Getting My Squat Confidence Back After Incident

purple99 · September 23, 2016, 5:45pm

Hi Guys,

I’m new on here and don’t know if I’m doing this correct so bare with me!

I just wondered if any of you have some good pointers to building back my squatting confidence after a mishap I had a few months ago. Not sure if this has happened to anyone else or not but I was setting a new Single PR, walked the bar out no probs and went down into the squat and came back up. During the final few inches of lockout the bar took me forward and literally crashed down over my head onto the safety racks. I train alone but in a good rack at home. I wasn’t injured or anything but I found the whole incident quite daunting and its really put me off squatting heavy recently.

I think I failed the lockout as I was too concerned with walking/getting the bar back into the rack. I must have started the walk back in before properly completing the lift and lost balance and the bar took over. On a few previous lifts I was really starting to have to struggle to walk/waddle the bar back in also with all my energy going into the actual squat.

Does anyone have any tips on rebuilding my confidence with it again and not worrying about getting it back into the rack? Also on how to build strength in the walk out/In?

Any feedback at all would be really appreciated as my lack of squatting has hit my Deadlift pretty hard also.

Cheers

jbackos · September 23, 2016, 6:13pm

A few comments are in order:

You need to analyze your form closely by a coach or have someone film you so you can see what you’re doing. You seem to be falling forward which reveals a number of possibilities (weak back, weak core, weak hamstrings, glutes, calves, etc.). If form is OK then a heavy weight will make you fail in position. Big time work on technique with lighter weight first then proceed to strengthen the posterior chain and the core.
As for not being able to walkout and walk back in, you need to practice walking with weight. Take 50 lbs over your heaviest weight for the day and walk out, hold for 10-30 seconds, then walk back in. You could also place 100 lbs over your heaviest weight in a high rack position and just stand up with it then put it back down. After a few months of this, no training weight will ever fuck with your head again.

So much for the technical stuff, now I’ll break your balls. Why are you maxing in the gym?? There is absolutely no reason to risk injury when there is no trophy on the line. If you need to test yourself, you need to figure out the transfer you get from a triple or a five. Im now coming back from a looooong layoff but I know from past experience that 30 lbs over my best triple is a safe bet in the squat, 45 in the deadlift and 20 in the raw bench. This is how I used to determine by meet second attempt. When I was active in the sport from 1990 to 2007 I never took a max single in any of the three lifts. A single would mean that I missed a double or felt off on that day’s double. Study Coan who never maxed in the gym and When I trained under Steve Scialpi he had me no heavier than 60% for a ton of volume until 5 weeks out I got just as strong training like that-don’t need to kill yourself.

Next as for the mental shit, just grow hair on your nuts. Getting under big weight is serious business and you need to get that fear out of your head or your fucked. I fell once in the rack with 725 while doing 1/2 squats off the pins, and five minutes later I got right back under the bar.

Good luck to you.