

Written by Corey Hayes

Now that I am taking in-person clients at my gym, I’m there all damn day. I see the good, the bad and the ugly…. with a concentration on the bad and the ugly. I work with a lot of power lifters and strength driven trainers, usually all have similar issues on each lift. Ill give you a break down of common problems and solutions for each main lift.

Squat:

The biggest problem I see here is the infamous “Butt-wink” which is when the pelvis tucks under as the lifter gets to depth or close to depth. Why does this happen? Well basically your hamstrings are stretched as much as possible. The uneducated would see this and decide to stretch their hamstrings out but for most people that would be wrong. The tight hamstrings are only the effect, not the cause.

More often than not it is caused by weak glutes and abs, so naturally to solve this problem, I throw my clients into a program full of trunk and glute strengthening movements. Here are some of my favorites

Trunk:

Planks

Anti-Rotation Band holds

Front Squat holds

Ab coaster

Glutes:

Glute bridges

Kneeling squats

Wall sits with band around knees

Split squats

To further this, we work things at both ends. Weakness is the main problem in my opinion but the lower back and hip flexors are “hella” tight in people with APT so we do the normal myofascial release work. I generally start people on a normal foam roller then as they advance we move on to a rumble roller then to a baseball. Nothing fancy here, just roll 4-5 minutes on each spot and move on.

Bench:

We all know someone that constantly pull their pec’s dont we? Hell, I’m one of them. This major problem is usually caused by the inability to retract and hold the scapula. A big problem here is having the inside of the shoulder blades “glued up” and full of knots and adhesion’s. I’m sure everyone is already working these out with their lacrosse balls getting lose but find themselves back at square one the next day. Why is this? Weakness! I’m not going to bore you by naming 47 little muscles in there you need to strengthen because it doesn’t matter! We train movements and functional muscle groups.

Here is my solution. These are bench press specific pull apart that DESTROY the scapular re-tractors like no other.