Dave, our prayers are with you for a speedy recovery!! God Bless You and Laree
Reprinted with kind permission from Laree and Dave Draper (thanks guys!)
From Dave Draper’s IronOnline Health and Fitness Data Base
The overhead squat is a demanding, but rewarding, whole-body exercise. It builds strength and flexibility in the shoulders and core, espeically 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.
- Dan John has written a famous overhead squat article.
- 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.
[Editors Note: This exercise must be respected due to its complexity and the stretch in the shoulders. This article is the best description of the physicality of the movement I have ever scene. That said, I want to encourage you to do this movement if you have bad shoulders. I am of the school of thought that says the only way to strengthen a weak link is to place it under stress, carefully and regularly. In short, use this to improve shoulder strength, range of motion, balance and overall body unity. Just be careful and go as light as you need to avoid pain.]
[Editors Note Number Two: Here is an excellent video from YouTube. You will notice the difficulty the lifter is having. This is not because he is weak or inexperienced. The lift is just that damn hard.
I think the video is instructive for several reasons. One, it shows you the risks involved when a weight is overhead. Two, it shows you both the right and wrong way to get rid of a weight, or "dump" it, should you get in trouble. You will notice that one of the first bailouts failed miserably, hitting the the lifter in the back of the head with the bar. That was the wrong way to dump a weight. Other than that, the lifter dumps the weight safely. Three, it shows the value of rubber bumper plates as well as the value of a solid lifting platform. You really need to have access to both if you are going to do this movement safely.]
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Hey! Thank you so much for posting this. I’m 4 years late but better late than never, right?
It’s taken me a long time to do the “Asian Squat” or “ATG” squat. I injured my knees a year or two ago and since then lost the ability for some reason to do the traditional Western squat. So I had to relearn how to squat. I still have problems using the full heels down squat/Asian squat as a resting position, but it’s getting there.
My shoulder mobility has also been pretty awful due to using the computer so much for so many years. But I’ve been working on that too.
I found this article today while doing searches online for shoulder joint exercises and full squats…and here’s the gold mine
I’m not a lifter and don’t even use weights. I think for flexibility and functionality and strength, though, you can get benefits from this even without weights. I just use a walking stick or my old staff from karate (it’s about 8 pounds – iron rod through the center), and hold that like a bar to get my shoulders in the lockout position.
The first thing I noticed is that doing this overhead squat, with my shoulders locked out with the walking stick or staff instead of just doing a ‘normal’ ATG squat without paying attention much to where my arms were…is the hamstring activation. Wow. It’s incredible. It makes the squat feel like a completely different movement.
I was doing “shoulder dislocates,” by the way, as a flexibility/prehabilitative exercise, and so I thought the positioning of the shoulders with the bar in the overhead squat was perfect. It all just clicked when I did it just now.
I think I’ll be adding these to my list of essential exercises. I do all bodyweight exercises, and I like using full ranges of motion. This overhead squat makes perfect sense in so many ways.
I’m just really psyched about this
I think it’s a huge mistake to focus on strength alone and neglect range of motion and full body functionality. Joint mobility is hugely important. Exercises like these seem to be the best by far.
Yeah…really REALLY excited. Thank you again so much for sharing!
Thank you for stopping by!
This is a tough exercise, and one that I would not recommend with an actual barbell unless you have a good way to dump the weight should you need to, and do so without destroying a big screed TV in the process. In other words, you need a solid floor, ideally a lifting platform, a large room with plenty of free space around you, and bumper plates if you are going to add weight to the bar. This is just not an ideal exercise to do in your bedroom or living room, unless you can get by with using just a stick or a cane. Great post, and thanks again.