The overhead squat is the ultimate core exercise, the heart of the snatch and peerless in developing effective athletic movement.

The overhead squat is to midline control, stability and balance what the clean and snatch are to power—unsurpassed.

Ironically, 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. The second is a weak squat—you need to have a rock-solid squat to learn the overhead squat. The third obstacle is starting with too much weight—you haven’t a snowball’s chance in hell of learning the overhead squat with a bar. You’ll need to use a length of dowel or plastic PVC pipe; use anything over five pounds to learn this move and your overhead squat will be stillborn.