Starting Strength

the posterior muscles we are trying to keep tight so that we can use them to drive the hips up. The first time you do this experiment will convince you that looking down is more efficient.

    Figure 2-15. Blocking the hips to learn the effect of eye gaze direction. An upward-directed gaze quite effectively diminishes the ability to use the posterior chain during the drive up from the bottom.

    Looking at the floor also provides the eyes with a fixed position reference. Using this reference, you can easily identify any deviation from the correct movement pattern and adjust it as it happens. The ceiling also provides a reference, but the neck position is unsafe, and anything you’re looking at upward will be farther away than the floor when you’re at the bottom of the squat. It’s hard to imagine a room in which the floor isn’t closer to the eyes than the ceiling is; the floor is therefore more useful as a reference – smaller movements can be detected against the closer point.
    Most people will have more trouble with this change in their eye gaze direction than with any other aspect of this squatting method. To correct the error of looking up, fix your eyes on a position on the floor 4 or 5 feet in front of you. If you’re training close to a wall, find a place to look at that is low on the wall and results in the same neck position. Stare at this point, and get used to looking at it so that it requires no conscious effort. Most people, if they are looking down, will not raise their heads to the point where neck position is affected. Inventive coaches have used tennis balls for the purpose of demonstrating a chin-down, chest-up position ( Figure 2-16 ).

    Figure 2-16. A tennis ball can teach the correct chin/neck relationship.

    Adding the bar
     
    Now you’re ready to squat. You have already been in the position you will go to at the bottom, and now you’re just going back down there with the bar. First, chalk your hands. Chalk is always a good idea because it dries out the skin. Dry skin is less prone to folding and abrasion than moist skin and therefore is less prone to problem callus formation. If the weight room is not equipped with chalk, bring your own. If the gym complains, change gyms.
    The squat begins at the power rack or the squat stands, whichever is available. Set the rack height so that the bar in the rack is at about the level of your mid-sternum. Many people will perceive this as too low, but it’s better to be a little low taking the bar out of the rack than to have to tiptoe back into the rack with a heavy weight. Often, this position in the empty rack will look low because the diameter of the bar sitting in the hooks tells the eye a different story about its true height in the rack. When the bar is placed in the rack, the eye will be more comfortable with the setting. And remember, we are placing the bar in a lower position than the top of the traps, so you’ll need the rack lower than you think. You’d rather have the rack set a little too low than a little too high, and most people are not as tall as they think they are. Most people will want to use a position in the rack that is too high. If your shoulders are not flexible enough to assume the low-bar position at first, they should stretch out over a couple of weeks.
    Face the bar. Always an empty bar at first. ALWAYS. There will be plenty of time very soon to add weight. Take an even grip on the bar, measured from the markings placed on the bar for this purpose. A standard power bar has 16–17 inches between the ends of the outside knurl, and 32 inches between the finger marks, those one-eighth-inch gaps in the knurl indicating a legal bench-press grip. Grip width for the squat will obviously vary with shoulder width and flexibility, but in general, the hands will be between these two markings on this type of bar. A narrower grip allows a flexible person to better support the bar with the posterior muscles of the shoulders when the elbows are lifted, and a wider grip allows an inflexible person to get more comfortable under the bar. In either case, a narrower grip tightens your shoulder muscles so that the bar is supported by muscle and doesn’t dig into your back.

    Figure 2-17. A comparison of wide and narrow grips. Note the difference in tightness of the upper back muscles and the resulting difference in bar support potential.

The thumbs should be placed on top of the bar so that the wrists can be held in a straight line with