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Overhead

Your Overhead Squat Is Weak and Unstable

Coaching by Danny Lehr1:22

The fault

No solid overhead position under a loaded squat.

Why it happens

The overhead squat is the snatch catch held still. If you cannot own the position at a controlled tempo, you will not own it at the bottom of a max snatch.

The fix

Simple tips for establishing a solid position and correcting the common errors. This was the very first episode of The Lifting Fix, published 8 June 2015.

That's one fault. There are sixty-four.

The free fixes assume you already know roughly what you're doing and something specific is going wrong. Find it, fix it, get back to training. That's what they're for and they'll always be here.

The course is the other direction. It goes in order: the positions, how you move through them, the finish and the catch, then the faults that come out of each one. It's what I'd teach you from scratch, filmed properly instead of on a phone in the corner of a gym.

Thirteen modules in 1080p, plus a 16 page written companion you can read at the gym instead of watching.

Taught by Danny Lehr. Competed in Olympic weightlifting 2010 to 2019, won the 2019 Masters World Cup. Coached these lifts under Glenn Pendlay and Dave Spitz.

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Snatch Squats Overhead

About this fix

Originally published as "Get Stronger Overhead Squats", part of The Lifting Fix, the free weekly technique series Danny Lehr started filming over a decade ago. He gave every episode away then, and they are still free here. Danny Lehr competed in Olympic weightlifting from 2010 to 2019 and won the 2019 Masters World Cup. More about Danny Lehr.

Transcript

So we're going to talk about overhead squats and a really common fault and some easy ways to kind of fix that and adjust that. The biggest problem people have when they're squatting is levering, just losing their chest, dropping their chest and just disengaging with their shoulders. So see here as his chest is all forked, he's just cranking his bar behind him to stand up. Okay, stand all the way up.

So do a few reps like that. Oh no, he stands up and up. He might even at top hit it straight and it'll lower down and then disengage. Oh, all right.

Well, he's being a dirty, dirty chest dropper. All right, that's not good. So you want to keep your chest up. So what you're going to do is do it tight in his traps and then he's going to roll.

If you rotate his armpits forward, this is a nice strong overhead position. Now as you squat, his goal is to keep his chest up and that's going to be a much stronger position. A lot of times people think an overhead squat is the ability to hold the bar overhead. If the shoulder mobility is there, that's not the issue.

The issue is keeping the bar. keeping your chest up. Don't be a dirty chest dropper, keep your chest up and your overhead squat will get better. One thing you can do to work on that is front squat which will require you to keep an upright torso.

More overhead fixes

The Bar Finishes Out Front, Not Actually Overhead

Leaving the bar in front of the body and calling it locked out.

Your Scaps Are Loose Overhead

No upper back engagement supporting the bar overhead.

With Garret Fisher

You Cannot Find the Strong Overhead Position on Your Own

Not knowing what a reliable overhead position feels like when nobody is watching.

Want the rest of this category?

Every overhead fix I've filmed, one a day for five days, in the order I'd work through them with you. Not the order they got uploaded. The order that actually fixes it.

Plus the snatch pull checklist. One page, nine points, floor to hip.

Free, and these videos are free on this site whether you do this or not. This is just me putting them in the right order and sending them to you, so you don't have to guess where to start.

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