easy, I'd like to empower you to do a few more reps, which is called adding volume.

Conversely, if you don't want to do more but you probably could, you could increase the weight. This is adding intensity while keeping the volume the same.

Listening to your body is a useful skill to hone in on. Knowing when it wants a little more will excel your strength and stamina.

Bonus thought:

There are certain times when I'll have you do 10 reps of something, and it's okay if it feels like you could 100 of them. Specifically in conditioning components when the goals is to improve endurance. Also when learning new movements, doing a movement for the first time in a while, coming back from a week off are the obvious ones that come to mind.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Trail Thoughts

On Sunday, I run a 30k trail race. Here are a few of the thoughts that popped in my head during the first lap of the run. During the start of every race, everyone is packed together and figuring out their own pace. As I try to stay calm during these crowed starts, my mind always wanders to these things that I’m happy to know now.

Run your own pace.

When the first climb appeared, less than half a mile in, all the runners in front of me “ran,” up it. From experience, I know that early in the race, I should just hike up this hill. Which I did, and so did the conga line of people behind me. I felt like I should run, because that’s what the people in front of me were doing.. Don’t just do what the person in front of you is, run your own race.

No feet slapping.

In long races, running hard and fast downhills can really beat up your legs. If you want to run a fast race, there’s no avoiding it, but if you’re after sustainability, don’t let your feet slam on your way down the mountain. Instead, control your descent, using momentum, but feel slapping and making a lot of noise on the way down is going to tire your legs out faster.

Trail Shoes.

Don’t wear your road running shoes on the trail. Even if it isn’t a technical trail, with lots of rocks and roots and mud, having better traction on the ups and down is a necessity.

Aid Stations are Time Sucks

This course had an aid station every couple of miles. It would have been easy to not carry anything with me, but I decided to carry a water bottle in my hand. This way, I could drink between aid stations, especially important because of how hot it was. Primarily, I didn’t want to have to stop, chug water, refill, throw a cup away every time an aid station came across. If my bottle still had fluid in it, I just kept on running straight through the aid station, leaving a lot of people who had to hang out there behind.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Red Light/Green Light

A few years ago I wanted to run fast, push the pace, and see how quickly I could cover large distances.

The same notion fires me up, but I no long have the desire to burn the house down each and every time I line up for a race.

With the seasoned lifters at my noon class, we call this maturity.

When you’re new the game, you can push it hard, make expensive decisions and be able to buffer it off. But as you become more seasoned, you realize the juice isn’t worth the squeeze, and you start making better, more mature training decisions. Something along the lines of, I could do another heavy set of 8, but I don’t need to.

In an effort be more mature in my training, I realized what I wanted more than being fast, was being capable. Meaning, I would rather run a race a little slower, but not have to limp around for 48 hours afterwards. I didn’t want training to disrupt training.

So I focussed on running these long distance races with the idea that, if I want to, I can train tomorrow. I should be in good enough shape that this effort won’t sideline me.

Nothing made me realize how important that was than yesterday. I pulled in the driveway after driving 50 minutes home from a 3 and a half hour race. I was stiff, achy from the drive, dehydrated, hungry and ready to get out of the sun. Elliot didn’t care about any of those things though. He wanted to play red light, green light and run through the splash pad in the backyard. He wanted to chase me, so there was no hiding. Right back to running.

I knew I could have pushed a little harder on the last lap of the race. I knew I could have shaved a little time off, and dug a little deeper. I could have suffered more. But it wasn’t worth it, because being able to get out of the truck and start playing was.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

July Fourth Weekend

Saturday marks the start of July, and we’ll be gathering at the gym for a community workout at 9am.

This is a fun excuse to host a Saturday workout at the gym, and a chance for you to come by at a different time and workout with some other GAIN members. Family and friends are invited too, just make sure they RSVP using the link below.

RESERVE A SPOT

We’ll be open regular hours on Monday July 3rd, and Wednesday July 5th, and closed on the 4th.

See you at the gym!

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Constant Cues

Lean-Fall-Pull.

Kiss the heel.

Settle! Settle!

Easy.

Find the rhythm.

Faster cadence.

Be springy, be smooth.

Pull! Pull! Pull!

Lift the heel.

Lead with your belt buckle.

Breathe.

Stop shrugging.

Stop looking at your feet.

Stop looking at your feet!

Breathe. And stop looking at your feet!

Running is a skill. I have a never-ending stream of these cues floating through my head during most runs. Trying to adjust and find the perfect stride is how you get better.

Most of the time I feel like I'm almost doing it, and other times, I feel like I'm effortlessly floating along.

If you're headed out for a run this weekend, hopefully one of these cues will stick and help you feel fluid an smooth out there!

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Feel Through Your Feet

Feeling movement through your feet is a super power.

Your feet provide sensory input and stability up through the whole leg.

When doing any movement that begins standing up, you can benefit from paying close attention to what they’re doing.

Are they wobbling around? Collapsing inward? Is all your weight shifting to your heel? Or too far forward towards the toes?

The mid foot is the sweet spot. It’ll allow you to find balance and stability.

If you have a hard time finding that sweet spot, especially on things like split squats, SLDLs, lunges and similar movements, you may want to ditch the shoes. You’ll feel better connected, have better awareness, and a better opportunity to let all those little feet muscles shine.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Isometric

Isometric contractions happen when your muscles are keeping you in one spot.

These improve stability and strength in the shape you're holding, plus a few degrees in either direction.

Split squat iso holds, bottom of push up iso holds, march iso holds, or anything like that, will improve end range strength, get you comfortable in certain positions and build more stability. In other words, they can have a dramatic impact in your over all strength.

They're a no brainer to include into a strength and conditioning program. Use this caution though, iso holds are notorious for being more challenging than they look.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Macro Talk Pt 6

Over the weekend our oven broke. I wouldn’t have been a big deal, except for each Sunday we meal prep, and I make each of us our own batch of personalized egg bites. These are our go-to breakfast each morning, which is especially helpful when trying to wrangle kids out the door. There’s nothing to cook, they’re easy to reheat, and most importantly, we know the macronutrients of each muffin.

I haven’t been tracking for a couple weeks. I weigh my food occasionally to make sure I know how much I’m getting, and to keep my eyeball scale sharp. I eat similarly most days, and entering it into MyFitnessPal became redundant.

Expect for Yesterday. I needed a new plan. What was my breakfast going to be? How would it compare in macros to my normal breakfast? What time am I going to cook? Will it keep me full? These seemingly insignificant questions were a big deal because for a couple months, I haven’t had to think about them at all.

I pivoted. I made scrambled eggs with a little bit of cheese, and a bagel. The scrambled eggs were the same in fat, but lower in protein than my homemade egg muffins, which contain cottage cheese, upping the protein. Otherwise, the rest of the day played out normally. I hit my numbers without issue and didn’t go over on fat like I expected.

While it was frustrating to have to figure out a different meal, and will be frustrating to deal with this oven, overall it was easy to adapt to. I had put in the time tracking my macros, and building the necessary skills to know how to properly fuel myself. Nutrition is tricky, and you might need to approach it differently, but tracking macros has not only greatly improved my understanding of food, but how my body reacts and responds to it.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Heart Rate Monitors, Chest Strap vs Wrist.... Continued

Last week I did a running workout with Taylor. I forgot my heart rate monitor at home, so we wouldn’t be able to compare data like we normally would since my heart rate would be recorded by the built in wrist-based monitor built into my watch.

This begs the question, is your wrist heart rate monitor as good as a chest strap?

My wrist monitor seems to be good at measuring my resting HR and my overnight HR while sleeping. I’ve done workouts comparing both at the same time, and the lag alone on the wrist can skew the data and paint an inaccurate picture of what happened. If you want to use your heart rate to measure recovery times or get as certain amount of zone 2 work, the chest strap's accuracy is incomparable.

After last week’s interval workout, I sync up my watch to check out the data anyway, and I’m surprised to see it looks like I wore my heart rate strap. You can clearly see a steady, subtle build in our 1.75 mile warm up run, then 3 distinctive spikes for our 3 intervals. The numbers are right around where I would expect them to be for a chest strap.

While I’m still not going to trust the wrist strap, I was happy to see such a similar reporting based off my perceived exertion. Of course, the only way that I could in fact correlate the data, is because I usually wear the chest strap.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

My warm up and 3 sets of running (and biking) intervals recorded from wrist based HR monitor.

Taylor’s intervals recorded with chest strap.

Beginner Checklist

These are my top strength training movements for beginners.

These basic movements are easy to learn, provide a coach with lots of intel on movement patterns and play a foundational role in the development of a long-term strength and conditioning program.

1. Box Squat

The box squat teaches people how to use their hips, control the descent and maintain a rigid torso position. The box exaggerates the squat, and makes it easy to spot (and feel) funky movement patterns.

2. Push up/Elevated Push Up

This pressing movement allows for plenty of reps to create stable shoulders and groove sound shoulder mechanics. Elevating the hands allows for most everyone to get some horizontal pressing in.

3. Ring Row

The same as a push up, except this is a pulling movement opposed to a pressing movement. Simple, feels good and easy to correct sagging hips or poor shoulder mechanics.

4. Split Squat

This stationary lunge gets your knee behind your butt, a vital movement for healthy hips, and builds single leg strength, stability and balance.

5. Kettlebell Deadlift

The deadlift teaches control of the spine and emphasizes utilizing the hips rather than the back.

6. Anti-Rotation Press

This sneaky hard movement teaches you to resist unwanted motion and maintain a stable trunk.

When in doubt, choose one of these movement, or a variant from it. It’s an excellent way to create a well-rounded workout and hit most the movement patterns.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Interval Warm Ups

Getting properly warmed up for intervals will get you much more out of the session. If you were to dive right into the first interval, not only would it be an unrealistic pace for you to hold (because you’ll feel good but fatigue quickly), but there will be a lot of heart rate spikes and dips since the bout of exercise started immediately instead of gradually.

When we’re at rest, the majority of our blood is centered around our organs, helping the body rest and digest. When we start exercising, say riding a bike, our muscles need more oxygenated blood. So it is taken away from the organs and delivered to the muscles.

Without a gradual warm up, we open the flood gates to send blood out. Your heart rate spikes, and you feel like you’re working hard, but your body is just trying to keep up delivering oxygen to the working muscles. You intervals will play out the same way. Erratic paces, heart rate spikes, feeling like you’re breathing heavy but you aren’t working that hard are all signs of too short a warm up.

In an ideal world, a longer, more gradual warm up is better. In the gym, tight on time, at least 5-8 minutes of extra moving should do the trick.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Positive Influence

The gym will impact other areas of your life. Showing up to the gym consistently is huge. Just showing up isn’t all you have to do if you want to make real lifestyle changes though.

You see, most of your progress happens away from the gym. And most of your time is spent away from the gym. Ideally, your time in the gym has a positive influence your behavior when you’re away from the gym. This is the key to making long-lasting, healthy changes to your life.

Doing the little things over and over like:

Choosing nutritionally dense food.

Skipping the alcohol.

Drinking more water.

Walking and moving more.

Sitting less. Stretching more.

Managing your stress.

Having a community to belong to.

You can't write any of those things down on a strength and conditioning program, but they're all equally as important as adding weight to the bar or lowering your 500m pace on the rower.

Hopefully a good workout inspires you to make better food choices, gives you a dose of like-minded people, and reminds you to sit on the floor and use that foam roller tonight instead of slouching on the couch.

The gym is important, but so are the things that happen away from it. Show up consistently and let your practice of showing up for yourself bleed into other parts of your life.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Feet and Eyes

Where are you feet? Where are your eyes?

No matter the movement, its quality would benefit from considering these two things. Are your feet turned out? Collapsed inward with no tension? Are you looking around, at your feet, or keeping your chin down and eyes straight ahead to best align your trunk for maximum horsepower?

Even during the bench press, leg drive is an important factor to make or break a heavy attempt.

Whether it's jumping rope, box jumps, deadlifts, kettlebell swings, squats, lunges or rowing, take a moment to notice what your feet and eyes are doing. A small adjustment can make a big difference in movement quality and performance.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Ring Rows

Ring rows are a silent champion of the weight room.

This simple, versatile movement, can easily be written off as a beginner exercise, however, there’s so much going on here, it deserves to be a staple in most peoples’ program.

We get horizontal pulling, a plank-like challenge for the torso, grip strength and endurance and it’s easy to see and feel if you’re doing it well.

Keep these things in mind when ring rowing, or performing any other rowing variations at the gym.

• Squeeze! Squeeze the handle with your whole hand. Don't let it hang in your fingers.

• Don't shrug. Keep those shoulders away from your ears!

• Use your upper back, not just your arms. Try to feel your shoulder blades moving as your arm works.

• Keep your hips square - don’t snag, arch or twist your torso.

Ring rows are a total body strength movement. If they feel easy for you, take a couple of big steps forward and find a few challenge. Get to work!

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Podcast Recomendation

I was excited to see that Eric Cressey was on the Tim Ferriss Podcast recently.

Eric is strength and conditioning coach who primarily trains professional baseball players. He owns two gyms and is currently the Yankee’s strength and conditioning coach.

The podcast starts at a place you wouldn’t expect, but you can tell immediately Cressey knows his stuff.

Enjoy.

LISTEN HERE

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Hip Hinge

In strength and conditioning, there's a fundamental movement pattern that often gets overlooked but has potential for unlocking your strength and performance. It’s the hip hinge. While it sounds simple, mastering this movement can have a profound impact on your overall strength, power, and understanding of movement.

The hinge involves flexing your hips, while maintaining a rigid spine. Moving this way loads the muscles of your hips, or what’s called the posterior chain, your hamstrings and glutes. Learning how to use and load those muscles will prevent you from lifting with your back, or putting the pressure in the wrong spot.

When hinging, much like squatting, paying attention to your feet is a game-changer. Finding some tension off the floor, and placing your weight on your mid-foot will guide your hips and knees to exactly where they need to go.

In the gym, more weight is usually viewed as harder, but hinging, like many other movements, actually can require some load to get the best feel for it. If you’re having trouble feeling the hip hinge, grab a 10 pound plate and give it a big hug. This can create the right feedback to engage the hips and create total body tension.

Step-by-step:

1. Get organized; screw your feet into the floor, stand tall and squeeze your butt.

2. Imagine you’re carrying your groceries inside. Your hands are full and the door is about to close, you bump it with your butt to push it back open and carry - that’s how you initiate a hip hinge.

3. As your hips move back, let your chest start moving toward the floor. Keep your chin down and eyes ahead.

4. As you reach the turnaround point you should begin to feel a stretch in your hamstrings, this is a good sign.

5. To stand up, simply press your feet into the floor and allow yourself to come up with a little bit more speed that the descent. Be patient and don’t lead with your chest or head.

The hinge can be one of the more difficult fundamental movement patterns to learn but once you have it, you can unlock new found strength, power and athleticism.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Stroller Jogging

Last week, I took off on my first stroller jog of the summer and got crushed! Running with the stroller is no joke, if you’ve got a stroller run in your future, or if you’re a stroller running regular, here are some point of performance to keep in mind.

• It’s much harder. Pushing that heavy thing down the road is hard. Don’t underestimate it. Our neighborhood is full of subtle ups and downs, and with the stroller they are much more noticeable.

• One hand only! In order to keep that fluid and smooth stride, you’re got to have some arm action. I place one hand in the middle of the stroller handle and pump my other arm, trading frequently. Avoid running with both hands on the handle if you can.

• Side by Side. If I’m really trying to open up my legs and get moving, I run adjacent to the stroller. If I don’t, there isn’t enough room for my legs to open up.

• Walk it! The goal of my stroller run last week was some easy volume. I threw my chest strap on to monitor my heart rate. I wanted to keep it under 150 beats per minute. This meant, I walked much more frequently than I would have had I not been pushing the stroller. Those slight climbs added up. Instead of feeling frustrated, I plan on that happening when stroller jogging.

Stroller running ins’t ideal. A little awareness of your position and how you're moving can make a big difference. Get out there!

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Built-In Accountability

Taylor and I have a sneaky, built-in accountability system, and it’s in place for you and you might not even know it. It’s a key benefit of working out in a strength and conditioning gym, there’s ample opportunities for accountability.

Each time I workout, I log the results in TrueCoach. I record what I did, how long or how heavy, and maybe a couple words about how I felt afterwards. No one has access to see my TrueCoach expect for Taylor. And every couple of days, I know he’s going to pull it up and take a peek at what I’ve been doing.

This helps in in two ways. First, it actually makes me remember to log and track my workouts. If he wasn’t coming in to check on them, I might fall behind and probably would have stopped by now. Second, it helps me workout! If I told him I’m going for a run later, there’s a way to check and see if I actually did what I was going to do. Sometimes, not all the time, that gives me the push that I need to get moving.

Us coaches go through everyone’s account each day. We see what you fill in, if you left any notes or uploaded a picture. Whether you realize it or not, filling that thing out and hitting the complete workout button builds accountability for you. The more you put into it, the more you’ll get from it.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

That Time I Got Pinned

After I got my license, I started driving myself to the gym everyday after school.

Great Bay Athletic Club was never overcrowded at 3pm like it would be in a couple hours. Besides me, there were afternoon regulars. A couple of old-school bodybuilders with thick training logs and the trademark thin and low tank top, a pair of older kids from my high school and my lifting buddies. I had just gotten into working out. I wanted to be a better hockey player but mostly, I wanted to look good.

In the strength world, it’s a right of passage to do something with 135 pounds. The barbell itself weighs 45 pounds, and before bumper plates we common, the only large diameter plates were metal 45 pound plates.

On this afternoon I was the only person there, none of the weekday usuals were around. I went on to do my typical warm up. Shot some free throws on the basketball court, worked on striking the speed bag, and a mainstay in warm ups at the time, arm circles with 2.5 pound plates.

This meant I was going to bench press. It's what all the stronger guys in the gym did before they benched, and that was pretty much what most people here did, bench press.  I got my program from Flex magazine. A true bodybuilding split-style. Chest, shoulder, triceps twice a week, back and biceps twice a week and two lower body days. One dedicated to hamstrings and glutes, the other was quads and calves.

The program, my first introduction to progressive overload, decreased reps each week, intended to make you use heavier weights. Towards the end of the program, I was down to 4 reps for my main exercise of the day.

I continued the customary warm up, 10 reps with the bar, small 10 pound plates on each side, 10 reps there. I remember looking around, surprised none of my friends had shown up or at least the bodybuilder who always wore zebra print pants. I swapped out the 10’s for the stout 25’s. The reps there felt good enough that I put the 35 pound plates on the bar, now equalling 115 pounds. 

The reps were good, and I rested a while. Eager to become strong I loaded up the bar with status, 135 pounds. I walked around in my Nike Shocks, obligatory homemade tank top and basketball shorts. I was going to get it, for the first time. 

If you’ve been lifting for a while, you know if you can get the weight as soon as it leaves the rack. I hadn’t had nearly enough reps to know there was no chance I could get this barbell of my chest. I lowered it under control, using what I thought was good technique. 

When the bar touched down, I stopped thinking about lowering the weight and pushed with all my might. The bar started lifting, gaining a bit of speed, then dropped onto my chest. My right leg kicked out when it landed. I was pinned. No one was around. Embarrassed, I wiggled, grunted and heaved, trying anything to get out.  I couldn’t budge the bar.

Finally, some guy walked down the hallway from the locker room on the the gym floor. Immediately he noticed me on the bench. Several minutes into my predicament, I was just laying there, hoping for rescue. He ran over, lifted the bar off my chest and asked if I was okay. Instead of lecturing me, which I’m sure would have resulted in me abandoning the whole gym thing due to embarrassment, he said it happens, don’t worry about it, and went on his way to the cardio theater.

That wasn’t the last time I would get pinned, but it would be the last time I did it without a spotter. I kept working my bench press too, eventually, building to the point where 135 pounds was an acceptable warm up weight.

I’ve been reflecting a lot on how I got started working out, and how I was able to instill this important habit into myself at a young age. Looking back, I’m thankful that guy was nice, and didn’t scare me away from the gym. To whomever you were, thanks for the help.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain