Professional Eagles - Why We Circle You While We Coach

Have you ever noticed how much our coaches are walking around on the floor during your training session? There’s more to it than us just getting our steps in! We are actively looking at different angles of your movement to watch different “checkpoints” on the body. For example, when you squat we can see different movement breakdown depending on whether we are looking from the front (anterior), back (posterior), or side (laterally). If we can’t move around and have to pick one spot, you’ll notice we tend to stand at a 45 degree angle, because it's the best combination of all angles. When in the right spot, we look at a few different things: 

• Where your center of gravity is (the center point of your body’s mass) as it relates to how the bar or weight is moving

• What the angle of your joints are at the point of movement, specifically:

  • Ankles

  • Knees

  • Hips

  • Spine

  • Shoulders

  • Neck

• Speed of the movement overall - how fast you are moving or control the movement tells us a lot about how fatigued you are

• Overall fatigue signs, breathing, facial expression, shaking, etc.

Any change in these points outside of good biomechanics results in an automatic interpretation of “movement breakdown”. Not all breakdown is an immediate stop, but movement breakdown at all means something IS going wrong. Whether it is your form - which is coachable - or it is weakness/imbalance - which is trainable - we will always call out when something can be improved to reduce the chance of injury and maximize we are always looking to perfect your movement in the skills you execute in the gym. Higher levels of control means more strength gains over time, and more strength means high quality of life. This means that we will sometimes stop you when you need to make a fix, but we also must balance your goals with how fast you can acquire the skill of each lift, so we master what we can within a reasonable progression timeline, and then vary that skill to expose you to something a little bit different. In this way, the coach will always see movement breakdown, since you’ll always be learning something new in the long run! 

 We put a lot of emphasis on the squat, so let’s break down those checkpoints for what we are looking for so you have an example. This next section is directly from our Method Standards Trainer Handbook, the baseline for how we teach the squat. We break down movement coaching into how we “Teach” it, what we “See”, and how to “Correct” any breakdowns we see. This is a basic outline, there is a lot more to Teach, See, and Correct, but you can learn what our trainers learn when they first come in! Read through it and let your trainer know if you have any questions!

METHOD TRAINER HANDBOOK

SQUAT PATTERNS

Knee Dominant Structural Loading

TEACH

Set-up:

• Feet Shoulder Width Apart, angled 15-30 degrees outwards

• Fully engaging foot/ankle complex; weight even in feet, engaged arches

• Slight external rotation of knee

• Trunk braced

Execution: 

• Initiate squat with slight hip hinge

• Hips move back and down while knees move over toes

• Maintenance of foot and neutral spine throughout movement

• Knees in line with toes

• Descend as low as possible while maintaining lumbar positioning

SEE

Lateral View 

• Spinal curvature maintained throughout, regardless of angle of back 

• Weight evenly distributed in the foot and ankle complex stability maintained throughout movement

• Initiate movement with hips moving back and down as the knees move in line over the toes

• Center of gravity maintained over the mid-foot

Anterior/Posterior View

• Weight evenly distributed in the foot and lateral ankle complex stability maintained

• Shoulder/hip transverse planes parallel to each other throughout movement

CORRECT

External/Environmental Cues

• Band around ankles; low position: Pulls feet into pronation. By engaging arches and full foot/ankle complex, creates tension through the floor that radiates up to the knee. You will often observe a tibial external rotation, and clients may remark on added feeling of stability.

• Band around knees: Pulls knees into valgus. Can be used after a client learns to engage the arches independently. By engaging hip complex and foot/ankle complex simultaneously, clients will learn what appropriate knee positioning on the descent of a squat feels like. 

• Band around stomach: Trunk feedback to help someone learn appropriately bracing their core

Verbal Cueing

• “Engage the arches of the feet” or “Make a tent with the feet”: Asks the client to create even foot pressure. Use in combination with the band around the ankles for proprioceptive cuing.

• “Drive the knees out”: Some version of this is often used to correct the problem that is also solved by the band around ankles. However, sometimes clients can drive the knees out a little further to allow for sufficient external rotation of the femur to allow for hip complex to drop even further. May require a wider stance, but when executed WITH foot/ankle complex cueing can often get people into a lower squat without spinal position breakdown.

• “Chest up/Proud Chest/Show your logo”: This is a cue to address spinal angle relative to the hips, or to address thoracic curvature in the squat. The goal of this cue is to maintain thoracic curvature throughout the movement, which influences center of gravity. This is even more important under load, especially the front squat or goblet squat, which tax thoracic extension.

• “Don’t squeeze through your hips at the top” / “Don’t push your hips forward”: This helps correct any excess glute engagement which creates too much hip extension and subsequent posterior tilt at the top of the movement. Maintenance of anterior pelvic tilt is