The ladies came together gathering around the central pillar in our weight room to receive feedback from our strength & conditioning staff regarding the outcome of their mission.  They circled up standing shoulder to shoulder while their hands were still covered in chalk and sweat still pouring down their faces.  They look eagerly towards us awaiting to receive their mission outcome.  We make it a habit to debrief the team and the individual leader for every session (or evolution) we lead our athletes through.  In this session, Whitney stood proudly in front of her teammates having lead her squad through the 60 minutes of challenging feats of strength & power.

“Give it up to Whitney for having the courage to lead the team today”, I command.  The teammates hoot and holler while applauding and acknowledging Whitney’s trial of fire through our leadership program.

“Let’s Debrief.  Whitney, give your teammates one thing they did well today and one thing they need to improve on before our next session.” I said.  She turned to her teammates and commented that her squad did a great job communicating coaching cues to each other while navigating through a new lift, consisting of new exercises.  I nod my head while listening to her.

Whitney then addressed that the team needed to do a better job at hustling from one exercise to another.  I paused as I listened to the words Whitney was saying.   “Their were moments where I was coaching you to jog from one side of the weight room to the other and not every single athlete was responding”.

I affirmed her statement by nodding along as she was recalling the tough and physically challenging 60 minute session.  I held a long pause, to draw the team’s focus, before moving along.  “Teammates!  Give your team leader one thing she did well today and one thing she needs to improve on before her next opportunity to lead.” I asked the team.

The teammates were quick to respond on Whitney’s ability to to “see the room” and offer vigorous partner coaching to every single one of them.  Tonya, one of Whitney’s teammates, quickly added “Although I wasn’t Whitney’s partner during this lift, she was always pushing me to do better; even while she was struggling through an exercise, her focus was on improving her teammates.”

“Tonya, You’re absolutely right” I said.  I scanned the team and made individual eye contact for a few moments with every athlete.  “What’s one thing she can improve on before her next leading opportunity?” I inquired.  The team fell silent and soon after, the eye contact strayed.

“If you’re too afraid of hurting someone’s feelings, you’ll never be confident in your ability to lead” I said.  I attempted to get the ball rolling by addressing our fundamental strength & conditioning belief.

‘”Whitney, you’re responsibility is to make sure our teammates accomplish the mission.  Your mission today was to ensure every athlete abide by our four weight room standards.  You identified that several of your teammates did not respond to you coaching.  Their response falls upon your ability to lead; as its your sole responsibility to complete the mission.”

She responded with an affirming nod and continued to listen.

“Use my staff to help communicate your message.  If you see teammates not responding to your command, confront the teammate to walk in lock-stop.  I promise you that I’ll back you 100% during the session.” She again nodded understandingly.

I asked the rest of my staff to contribute their feedback regarding what they witnessed during the lift.  In an instructed and educated manner, they sandwich their responses to the team of athletes.  They start by reinforcing  or praising a few positive elements of the session.  Our staff then follows the positive reinforcement with future-oriented instruction that identifies elements of the lift where the athlete could improve.  My team then encourages them with motivational praise ergo conveying our confidence in their ability to perform the skill correctly.

“What are we saying today” I enthusiastically command as I reach my clutched fist into the middle of the circle.  “Shocks on three”, Whitney responded.  In a violent eruption Whitney yells out “one, two, three” .  The team roars will a loud and defining “SHOCKS!” 

It’s all in a days work, and coincidentally, it all transpires in final moments of each session.  I believe these last 5 minutes allow for the greatest growth of an athlete.  Perhaps, more importantly, it allows for the greatest opportunity for the growth of a leader.

As strength coaches our number one priority should be preventing injury. No matter how strong or fast we can make our athletes, it is useless if they’re sitting on the bench due to an injury. I know there are many facets that we cannot control once the athlete is in the game. However, there are a number of things we can do in our training environment to “better the chances” that our athlete won’t get injured during their competition. Even more, each year one out of 100 high school female athletes and one of 10 college female athletes experiences an ACL injury. This is crazy, isn’t it? At our training facility we have a majority of the female teams and to personally think that one out of every ten women who walk through our door will have an ACL injury – outrageous.

Based on the data provided by the NCAA, we know that approximately 2,000 female athletes are expected to tear their ACL. What the means is that generally females have 8x the chance of ACL injuries compared to men. You might be asking, how the hell is this happening? Beside all the physiological differences between men & women, one of the biggest components may be the lack of hamstring strength. The NCAA also cited that an ACL surgery costs the university approximately $25,000 to repair. Can you imagine that? Not only does the athlete lose their playing season, a possible scholarship, but in a matter of a second we could cost a university $25,000. (1,2) Damn.

So we got to ask ourselves; what are we doing to stop this (or at least lower the rate of occurrences)? I can tell you a number of things what we’re doing, but if you’re up on your literature, it should come as no surprise.

Deep Front Squat.

Let’s first take a look at what usually happens when a female athlete first steps through our doors. Most will come in being extremely quad dominant. This is no surprise as the majority of their athlete careers they were probably running & jumping, kicking and all other sorts of knee dominant movements. This is great that they’re extremely strong through their quads, but whenever we tested their hamstring strength in relation to their quad strength, they’re hamstring was extremely significantly weaker.

As we know through research, the balance of power and recruitment between the quads and hamstrings is one of the most important factors of knee stability in sport. As I already stated the ratio of Q/H (Quad to Hamstring) in female athletes tend to favor more quadriceps strength than hamstrings. The difference between men & women is that women tend to be more quad dominant meaning on knee dominant exercises, females tend to engage the hamstrings first which increases stress on the ACL (1,2,3,4,5).

So the article is named, “Let’s Get Our Female Athletes Squatting Again”. With that said, now is time to start discussing what we’re doing to try to increase hamstring strength and improve that Q/H ratio. With our athletes it’s important to ensure that we’re doing everything we can to get better hamstring and glute activation and work. Whether it is the glute/ham, bodyweight hamstring negatives, leg curls, Romanian deadlifts, glute bridges, swiss-ball hamstring curls, mini-band adduction/abduction walks, etc. We make sure to use them ALL.

However, when we approach “selling” the squat to female athletes, there always seems to be some hesitation. “I don’t want my butt to get bigger”, “I don’t want to look like those women bodybuilders”,
“I only want to look toned”. Whatever the excuse may be, it’s our job to sell the squat like its the million dollar cure that is going to change their world. How can we do that? Proper queuing, coaching, psychology.

Deep Back Squat

Now at this point you might be following me and the article but is wondering about “Why Squats”. I know there are 100 ways to skin a cat and certainly a squat is merely “one tool in our toolbox”, but based on the photos provided, look at how much total muscle activation/work the squat accomplishes. The way we instruct squats is a wide stance (as research has shown to get better glute work) with intense verbal queuing to sit back, sit back, sit back (to engage more hamstring). If we’re looking for even more glute work we’ll throw a mini-band around the knees to get more RNT (Reactive Neuromuscular Training) which will slightly adduct the knees into a valgus position “queuing” the the glute med to “turn on” to abduct those knees into neutral alignment, essentially flipping the switch that allows for more glute med work.

So that is it folks. I will by no mean say that I’m an expert at this. I have probably bastardized so many concepts that it isn’t funny. However, I will say I know simply enough to be dangerous. All joking aside, whether my research, writing skills, or communication capability lacks a bit, I can say that since we focused heavily on improving the posterior chain in our female athletes, our ACL injury rate has decreased dramatically. Like I said in the beginning, it’s our job to make sure we’re doing everything we can to prevent injury in our athletes. Whether you want to include squats in your program is ultimately up to you, but you cannot neglect adding posterior chain exercises in your programming to prevent ACL injuries.

1. Adams, Erik, M.D., Ph.D., An Increased Risk of ACL Rupture in Female Athletes. Midwest Institute of Sports Medicine, Epidemiology, 2002.

2. Griffen, Letha Y., M.D., Better Understanding of ACL Injury Prevention. The NCAA News, October 2000.

3. Boden, Barry, M.D., Letha Griffin, M.D., Ph.D. and William Garrett Jr., M.D., Ph.D., Etiology and Prevention of Non-contact ACL Injury. The Physician and Sportsmedicine, v28, 4, April 2000.

4. Courdes, Laura, For Women, ACL Tears All Too Common. The DePauw.com, December 1999.

5. Mannie, Ken and Tim Wakeham, Strength Training for Female Athletes. Coach and Athletic Director, v70, 5, December 2000.

As strength coaches our number one priority should be preventing injury. No matter how strong or fast we can make our athletes, it is useless if they’re sitting on the bench due to an injury. I know there are many facets that we cannot control once the athlete is in the game. However, there are a number of things we can do in our training environment to “better the chances” that our athlete won’t get injured during their competition. Even more, each year one out of 100 high school female athletes and one of 10 college female athletes experiences an ACL injury. This is crazy, isn’t it? At our training facility we have a majority of the female teams and to personally think that one out of every ten women who walk through our door will have an ACL injury – outrageous.

Based on the data provided by the NCAA, we know that approximately 2,000 female athletes are expected to tear their ACL. What the means is that generally females have 8x the chance of ACL injuries compared to men. You might be asking, how the hell is this happening? Beside all the physiological differences between men & women, one of the biggest components may be the lack of hamstring strength. The NCAA also cited that an ACL surgery costs the university approximately $25,000 to repair. Can you imagine that? Not only does the athlete lose their playing season, a possible scholarship, but in a matter of a second we could cost a university $25,000. (1,2) Damn.

So we got to ask ourselves; what are we doing to stop this (or at least lower the rate of occurrences)? I can tell you a number of things what we’re doing, but if you’re up on your literature, it should come as no surprise.

Deep Front Squat.

Let’s first take a look at what usually happens when a female athlete first steps through our doors. Most will come in being extremely quad dominant. This is no surprise as the majority of their athlete careers they were probably running & jumping, kicking and all other sorts of knee dominant movements. This is great that they’re extremely strong through their quads, but whenever we tested their hamstring strength in relation to their quad strength, they’re hamstring was extremely significantly weaker.

As we know through research, the balance of power and recruitment between the quads and hamstrings is one of the most important factors of knee stability in sport. As I already stated the ratio of Q/H (Quad to Hamstring) in female athletes tend to favor more quadriceps strength than hamstrings. The difference between men & women is that women tend to be more quad dominant meaning on knee dominant exercises, females tend to engage the hamstrings first which increases stress on the ACL (1,2,3,4,5).

So the article is named, “Let’s Get Our Female Athletes Squatting Again”. With that said, now is time to start discussing what we’re doing to try to increase hamstring strength and improve that Q/H ratio. With our athletes it’s important to ensure that we’re doing everything we can to get better hamstring and glute activation and work. Whether it is the glute/ham, bodyweight hamstring negatives, leg curls, Romanian deadlifts, glute bridges, swiss-ball hamstring curls, mini-band adduction/abduction walks, etc. We make sure to use them ALL.

However, when we approach “selling” the squat to female athletes, there always seems to be some hesitation. “I don’t want my butt to get bigger”, “I don’t want to look like those women bodybuilders”,
“I only want to look toned”. Whatever the excuse may be, it’s our job to sell the squat like its the million dollar cure that is going to change their world. How can we do that? Proper queuing, coaching, psychology.

Deep Back Squat

Now at this point you might be following me and the article but is wondering about “Why Squats”. I know there are 100 ways to skin a cat and certainly a squat is merely “one tool in our toolbox”, but based on the photos provided, look at how much total muscle activation/work the squat accomplishes. The way we instruct squats is a wide stance (as research has shown to get better glute work) with intense verbal queuing to sit back, sit back, sit back (to engage more hamstring). If we’re looking for even more glute work we’ll throw a mini-band around the knees to get more RNT (Reactive Neuromuscular Training) which will slightly adduct the knees into a valgus position “queuing” the the glute med to “turn on” to abduct those knees into neutral alignment, essentially flipping the switch that allows for more glute med work.

So that is it folks. I will by no mean say that I’m an expert at this. I have probably bastardized so many concepts that it isn’t funny. However, I will say I know simply enough to be dangerous. All joking aside, whether my research, writing skills, or communication capability lacks a bit, I can say that since we focused heavily on improving the posterior chain in our female athletes, our ACL injury rate has decreased dramatically. Like I said in the beginning, it’s our job to make sure we’re doing everything we can to prevent injury in our athletes. Whether you want to include squats in your program is ultimately up to you, but you cannot neglect adding posterior chain exercises in your programming to prevent ACL injuries.

1. Adams, Erik, M.D., Ph.D., An Increased Risk of ACL Rupture in Female Athletes. Midwest Institute of Sports Medicine, Epidemiology, 2002.

2. Griffen, Letha Y., M.D., Better Understanding of ACL Injury Prevention. The NCAA News, October 2000.

3. Boden, Barry, M.D., Letha Griffin, M.D., Ph.D. and William Garrett Jr., M.D., Ph.D., Etiology and Prevention of Non-contact ACL Injury. The Physician and Sportsmedicine, v28, 4, April 2000.

4. Courdes, Laura, For Women, ACL Tears All Too Common. The DePauw.com, December 1999.

5. Mannie, Ken and Tim Wakeham, Strength Training for Female Athletes. Coach and Athletic Director, v70, 5, December 2000.