Where You're Sore Tells a Story

Coach Pendlay of Team MDUSA has been posting almost daily blogs lately. If you can't spend your time working with a full-time dedicated weightlifting coach then at least spend some time reading and watching videos from those coaches. Monday's post was titled "Where Does It Hurt?" and spoke about the idea that you could self monitor your lifts by where you were sore. This is something I've used when coaching and after sharing it a few times and getting some more questions I decided to write up a little more detailed explanation.

The idea is if I did any of these exercises the day before I can tell if my form was correct by decoding where I'm sore.

Front Squat

• Should feel your quads and butt
• Should not feel it in your back
• Most likely cause of back pain is your chest dropping during the lift.

Back Squat

• Should feel your butt and posterior chain (backs of legs)
• Should not feel your quads and back
• Most likely cause of quad soreness is rolling weight forward, dropping your chest and/or not sinking your butt all resulting in using your quads to stand up the weight.

Overhead Squat

• Should feel your butt and legs and a little shoulders
• Should not feel your back
• Most likely cause of back soreness is butt sticking out and dropping the chest.

Deadlift

• Should feel posterior chain
• Should not feel your quads or back
• Most likely cause is early opening of the hips (stripper deadlift)

Kettle Bell Swings

• Should feel in your butt, hips, posterior chain
• Should not feel in back or arms
• This one gives you warning signs quickly mid-workout. If your back begins hurting you are not keeping your hips stacked between your feet and chest. You have your butt sticking out and are using your lower back to move the kettle bell.

Power Cleans

• Should feel in posterior chain and traps
• Should not feel in back or biceps (from of your arms)
• If your biceps are sore after power cleaning then most likely you are doing something more like a reverse curl then a power clean. Keep your arms straight for as long as possible and get the bar moving with a powerful explosion of your hips not your arms.

Clean

• Should feel in posterior chain, traps, quads and butt
• Should not feel in back or biceps
• See Power Cleans

Snatch

• Should feel in posterior chain, traps and quads
• Should not feel in back or biceps
• See Power Cleans :)

Overhead Pressing

• Should feel in shoulders
• Should not feel in back
• If your back hurts the most likely cause is not keeping your hips stacked over your legs and shoulders stacked over hips. If you stick your butt out to complete a lift you aren't using the shoulders and pecs as this lifts are designed to strengthen.

There is a reoccurring theme here. If your back is on fire something isn't right. It could be a form issue or a strength issue. Maybe both. A few suggestions to strengthen your back- good mornings, glute ham raises, romanian deadlifts, stiff leg deadlifts, back extensions, shrugs and snatch grip deadlifts. Scroll through this article to find links to most of these exercises.

Lastly to truly get to the bottom of what you are doing video tape your lifts. Feel free to share video with me on Facebook or instagram and I'll do my best to help.