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Correct spotting of the squat.


Skeletor

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I thought this would make a good topic seeing as a few lifts in recent comps have caused controversy over both spotting technique and strength/size/numbers of spotters etc.  WhIle it would probably seem reasonably straight forward it's clearly something a lot of us need to be aware and correctly trained in to avoid risking the lifters and your own safety. So let's talk about how a heavy squat should be spotted.  How many spotters? Location of spotters. Correct body and arm placement whilst lifter is under load etc.  Hands tracking under the edge of bar or under plates ready to grab plates against body? Obstructing view of judge etc. Interested to know 100% as I'm going to be spotting in more comps and I don't want any mishaps .

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i gotta say big respect for people that spot often and do it well. can't really hate on them for the odd mistake imo.

i spotted for the first time a few weeks and and its very nerve racking even with easy weights, because its not just yourself at risk, would hate to either grab it early or miss it and they fall.

 

spotting much more stressful than lifting imo lol

 

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10 minutes ago, maccaz said:

i gotta say big respect for people that spot often and do it well. can't really hate on them for the odd mistake imo.

i spotted for the first time a few weeks and and its very nerve racking even with easy weights, because its not just yourself at risk, would hate to either grab it early or miss it and they fall.

 

spotting much more stressful than lifting imo lol

 

Agreed spotting can be stressful. 

 

As is loading when everyone is trying to be as time efficient as possible. 

 

I had a lifter at a IPF meet let the bar off their back when re-racking the squat on a 260kg attempt definitely put some strain on the old shoulder... could have ended badly. 

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28 minutes ago, maccaz said:

i gotta say big respect for people that spot often and do it well. can't really hate on them for the odd mistake imo.

i spotted for the first time a few weeks and and its very nerve racking even with easy weights, because its not just yourself at risk, would hate to either grab it early or miss it and they fall.

 

spotting much more stressful than lifting imo lol

 

Yeah mistakes happen for sure. I think for myself learning the best way to spot will be a huge benefit to both the lifters and myself and help limit any little slip ups that may occur. Obviously a lot comes down to the lifter having faith in the spotters and not just dumping it to though.

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Personally for me, ive found all the spotting down here with cpa very good, its always hard to get guys too help too, i try to when i can but do live quite a way, every time ive missed 9ive been caught very swiftly, and thats also with taking a walk at the top after loosing balance, im lifting baby weights tho, gets different with big stuff. think our spotters did a very good job with Hayden on the bench and squat this year, saved his face with a shirted bench i think

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Spotting is definitely a skill that has to be learned.   This was going to be a short post, but whatever...

 

In terms of position, and number for the squat - it's relative. Would I put two spotters on each side for Tonka squatting 150?  hell no - but for a young fella in a novice I might.   A good spotting crew will know how the lifters are tracking, and the technical controller can add spotters.

Hands under the bar, or elbow under - depends on the relative heights.  Put a six foot guy spotting U52kg women and the odds are he simply can't go low enough with elbow under the bar. 

Hands under bar, or around plates - how much room's left on the end of the bar?- if it's loaded with bumper plates, it's often riskier to go for the stubby bar end, rather than the plates. 

If we put two spotters on each end, we tend to communicate - you grab the plates, I'll grab the bar.

If you're center-spotter - hands under armpits, stay close - when it goes, grab the lifter (and tell him to keep a hold of it!).

 

Learn to spot on raw lifters - the speed at which an equipped lift can go bad once it gets off-line is freaky, and you need to appreciate that.  More so with bench - drift off-line and boom, someone's face is eating bar.

 

You can't be squeamish - you've got to be prepared to get stuck in and grab,  even if you're a guy center-spotting for womens' squat, grab like your life depends on it, 'cos hers could.   You can always apologise afterwards.

 

Listen - sometimes the judges will spot it before the lifter says a word; sometimes the first thing you hear is "Oh sh......"
 

Do NOT, under any circumstances, spot a squat praying-mantis styles unless you're a world-record holding Oly Lifter.  You can't hope to catch and hold a loaded bar that's already moving downwards in your bare hands, and keep it away from the lifter... it ain't going to happen.

 

Don't stop the spot until you're confident the bar is safely racked - sure, it's the lifter's role to stay with the bar, but in some cases they simply may not be able to (a torn quad, for instance). 

 

The onus is on the judges to move if they have to, to make sure they've got a clear view - watch and you'll see the good judges move around quite a lot.  When you've got a big equipped lifter and five spotters, the lifter's safety comes first.

 

 

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That pic Markos posted in Skeletor's screenshot makes a lot of sense. If you're grabbing the plates like that, I guess the bar naturally falls into the crook of your elbow too, which would be a really strong position to lift from.

 

Not being a PLer, I've never really paid much attention to the spotters (sorry, spotters!), but that's not the mental image I have of spotting at the comps I've been to. How common is that technique? Have I just never noticed it, or is it quite rarely used?

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2 hours ago, Pseudonym said:

That pic Markos posted in Skeletor's screenshot makes a lot of sense. If you're grabbing the plates like that, I guess the bar naturally falls into the crook of your elbow too, which would be a really strong position to lift from.

 

Not being a PLer, I've never really paid much attention to the spotters (sorry, spotters!), but that's not the mental image I have of spotting at the comps I've been to. How common is that technique? Have I just never noticed it, or is it quite rarely used?

 

its not common i dont think

ive never seen it apart from at pro raw, and even there, not all the spotters do that i dont reckon.

would make sense to have a standard on method, given the real risk of being majorly injured from a bad spot 

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Probably the biggest challenges in spotting are:

  • Relative height - that crook of the elbow technique doesn't work if the lifter's taller than the spotter; 
  • flexibility - spotters have to be limber enough to position themselves in the most powerful position. In some cases that may end up being like a "goblet squat" with the end of the bar;
  • Speed - spotters have to be able to move with the lifter, whilst staying in that strongest position. That may mean dive-bombing to an a-to-g squat to be able to track the lifter out of the hole;
  • strength - even in a novice comp, a 200kg squat is common. Each side spotter could, worst case, find themselves trying to curl or power clean 100kg, a skill which is far less common; and
  • endurance - I was once part of a five-person spotter team at a CDPA major comp, and we reckoned each of us, over the course of six flights of lifters, had moved around 15,000 kg. Add in the pressure to get rack heights right, bar loaded quickly and accurately, and turn-around tight, and you can see how form would suffer.
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TFB has certainly answered pretty much all of it.

 

I've had one of the most full-on spotting experiences in NZ. Few years ago big Reuben Simanu (6'2, 160kg) was going for a 385 squat on his 3rd attempt in a club comp. I was rear spot.

He had forgotten his shoes at home, so was in Chucks, on carpet, with a whippy bar and a wide set of non-comp plates.

Thankfully we had a solid crew, incl 2 of the strongest guys in NZ on side spot.

 

First go: After walking out - one of the collars slipped off. I yelled 'dump it' grapped the bar with 1 hand and pushed him forward with the other - no one was hurt. We reloaded and gave him time to rewrap and calm down.

 

2nd go: During the walkout his leg buckled - I made the call to grab him and push him back to the rack. Side spotters simply can't see or react to that kind of thing. He said he was "half a second from dumping it" - the oscillation wasn't helping. After resetting:

 

3rd go: Nailed it. I will try find the photo - I was tense out of my mind expecting a miss but he nailed it.

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1 minute ago, Wookie said:

TFB has certainly answered pretty much all of it.

 

I've had one of the most full-on spotting experiences in NZ. Few years ago big Reuben Simanu (6'2, 160kg) was going for a 385 squat on his 3rd attempt in a club comp. I was rear spot.

He had forgotten his shoes at home, so was in Chucks, on carpet, with a whippy bar and a wide set of non-comp plates.

Thankfully we had a solid crew, incl 2 of the strongest guys in NZ on side spot.

 

First go: After walking out - one of the collars slipped off. I yelled 'dump it' grapped the bar with 1 hand and pushed him forward with the other - no one was hurt. We reloaded and gave him time to rewrap and calm down.

 

2nd go: During the walkout his leg buckled - I made the call to grab him and push him back to the rack. Side spotters simply can't see or react to that kind of thing. He said he was "half a second from dumping it" - the oscillation wasn't helping. After resetting:

 

3rd go: Nailed it. I will try find the photo - I was tense out of my mind expecting a miss but he nailed it.

yikes, this reminds me of this

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

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22 minutes ago, Wookie said:

TFB has certainly answered pretty much all of it.

 

I've had one of the most full-on spotting experiences in NZ. Few years ago big Reuben Simanu (6'2, 160kg) was going for a 385 squat on his 3rd attempt in a club comp. I was rear spot.

He had forgotten his shoes at home, so was in Chucks, on carpet, with a whippy bar and a wide set of non-comp plates.

Thankfully we had a solid crew, incl 2 of the strongest guys in NZ on side spot.

 

First go: After walking out - one of the collars slipped off. I yelled 'dump it' grapped the bar with 1 hand and pushed him forward with the other - no one was hurt. We reloaded and gave him time to rewrap and calm down.

 

2nd go: During the walkout his leg buckled - I made the call to grab him and push him back to the rack. Side spotters simply can't see or react to that kind of thing. He said he was "half a second from dumping it" - the oscillation wasn't helping. After resetting:

 

3rd go: Nailed it. I will try find the photo - I was tense out of my mind expecting a miss but he nailed it.

Leg buckled during walk out? Damn imagine if there was a device that allowed people to squat without having to go through the un-natural movement of stepping backwards with great weights compressing their spines... a device that if you had to bail on a weight allowed you to fall forward to the ground with the weight being caught by safety cords.. OH WAIT THERE IS.

Ugh.

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23 minutes ago, Wookie said:

TFB has certainly answered pretty much all of it.

 

I've had one of the most full-on spotting experiences in NZ. Few years ago big Reuben Simanu (6'2, 160kg) was going for a 385 squat on his 3rd attempt in a club comp. I was rear spot.

He had forgotten his shoes at home, so was in Chucks, on carpet, with a whippy bar and a wide set of non-comp plates.

Thankfully we had a solid crew, incl 2 of the strongest guys in NZ on side spot.

 

First go: After walking out - one of the collars slipped off. I yelled 'dump it' grapped the bar with 1 hand and pushed him forward with the other - no one was hurt. We reloaded and gave him time to rewrap and calm down.

 

2nd go: During the walkout his leg buckled - I made the call to grab him and push him back to the rack. Side spotters simply can't see or react to that kind of thing. He said he was "half a second from dumping it" - the oscillation wasn't helping. After resetting:

 

3rd go: Nailed it. I will try find the photo - I was tense out of my mind expecting a miss but he nailed it.

its on the wall in miada Avondale isn't it?

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3 minutes ago, donz said:

Leg buckled during walk out? Damn imagine if there was a device that allowed people to squat without having to go through the un-natural movement of stepping backwards with great weights compressing their spines... a device that if you had to bail on a weight allowed you to fall forward to the ground with the weight being caught by safety cords.. OH WAIT THERE IS.

Ugh.

 

I hear what you're saying except 90%+ of the bar dumps due to leg buckling don't happen during the walkout.

And monolifts only serve to increase the weight on your back, allow for a wider than usual stance if desired - they help  safety wise if you dump the weight, but I think they actually make things more risky in a way by allowing you to use weights that you absolutely could not walkout. No surprise that mono's came about due to multi-ply lifting.

It's interesting to me that the majority of the loudest pro-monolift people online seem to be guys that never lifted IPF and were thus forced to learn how to walkout as part of a big squat.


i guess as a strongman you don't think twice about moving around under load.

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I don't use a mono even though I can go to powerhouse and lift in one, I don't give 2 flying fucks about equipped lifting - I think it's boring as shit and will never do it and people in bench shirts look like zombie fan girls. If walking out takes away the ability to lift more weight then why would you want to walk it out? Is power lifting not about the ability to lift the most weight possible? You don't walk out a bench press or dead lift - you walk in, bend over and pick the bar up. You're talking about the mono allowing a wider squat yet you're fine with a sumo dead lift where peoples toes literally touch the weights? Where is the consistency with that statement.

 

The squats I saw with bad spotting in this IPF comp were all examples of where the weight could have been dumped, the lifter flops forward ( you could even put pads down to save face smashing the ground ) - I don't see why you'd want to trap a guy whos 140kg under the bar while he's on his knees almost convulsing while people struggle to lift the weight - how the f*ck is that poor c*nt going to get back to his feet once he's on his knees holding 415kg? Jesus.

 

I think ( personally obviously ) that it's retarded to walk out heavy weights, it doesn't make you alpha or stronger.. a big dead lift requires more strength than an equal weighted squat which is why guys like the SHW can bounce their fat asses up from a 438kg squat but struggle to pull a 360kg dead lift  ( ok that might be sparking a new debate ) but yeah my 2 cents is if its ACTUALLY about safety to lifters AND lifting the most weight then unrack + walk out makes no sense.

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Personally I'd never attempt a squat that I couldn't walk out but don't care if I have to walk it out or not as the only time I use a mono is in comp and I'm not exactly lifting heavy ass weight but I don't think there's anything great about walking it out either. I like the safety aspect of a mono and chains for sure and believe all feds should have something in place whether it's just spotter bars on a rack or in a full mono.  Raising the issue of the IPFs poor spotters at  is not at all a shot at the IPF as they are a fantastic fed as are all but I just think they need to implement something because you imagine what the shw guys will be lifting in ten years time.  You imagine trying to spot a superfreak like Ray on a 500kg squat with no safety in place and he buckles or collapses .  Ideally all feds would have a similar safety system and all competitors would encourage other lifters regardless of which fed they choose. There seems to be this common theme that IPF lifters are all up themselves and natural and that all other feds lifters are all roid heads who hate nattys which is far from the truth. All the ipf guys i train with are real cool people. All the gpc guys i lift with are equally cool people. All the UPANZ people i know are just as cool as the other guys.The important thing is encouraging young people into and growing the sport regardless what fed they choose. End of the day we're all doing the same 3 lifts all be it with slight variations. Foot placement, walkout,wraps etc. 

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