Active Hip 2.0: The Directors' Cut

[stef]

"...active hip is best understood as the use of an actively locked lumbar extension and actively shoved-out knees, which results in a below-parallel squat that incorporates a stretch reflex using all the muscles of the posterior chain in the most optimal way possible. The active hip gets the thighs out of the way of the pelvis so good depth can be more easily obtained. At the same time it makes the squat stronger because of the now-active use of the external rotators holding the femurs out so that both external rotators and adductors can contribute to hip extension. This produces a more effective use of more muscles over a wider range of motion."

Full article (http://startingstrength.com/articles/active_hip_2_rippetoe.pdf)

Resources page (http://startingstrength.com/index.php/site/resources)

[IWillLiveFreeOrDie]

I love reading these articles. They never fail to provide a new way to look at a familiar problem.

From reading the books, and the myriad posts on this board, I knew that shoving my knees out would better enable me to squat more effectively. When the weight gets heavy, I find it difficult to keep my knees shoved out on the way down. However, I find it even more difficult on the way up if I didn't keep my knees shoved out on the way down.

The bourbon has me rambling, but the gist is this article reinforces the necessity of keeping your knees shoved out while squatting.

Thanks for the additional insight,
Sean

[Hc2Mike]

Another great article!... seems I've read it before somewhere?

[simonsky]

just curious as to how i may know if i have the kinesthetic sense "to get my erector muscles to contract to arch my lower back with no tension from the
hamstrings interfering?"

[Mark Rippetoe]

If you know how to voluntarily arch your lower back, and can do so hard enough to make it start to cramp, you're performing the contraction properly.

[ZHarris]

Coach,

Another great article that helped me immensely, thank you. I had a problem with my lower back arching. I tried doing a ton of stretches and nothing seemed to work. After reading the article, I just shoved my knees out as hard as I could and had NO problems maintaining the arch and I even jumped up about 20 lbs yesterday on my squat with no issues. It actually felt a bit lighter. Anyway, thanks again, keep the info coming.

[caseyd123]

I'm no lifting coach, but I have taught the lifts out of the book/dvd/forum to about 4 of my friends/siblings and one thing that seems to work is to tell them to stop trying to be nice to the weight and do it with a mean streak. This works best with the knees out problem with the squat and the jump in the power clean.

I can say "keep your knees out" but SHOVING introduces the violent, aggressiveness of the movement and is a great cue that registers as 'hey this is some important shit' and once you start consistently doing it, you never even think of going back to knees in

Great article