Master This Cue and Get Better Abs and Posture
Before I say anything else, I’m sitting in a Barnes and Noble at the Grove right by our apartment and I looked up to see a fatty poster for “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies”!!!
Being a HYOOGE Lord of the Rings fan, I won’t lie, I wasn’t AS entertained by the first 2 Hobbit installments. I remember loving the book as a kid when I took breaks from playing with my Johnny Quest toys. It was a much easier read than LOTR, mainly because there were not 30-page diatribes describing the intricacy of a leaf Pippin stepped on. But coming off of the ridiculously grand scale of LOTR, the Hobbit MOVIES really didn’t have a chance to out-do them.
However, they are still baller, and I’m pumped for the last one. Plus, when a Tolkien movie comes out, you know it must be around Christmas time, which is always glorious. I remember when my Mom, my brother Kel, and I went to the midnight premiere of, “The Two Towers”. It was an unforgettable experience for 2 primary reasons;
#1: Someone came dressed as Boromir, complete with the horn of Gondor. He sounded it incessantly leading up to the start, which was just amazing.
#2: Near the end, there is a scene that is not in the book. Someone yelled out, “Not in the book!”, to which someone responded, “Who cares!”
I’m not exactly sure why, but that was hysterical.
Did I mention the Grove really knows how to get someone hyped for the Hobbit?
My boy K-Todd came out to LA last year and we went to the Grove, only to discover the ENTIRE PLACE was altered to resemble Smaug’s cave. Undeterred by the gates, we ran straight onto the staged area and started posing amongst the piles of gold and the thrones. We were later kicked out, but we had our moment!
Anyway, let’s talk about exercise cueing. Of all the skills a great trainer should possess, I think the one that is often-overlooked is the art of cueing.
In other words,
How do you communicate exactly what you want your client to do in a way that they understand and that doesn’t interrupt the flow of the session?
How do you do this “on-the-fly” when their technique may take a turn for the worse in the middle of a set?
I used to be terrible at this. Mainly, because cueing is never brought up in your typical exercise science curriculums. Luckily, I had the opportunity to get a lot of hands-on coaching at the University of Evansville as an assistant strength coach when I was in school and got pretty good. But those were athletes, and they (for the most part) had an innate body awareness and didn’t need things broken down too in-depth.
I would say something, and then that something would happen.
Here are 2 sample cueing conversations between myself and a UE athlete;
Conversation 1 (bench press):
Me: Pull your shoulders down and back
Athlete (pulls shoulders down and back)
Conversation 2 (squat):
Me: Drive your knees out!
Athlete (drives knees out)
So yeah, while I learned WHAT cues to give, I didn’t have a good sense of what to do when someone was like, “Umm, what in the name of Ronnie Coleman are you talking about?”
I clearly remember the first time I worked with a general population client. It was during my senior year and I had decided to transition out of the strength and conditioning program and go into the private sector. It was an in-home client and they were doing a standing dumbbell row.
This type of exercise is immensely difficult if the person doesn’t have a solid hip hinge and some degree of core stability. They were rounded over and using more of their anterior shoulders than actually doing a row.
Here is how that conversation went;
Me: Get your chest up
Client: What?
Me: Chest up, get tall
Client (raises torso)
Me: Go back down
Client: Down where?
Me: Chest up
Client (now fatigued and really losing form): I’m not sure how
Me: Do it!! Do it now!!!!
Slightly exaggerated, but I think you can see what I mean. I didn’t have a solid back-up plan when someone didn’t respond to a cue.
Now, I should mention that being successful at cueing means that you have the client performing an exercise they are ready for!
In the above instance, that person was not ready to perform a standing row, so no amount of cueing wizardry that I did would make a lick of difference.
Over the past few years, I’ve gotten better at meeting people on their level, but I still find it challenging, because everyone has a different way of learning. I guess that’s part of what makes coaching interesting…it’s not easy! But I find it very rewarding when I do or say something that makes someone “get it.”
While I could wax poetic about cueing for a while longer, let’s get to the meat of today’s post.
Building off of the last example, one of the cues I find tough to relay is “chest up”. If you are a trainer/coach, can you imagine how many times you have probably said that?
On the surface, I instantly think of the military and being given an order. The imagery I have in my brain is of a soldier snapping to attention.
However, this is not what “chest up” really means.
Think about it like this;
I think we can agree that we want people out of extension. We don’t want their ribs flaring and their lower back making an excessive arch. This is because, in this position, they will turn to their lower-back to do the work and not be able to effectively engage their core.
Look at those pits…
This is bad news for 2 reasons;
#1: They will potentially hurt their back
#2: They won’t actually be training their abs, so they will not see a strength OR aesthetic difference
The ribs flared, back-arched position is the natural one for someone in anterior tilt, which I talked about at length, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE.
This is what we want to see instead;
Again…those pits…
A nice, “stacked” torso, where the ribs are locked down and the pelvis tends more toward a posterior tilt than anything. To get this position, I’ll simply tell someone to “get their ribs down”. This is pretty intuitive and what I utter more than anything else during a session (besides “that looked glorious” and “you’re a dominant machine” and “so let’s talk about religion and politics”)
So what does this have to do with keeping the chest up?
Whoa, relax.
Sorry, that was funny…anyway,
Going back to the disastrous example from above, the client then asked…
“How do I keep the chest up, while maintaining my core position?”
Phenomenal question, and one that got me thinking.
“What the heck DID I mean by “chest up”?
It was an important revelation, similar to when Arnold realizes his wrongdoings after taking Turbo Man right from underneath Johnny’s Christmas tree, as this can become an issue on pretty much any exercise.
Take a squat, for instance. The ribs should be locked down here, but you also don’t want them falling forward and losing posture. Saying “chest up” typically leads to the same issue faced with the chin-up…a loss of core positioning that sets them up for back pain and weaksauce abs.
How to Actually Get the Chest Up and Keep Your Abs Engaged
As I thought about this cue, tossing and turning most of the night, I woke up with a clear head.
‘I don’t actually want people to do anything with their chest! All I want is for them to gently tuck their shoulder blades down and back!”
Doing this will get them in a better posture WITHOUT simply tossing their chest up in the air and losing their core.
Will it lead to a little bit more extension? Yeah, it will, because when you tuck the shoulders (scapula) down and back, the lats on the sides of your back will engage, driving a bit of lumbar extension. But that’s ok. Perfection isn’t necessarily the goal. You always want great form, but asking for textbook-perfection on every rep isn’t realistic or that much more beneficial. The moral of the story is you won’t lose your core position. That’s why I used the word “gently” above. You don’t want to tuck your shoulder blades down and back like an animal, because you will end up with the same issues as if you had just thrown the chest up. Just get a little bit of retraction and depression and you’ll be fine.
What It Looks Like
Because this post is about cueing, I understand that not everyone will get what I’m talking about in a written format, so I shot a quick video demonstrating what the difference is between throwing the chest up and actually using the scapula to get in a better posture;
As a trainer/coach, to effectively use this information, I’ve found it very effective to simply explain what you are looking for, have them practice it on a few movements, and go from there. That way, you can still use the “chest up” cue and they will actually know what you mean. I don’t think there is a need to change up the verbiage or make it any more complicated.
I hope that helps clear up any confusion. Practice that on every exercise you do and you will notice you will feel your abs and upper back (the X-Factor) in a whole new way, leading to a body that will look AND perform way better than it did before.
On the coaching side, it was an important lesson for me at that time to always assume someone will NOT understand what you are talking about.
If you’re a trainer/coach, do you have a different way of using this cue? I would love more ideas.
Dominate All Life,
Kasey, CSCS
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Jay Howard Ginsberg
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kaseyesser
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