Improve ALL of Your Lifts with This Cue?!

(In this article, you’ll also find a couple of videos related to today’s topic.)

Due to their technical nature, cues usually are very lift-specific. For example, “hips back, chest down” works really well for the squat, but it doesn’t work for a press or a bench press. However, there are exceptions to this rule; not too long ago, we made a video (we'll link to it below) about the idea of a positive cue versus a negative cue. I'm not going to give the whole video away right here, but that concept - it's not really a cue, but it's a type of cue - applies to all lifts, and today’s topic is very similar. 

We’re talking about the cue of “slow start” or simply “slow down.” Typically, when you use this cue (either of them), you're going to use it in your warm-ups or at least when the weight is light enough that slowing down shouldn't negatively affect the lift, i.e., it's not always going to work so well when the weight gets heavy. 

Let’s take a look at a few examples of this cue in action. On the press, some people struggle with “winding up the hips,” i.e., the hips should move forward first, but some lifters tend to move the hips backward before moving them forward. This can be a difficult habit to break, but if you simply tell yourself “slow down” or “slow start,” you can resist the urge to have your hips go back and instead slowly force your hips to go forward.

On the squat, a common error is to lead with the hips on the descent; in other words, the lifter bends or breaks at the hips first and then bend the knees, whereas we would like to see simultaneous breaking of the hips and knees. If you break at the hips first, just tell yourself “slow start,” and that will give you the time - during those first couple inches of descent - to focus on making your knees go forward and out at the same time that your hips go backward.

On the clean, you want to make sure that that bar touches your thighs at the jumping position (roughly the mid-thigh), so when we teach it - and you can always do this when you're when you're practicing this on your own - we go slow at first because we have to learn to touch that point on the thighs every single time. Eventually, it will be quick, and in fact, eventually it must be quick since a heavy clean or snatch won’t be successful if it’s slow, but the lift needs to be correct before it’s quick. As a result, if you're missing that point on the thighs, simply tell yourself to slow down, and when you get to that point on your thighs, that’s when you speed up. Again, in reality, the entire lift should be speeding up, but if you’re working to correct something, slowing down can be very useful.

Hopefully, this helps you in your training, and as always, we hope this helps you get stronger and live better.

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