Two Squat and Deadlift Mistakes That Seem Right But Aren't

Lifters are making these two mistakes on the squat and deadlift — and have no idea. Starting Strength Coach Phil Meggers covers what's going wrong and what to do instead.

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At Testify, we offer small group training, private coaching (in-person or remotely via Zoom), online coaching, and form checks. Interested in getting stronger, looking better, and having more energy?

What Lifters with Bad Knees Get Wrong About Squatting

Here are nine squat tips that apply to everyone, but they especially apply to those of you with grumpy knees. We’ve also provided a number of short videos to help with some of these tips.

1. Bar Position
Get the bar below your traps – sitting on the nice shelf provided by your bunched up delts. This is because . . . 

2. Lean Over
. . . you’re going to consciously lean over and point your chest at the floor as you start your descent. To facilitate this . . . 

3. Hips Back
. . . you’re going to simultaneously reach backward with your hips. You squat with your knees and hips, of course, and we want to squat in such a way that we ask each joint to do its respective share of the work. The hips are larger and surrounded by more muscle mass than your knees, so reach back with your hips. In doing so, you take some of the load off the knees and shift it to the larger and stronger hips.

4. Stance and Knee Direction
Take a stance with your heels at roughly shoulder width and point your toes out about 30 degrees. You’ve now set up your toes as arrows for your knees, and with this in mind, make your knees travel in the direction of your toes (i.e., forward and out). Getting the knees out makes depth easier to achieve and also avoids any twisting of the knee.

5. Forward Knee Position
Your knees will travel forward (and out) in the direction of your toes, and about one half to one third of the way into your descent, you’re going to stop the knees roughly above your toes (possibly a half inch or so farther forward for those of you with longer femurs).

Your knees keep bending, of course, but you block the forward travel at this point.

Tip #8 will help with this, as will the video below.

6. Give Your Knees a Hug
Get yourself a pair of knee sleeves.

Knee sleeves provide a nice, warm hug for your knees, and the warmth and compression provided by a 7 mm pair of knee sleeves makes for a wonderful sensation.

Below are links to a few knee sleeve options that are popular with a number of our members at Testify:

• Rehband knee sleeves (my personal knee sleeves)

• Stoic knee sleeves

• Iron Bull knee sleeves

7. Shoes
Get yourself a decent pair of lifting shoes and stop lifting in your squishy Chucks or running shoes.

The most important feature of a lifting shoe is the noncompressible sole and thus the very stable base it provides. This permits efficient force transfer between you and the floor and allows you to better execute the technical aspects that you’re working on, e.g., knee position, hips back, etc.

Below are some of the shoe recommendations and links we usually send to new members as a starting point for shopping:

• Nike Romaleos 4

• Inov-8 Fastlift 360

• VS Athletics Weightlifting Shoe

• Adidas Adipower

• Do-Win Lifting Shoes

8. TUBOW
A TUBOW provides excellent cueing for knee position – both lateral and in terms of setting the knees’ forward position. Because it fixes the knee position, it forces the correct hip position and back angle as well.

A video is highly useful here, so check out the one below:

9. Get a Coach
You can work on all of these things on your own, but you will fix them far faster working with a good coach. Many things that often take weeks or months to address on your own can be fixed in a single coaching session, and we see this all the time.

We’d love to work with you – whether locally or remotely – but if that’s not in the cards, I’d recommend seeking out a Starting Strength Coach (SSC) to help you improve your squat. Click here if you’re interested in working with us or click here for the link to the SSC directory.

As always, we hope this helps you get stronger and live better.

-Phil

PS: Whenever you want even more Testify in your life, here are some free resources:

• Book a free intro and strategy session with us HERE.

• Pick up a free copy of Testify’s Squat Guide: 12 Tips to Improve Your Squat Now HERE.

• Get our free weekly email - containing useful videos, articles, and training tips - HERE.

• Follow Testify on Instagram HERE.

• Subscribe to Testify’s YouTube channel HERE.

(Some links may be affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, Testify earns from qualifying purchases.)

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At Testify, we offer small group training, private coaching (in-person or remotely via Zoom), online coaching, and form checks. Interested in getting stronger, looking better, and having more energy?

The Squat: Hips and Knees Together!

For heaven’s sake . . . don’t do this.

(A Blast from the Past article originally posted on 09/17/21)

A problem that sometimes shows up in the squat is that of breaking at the hips first; in other words, instead of bending the hips and knees at the same time as we start to descend in the squat (which is what we want to happen), a lifter makes the mistake of breaking (i.e., bending) at the hips first followed by bending the knees. Let’s solve this problem.

A) Becky correctly initiates her descent by bending the hips and knees simultaneously.

In a correctly executed squat, the hips and knees will start to bend at the same time. As Becky shows in Figure A, her hips travel backward at the same time her knees travel forward and outward (i.e., in the direction of her toes) - this is what we would like to see, and this allows Becky to maintain her balance over the middle of her foot.

B) Becky incorrectly initiates her descent by bending at the hips first. Becky is exaggerating the error in the image on the left, but it tends to be a bit more subtle as Becky demonstrates in the image on the right (note that her hips have begun reaching back while her knees seem frozen in place).

In contrast, in Figure B, you can see Becky incorrectly initiating her descent by reaching back with her hips - which is correct - but she’s not forcing her knees to simultaneously move forward and out early in the descent.

This error is usually accompanied by the knees moving too far forward as the lifter reaches the bottom of her squat as well.

If you notice that you tend to break at the hips first, the simplest approach is to cue yourself, “Hips and knees at the same time” or “Hips and knees together.” Not surprisingly, the first approach is to cue yourself to do exactly what it is that you want to do.

However, if that approach doesn’t work, you can use an overcue and tell yourself to go “knees first” - in other words, you’re cueing yourself to shove your knees forward and out before you reach back with your hips. This overcue (like all overcues) is a bit of a lie as we actually want the motion of the hips and knees to be simultaneous, but it can be a potentially useful lie if it does the job and fixes the problem.

If those cues don’t work, go ahead and break out a TUBOW (Terribly Useful Block Of Wood) or two and make sure that your knees touch the TUBOWs about one-third to one-half of the way into your descent. If you’ve never used a TUBOW before, check out our video on that topic - TUBOW: The Portable Squat Coach - which is also included in this article.

Becky breaks out the TUBOWs.

As always, we hope this helps you get stronger and live better.

-Phil

PS: Whenever you want even more Testify in your life, here are some free resources:

• Follow Testify on Instagram HERE.

• Subscribe to Testify’s YouTube channel HERE.

• Book a free intro and strategy session with us HERE.

• Pick up a free copy of Testify’s Squat Guide: 12 Tips to Improve Your Squat Now HERE.

• Get our free weekly email - containing useful videos, articles, and training tips - HERE.

(Some links may be affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, Testify earns from qualifying purchases.)

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At Testify, we offer small group training, private coaching (in-person or remotely via Zoom), online coaching, and form checks. Interested in getting stronger, looking better, and having more energy?

Do This for a BIGGER Squat! | How to Pause Squat (and Why!)

Want to improve your squat? The pause squat can help. Starting Strength Coach Phil Meggers explains what a pause squat is, how to do it, and why you might want to utilize the pause squat in your training.

(A Blast from the Past video originally published on 05/01/23)

Whenever you want even more Testify in your life, here are some free resources:

• Book a free intro and strategy session with us HERE.

• Pick up a free copy of Testify’s Squat Guide: 12 Tips to Improve Your Squat Now HERE.

• Get our free weekly email - containing useful videos, articles, and training tips - HERE.

• Follow Testify on Instagram HERE.

• Subscribe to Testify’s YouTube channel HERE.

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At Testify, we offer small group training, private coaching (in-person or remotely via Zoom), online coaching, and form checks. Interested in getting stronger, looking better, and having more energy?

To Stand Up . . . Stay Leaned Over!

(A Blast from the Past article originally posted on 09/10/21)

I had a conversation this week with one of our members after his last set of squats that went something like this:

• Me: “That last rep was spot on.”

• Member: “Yeah, that rep was so much easier since I stayed leaned over longer on the way up. It’s so strange how that works, and I sometimes just forget it.”

• Me: “Yep, it can be counterintuitive, but you have to stay leaned over to make standing up easier.”

This conversation illustrates a common problem with newer and even experienced lifters, which is that of trying to raise the chest prematurely when coming up out of the hole on the squat. In other words, they try to make their back angle more vertical right away on the ascent. We sometimes refer to this problem as “not staying in your hips,” and today, we’re going to solve this issue.

Remember, during the ascent of the squat, your back angle will eventually become more vertical - after all, we finish the squat in an upright (i.e., vertical) position. However, if you try to make it vertical too soon, it makes for a slower, more difficult squat. To avoid this problem, we cue people to “drive the hips” or “stay in your hips” as they come up out of the hole (very often, this cue is reduced to simply “Hips!”).

With that being said, if these cues don’t work for you and you still find yourself raising your chest too soon on your ascent, try one of the following cues as you drive up out of the bottom of the squat:

1. “Stay in your lean.” 

2. “Stay leaned over.”

With these cues, you are reminding yourself to preserve your back angle - to preserve that leaned-over position - for longer than you think on the way up. You’re not telling yourself to become more leaned over - you’re just trying to keep your back angle relatively constant as you start to ascend. 

Don’t worry - you will eventually raise your chest as you continue to ascend, and it will happen without you thinking about it.  We just don’t want it to happen immediately, and these cues may just help you accomplish this.

We hope this helps you get stronger and live better.

-Phil

PS: Whenever you want even more Testify in your life, here are some free resources:

• Follow Testify on Instagram HERE.

• Subscribe to Testify’s YouTube channel HERE.

• Book a free intro and strategy session with us HERE.

• Pick up a free copy of Testify’s Squat Guide: 12 Tips to Improve Your Squat Now HERE.

• Get our free weekly email - containing useful videos, articles, and training tips - HERE.

(Some links may be affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, Testify earns from qualifying purchases.)

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At Testify, we offer small group training, private coaching (in-person or remotely via Zoom), online coaching, and form checks. Interested in getting stronger, looking better, and having more energy?

"This Made Him Look STUPID!" | Squat Mistake

Are you making this mistake when squatting? Well . . . don't. It's unnecessary, inefficient, and it makes you look like a newbie. Starting Strength Coach Phil Meggers explains.

(A Blast from the Past video originally published on 04/29/23)

Whenever you want even more Testify in your life, here are some free resources:

• Book a free intro and strategy session with us HERE.

• Pick up a free copy of Testify’s Squat Guide: 12 Tips to Improve Your Squat Now HERE.

• Get our free weekly email - containing useful videos, articles, and training tips - HERE.

• Follow Testify on Instagram HERE.

• Subscribe to Testify’s YouTube channel HERE.

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At Testify, we offer small group training, private coaching (in-person or remotely via Zoom), online coaching, and form checks. Interested in getting stronger, looking better, and having more energy?