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Overhead Squat

The overhead squat is a demanding, but rewarding, whole-body exercise. It builds strength and flexibility in the shoulders and core, especially the lower back, as well as the legs. It improves balance and coordination. In Dan John's words, it "makes the body one piece".

Unless you're already an accomplished Olympic lifter, you won't need much weight at all to start with. Begin with the lightest bar you can find; a bare Olympic bar might be too heavy. Take the bar in a snatch grip -- hands spaced as wide as comfortably possible -- and fling it to arm's length overhead. Lock your elbows. Take a stance somewhat wider than shoulder width, with your toes pointed out a little bit further than you'd usually squat with. The wider stance and pointed-out toes should help you keep your torso upright, which reduces the load on the lower back and shoulders.

Now, keeping the bar roughly over your heels, squat down as far as possible, then stand up. This is one rep.

Your depth may be limited by your shoulder flexibility to start with. In order to keep your weight balanced, you'll have to rotate your arms back as your torso leans forward. Keep at it, striving for a little more depth each workout. Your shoulders will get more flexible -- and probably healthier.

Once you're accustomed to the exercise, a few light sets of overhead squats make an excellent full-body warmup.

• Overhead squats taught me a lot about squat form and really getting down into ATG territory. We discussed overhead squat form here.

Byron writes: Matt gave you the main tip, use a snatch width grip. For people over 6' tall this is usually about collar to collar. With a wide grip and medium stance, all you have to remember is keep your heels on the floor, go to full depth, and don't fall over. It is a unique exercise in that it will expose many different weaknesses, and correct them too.

Dan John, who is pretty much the poster boy for the overhead squat, talks about a coach he knows that requires throwers to do the OHSQ with bodyweight for 15 reps before they throw for his team. This of course would be a gold standard but once you learn the movement you should be able to move some weight. Dan John has OHS Qd 315, but then he snatched 314 at the time so he may have had a little more in him. I'd say as a rule of thumb, you should be able to OHSQ with about two thirds of your squat (olympic style squat, that is).

If you are going to overhead squat, bumper plates are optional but willingness to drop the weight is NOT. If you miss, or I should say WHEN you miss, push the weight away from you, don't try to lower it. If your shoulder flexibility isn't adequate to get rid of the bar behind you, you can't practice this exercise. I'd try getting rid of the bare bar a couple times to see if you can do it safely.

I can't figure out any way to do overhead squats in a power rack - if your grip is wide your fingers will be too close to the pins for safety, you could definitely smash a finger. I either take the bar out of squat stands and jerk it from behind the neck, or more often just snatch it.

You can also drop snatch the first one - take the bar out of the squat stands behind the neck with your snatch grip; dip at the knees and rebound to bump the bar off your shoulders, then very quickly drop and lock your arms, landing in a full squat. This is probably not the way to do it on your first day.