Sports (Athletes)

This ebook, An Alexander Technique Approach to Weightlifting (Working Out), is published on this website in a PDF format. It is very detailed and practical, and it will give you the physical tools you need to take the limits off of your ability to create the weightlifting technique you want without sacrificing your body.
This ebook is also for sale on all AMAZON websites in a KINDLE format.
Located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.A. (MOVEMENT THERAPY)

Squats are a free standing lift, and it is the standard lift that requires the most coordination, the most up in the body, and is the lift done with typically the worst misconceptions of what a good squat looks like. So, you place the bar on your shoulders, you squat, and then you stand back up. There are some basic rules that are taught in the weight room.

Here are the two that the Alexander Technique considers not good for the body. You look up or forwards into the mirror by arching your neck and back to stay on balance, and second women should take a narrower stance because their hips are different than men’s hips.

When you come to the weight rack to take the bar off of the rack onto your shoulders, first release your neck and lengthen your back to powerfully meet the added weight on your torso and legs. If you observe what the typical weightlifter does when he gets to the rack, as he squats down to get under the bar, he collapses his neck and he hunkers down in his torso to support the weight. He shortens his whole torso and he even sinks in his hips, knees, and ankle joints to support the weight. He goes down, as we say in the Alexander Technique to support the weight.

So, you’re standing at the bar before you go under it to take it off of the rack. You release your neck and you direct your head to powerfully lengthen your spine upwards. You place your hands on the bar, and then you pivot into a shallow squat to come under the bar, but you keep your neck and back in the same alignment, as if you were still vertical, but now you’re on a slight diagonal under the bar with your legs under you.

As you pivot over to come under the bar, you aren’t trying to look in the mirror by arching your head and neck backwards. When you don’t arch your neck backwards by arching your neck, then if your eyes are looking straight ahead as you pivot over, you will be looking at the bottom of the mirror.

Also, do NOT arch your back before you lift the bar. Your back is at its most powerful when you’re in a partial squat, knees slightly bent with a head, neck spine all the way to the sit bones as aligned as if you are vertical. When you arch your back to stay on balance with weight on your shoulders, you are putting incredible pressure on the back side of the spine (anterior side of the spine), rather than letting all of the vertebrae’s surfaces be parallel to each other, so that the weight distribution is equal across the disc’s whole surface. Your back is at its most powerful, when you pivot over without arching the spine.

You have the weight on your shoulders. You have backed up so you can squat. You take a fairly wide stance with the feet slightly turned out. You release your neck and really turn up the volume on a lengthening neck and back, at the moment you pivot the torso still leading up and over the hip joints from the sit bones to the top of the head in straight alignment. Simultaneously you release your knees and you trust your thigh muscles, which are getting longer, not shorter, to lower you as your knees go out over your feet.

When you bend your knees, the thigh muscles get longer, not shorter.