Above the Rest Training Systems

Squat shoes aren’t “throwing you forward.” Your technique is.

Here’s why this trips people up.

Your subconscious is getting feedback from your body every rep, but it reports it to you in caveman language: feels good, feels bad, feels off.

When you put on a weightlifting shoe, you just changed one variable. You got an artificial boost to ankle dorsiflexion. That’s it. The floor didn’t tilt. The shoe didn’t push you anywhere.

So when an athlete says, “These feel weird,” or “My squat got worse,” I’m not calling that fake. I’m saying it’s data.

The question is what the data is actually pointing to.

If the elevated heel makes you feel like you’re getting dumped forward, something in your pattern is using that new range in a way you’re not controlling yet. If a knee position suddenly feels unstable, the shoe just revealed how you were managing your balance without it.

That’s the whole point of a tool.

A squat shoe can be a huge advantage for squatting, lap-implement positions, and overhead work. But the first reps will often feel “wrong” because it’s not your status quo.

Give it enough exposure, and your nervous system recalibrates. Then NOT wearing them feels strange.

What’s the biggest thing you “hate the feel of” right now in training, and what do you think it’s actually telling you?

Most athletes save sandbag and stone loading (over a bar or to a platform) for the peaking block before a contest.

But for most of the year, we live in extensions.

Why?

They take almost no setup, and they build a ton of transfer to every implement without sacrificing the “feel” of the event.

The common mistake I see: athletes pop the implement out of the lap, stand up “enough,” then drop it right back down.

It *feels* like a full rep, but the implement often only travels half to three-quarters of the height it needs for a real load.

The fix: *follow through.*

Don’t just stand up. Throw the implement up into space as high as you can.

You won’t always get huge elevation, but you’ll finish with the implement high on the torso and your extension fully completed.

This carries over to loading almost anything in almost any event: over a bar, to a platform, or to the shoulder.

Plus, you’re practicing the pick from the floor, which builds work capacity and speed.

If your “extension” is basically stand up → back to the lap, try this version for one session and tell me what you notice.