Read Video Text Below:
Hi, David Weck here. Today, I'm going to talk to you about how you can use your hands, yes, your hands to improve the way that you squat, the way that you can move.
First I want to define what I mean by your hands. I'm defining the hand as from the tip of the fingers all the way past elbow to the humerus. That is the hand because the way I can move my fingers involves muscles that originate at the humerus across the elbows. So that's your hands and there's a tie-in. We want to create this unification of the forearm through the fingers and the hands with simple formula (not easy, but simple) that will affect the tensional balance in the rest of my body. It's profound how effective this is once you tap into it and start to develop the strength.
So I have this concept that I call extreme isometrics. Extreme the extremities, that's hands and feet, and the intensity. It has to be a maximum voluntary contraction, you need to squeeze very, very hard isometrically to get the full benefit.
Here's how it works, simple formula and you'll be getting a lot more information on this in the future, but here's the precursor:
You flex the hand itself but you extend the fingers. Same rule applies for the feet, you want to learn how to flex the feet but extend the toes (Here's a foot strengthening exercise to help get you started). The reason is is that the muscles in the hands are in the hands, but there are no muscles in the fingers. It's all tendons and the muscles for the fingers are actually up in the forearm, originating in many cases from the humerus. When I flex the hand and I extend the fingers, I form this diamond position if I put them together. From that position, I want to extend them out like a cross. I want to create so much tension in here that I create a balance between the extensors of the forearm and the flexors of the forearm. I unify from past the elbow to the fingertips and that will have a tensional balance effect that will bypass the biceps and the triceps and will go to the big stuff (pecs, lats, traps, delts). I'll be able to create more relaxation and less need for postural support from the big muscles, so I'll be able to free them up by redistributing the tensional balance in the hands.
So here's how it works: I set that up and I do a counter rotation, my elbow is rotating backwards, my hand is rotating forwards and I'm seating the shoulders down as I maximize attention to the hands in that position. What I'm doing is I'm creating a shelf through my back. When the hand is here, I'm relieving the tension in the hand to the scapula. I want this triangle in the hands and the triangle in the shoulders to compete, which one is going to become the harder diamond. This is going to unify my back, it's going to make one clean shelf through the back. Then I tie in the abs and it will help me move my body up and down with greater efficiency.
By the way, we call this hand position a "C-Fist" here at WeckMethod. It's very similar to the CoreFist, but the fingers are now open rather than folded in.
So set into the cross position with the C-Fist. I'm going to have my feet at a 45 degree angle, I want this to be a complete neutral. I tie in both shoulders through the hands and I create that tensional balance. I'm packing in the tension as I go down into a squat. I use that to help me go down and feel that unification through the back. From here, I'm going to take my hands and bring them up overhead as high as I possibly can. I'm driving the knees out so that there's no collapse on that angle. That position and that tie-in will pattern a connection from my hands down to my hips that will reach the floor through a unified back. You'll feel incredible strength like it's effortless to move.
Think about this: when you set up on a leg press machine at the gym and you're buttressed against your sacrum, against the pad at the bottom of that leg press. You can put two thousand pounds on that thing and your friend can stand on it and you can press it because your legs are so strong when they have the leverage in the sacrum. Do a back squat and you're going to have to strip off all that weight and now you might be only doing three to four hundred pounds on a backsquat, compared to the sixteen hundred or two thousand you could do on a leg press because now the back has to transmit the load.
So a squat is not so much a complete leg exercise as much as it is a back exercise. The more structurally tied in the shoulders are to the spine and the pelvis through the back , the stronger your entire body is. This strategy, when you do it on a regular basis and you make those extreme isometrics very strong through a position of balance and strength unifies and creates a hand that's like a wing. Coming down into that squat makes you feel so tied in through the hips, its just easy. Out, down, hands up, and then come up.
Now, the really cool part about this is I've patterned muscle memory. The center of my body and my back can have the retention of this muscle memory which lets me set it and I don't need to go into that whole process with the hands. The motion with the hands was the link, the bridge into developing that strength isometrically. Developing that strength will allow me to use this postural setup for more things. I can amplify my acceleration, making me faster at slowing down and changing direction because now I take this mass and I've better connected the mass out at the hands to the mass in the center. I've controlled it all through a unified back.
So that is a WeckMethod C-Fist squatting exercise using the extreme isometrics that we teach. When you do it, you will feel a dramatic difference.
*Here's a word to the wise: at first, it might not be easy to find the position. Some of our master trainers have taken several weeks to just get to where you can extend the fingers and flex the hand. Many people will be able to differentiate flexing the hand and extending the fingers. Flexing the hands often flexes the fingers and that won't create the tensional balance we need through that shape. It takes perseverance to get that. For those of you out there who are super motivated to take your movement to the next level, think of it as a diamond. It's a centered diamond. This is the position where you know you will have it, fingers will be spread just a little bit. Have your wrists at your true neutral with a slight level of extension. The angle of neutral comes from when we used to carry sticks. A straight wrist is not a neutral wrist, whereas the CoreFist, C-Fist and holding onto a stick will give you that neutral wrist. Get strong through that position, it takes time to develop the position, though some people get it right away. Get that position and then employ it. Everything triangulates to greater strength. Check it out for yourself, ask me questions and stay tuned for more tips
