Breathing, Bracing and Spinal Stability

Your back is a lever

When you squat, you use your legs to generate power, and you carry the load on your shoulders. What is between the two?

Your back.

To effectively transfer that power from your legs to the bar, and to prevent injury to your spine, you need to stabilize your back, making it a rigid, strong lever. I like to address spinal stability in two regions: the thoracic, or upper back and lumbar, or lower back.

Upper Back – Scapula Stability

When discussing back stabilization, the lower back often gets all the love, and for good reason. The risk of injury is greater in the lumbar portion of the spine, particularly if you lift excessive weight with poor form. Overlooking the upper back, however, reduces the effectiveness of your lifts.

When you perform the power squat, or low bar squat, the loaded bar rests on your shoulders and across your back. To effectively stabilize the bar and transfer power to it, you need a strong, stable upper back. Let’s look at an example.

Say you are digging a hole, and you have broken the handle to your shovel. You are very strong. You don’t have a wooden handle to replace it, but you have some plastic piping handy, which is about the same size. You decide to replace the broken handle with the plastic pipe rather than drive to the hardware store for a proper handle (yet). As you start to dig, you find the plastic flexes and bows as you dig, and you can only scoop up very small bits of dirt, and cannot cut into the fresh sod at all. You shortly find yourself headed to the hardware store for a strong, rigid handle.

You want your upper back rigid and stable, like the proper handle/lever. I use two steps to maximize stability in the upper back:

• Grip width: When you set up for the squat, bring your hands in as close to your shoulders as your mobility allows. A closer grip naturally tightens your upper back. Keep in mind that it will put more strain on your shoulders and elbows, use caution if you have pre-existing issues with either joint.
• Scapula position: Bring your shoulder blades down like you’re trying to tuck them into your back pockets. As you set up, once you position the bar on your back and before unracking, push yourself into the bar, squeeze it tightly, and pull your shoulder blades down as hard as you can. Hold them tight from the moment that you unrack until your set is over and you’ve re-racked the weight. After bracing and before starting each rep (see the next section), retighten even more by pulling your shoulder blades down again.

[Add video of bracing scapula]

Note: Try to keep your shoulder blades tight the entire time the bar is on your back. I see a lot of lifters loosen their shoulder blades allowing the bar to rise as they breath in, then pulling it back down as they brace – keep it tight and keep the bar in place as you breath in.

Lower Back – Breathing and Bracing

Your lower back, as a lifter, is a vulnerable link in your strength chain. It is heavily used in all of your lower body training and to lift big you need to keep it healthy. Additionally, a strong and stable core transfers the power from your legs effectively to the loaded bar on your shoulders (through your thoracic region, as described above, of course).

Lumbar stability is created in two parts, breathing and bracing. When done well you create intra-abdominal pressure (you build up pressure within your gut) that effectively stabilizes your spine from within. I break this process down into a series of steps.

• Breath as much air as you can into your stomach. Now you’re not modeling for the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, you don’t need to suck in your gut when you squat…even if you’re a world famous insta-model. Let the air fill and expand your midsection. Note: When many lifters breath in, I see the bar rise; that tells me they are forcing the air into their chest – this will not allow you to brace as effectively as filling your gut does.
• Brace your stomach just like you are preparing for a punch in the gut.
• Force your diaphragm, pushing the pressure into your stomach. Push down on your diaphragm down just like you do when you’re sitting on the toilet trying to push a turd out (don’t actually push a turd out, that would be gross, and upset your spotter). This trick is not really widely taught, but can greatly increase your intra-abdominal pressure, and core stability.

[Add video of breathing and bracing]

It is important that you go through the steps to breath and brace before you start every rep. If you are trying to breath in as you are descending you have failed – you are not going to pack very much air into your gut nor brace effectively.

Note: above 5 reps the weight is usually light enough to relax your breathing and bracing technique somewhat in favor of getting more oxygen into your body so you don’t die. When doing high rep sets I usually start breathing in as I descend and out as I come up without stopping to reset for each one.

It is also important to breath and brace to un-rack the weight just as you do for each repetition. It make your set up much cleaner, and the weight will feel lighter coming out of the rack, giving you greater confidence.

When should you exhale?

If you exhale suddenly and uncontrolled during a repetition, you will lose core stability just as suddenly. This is a very bad thing with heavy weight on your back. You will fail. If, however, you hold your breath and exhale suddenly at the top of the rep you will feel light headed and see stars.

If you’ve ever seen anyone pass out after an intense set, they are likely managing their breathing poorly. Now you’re not going to run out of oxygen during one rep (or one set), however lifting heavy things affects your blood pressure. As you lift, your blood pressure increases. When you finish, it drops. Holding your breath during the rep will intensify the increase. Holding it until lockout then suddenly releasing it will cause it to plummet. Stars. Blackness. The floor.

Think of exhaling as a safety valve, bleeding off that extra pressure. Hold your breath and bracing through the descent and the rebound. Once you have upward momentum and have passed the sticking point, begin bleeding off pressure by snaking the air out through your teeth with a ‘tss’, just like you’re saying the letter ‘s’. This should be done in a very controlled manner while maintaining a tight core and intra-abdominal pressure. Complete your exhale as you lock out.

You’ll find that once you get these two techniques down, and lift with a stable, rigid back, the bar weight feels much lighter even coming out of the rack.