Pat Sherwood instructs new athlete, Charlie, on the overhead squat.
“The overhead squat is exceedingly simple yet universally nettlesome for beginners. There are three common obstacles to learning the overhead squat. The first is the scarcity of skilled instruction. Outside of the Olympic lifting community, most instruction on the overhead squat is laughably horribly, wrong — dead wrong,” Sherwood says.
“The second is a weak squat,” he continues. “You need to have a rock-solid squat to learn the overhead squat. We strongly recommend you review the December 2002 issue of the CrossFit Journal on squatting before attempting the overhead squat; you could save yourself a lot of time in the long run. The third obstacle is starting with too much weight.”
Originally published – Aug. 2014
Overhead Squat Development