Starting your weightlifting journey, whether you are in your own home gym, doing CrossFit, or going to a global gym, can be overwhelming. One major reason is not knowing the best weightlifting cues for beginners. You don’t know what to focus on when you’re performing exercises. That ends today.

I’m Annie Miller, a certified strength and conditioning specialist. I help you learn as you train and enjoy your lifts without having to figure it out yourself. Today, I will share what I think are six of the best weightlifting cues for beginners.

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Understanding and Applying Weightlifting Cues for Beginners

These cues are little phrases or words to think about during resistance training. They ensure the right muscles are engaged and your form is sound. Coaching cues click for some people and not for others.

Pay attention to the purpose of each cue. Focus on what the cue is trying to make you do with your body. You might come up with a different cue that makes more sense for you but achieves the same result.

1. Tight Lats or Break the Bar

Engaging your lats is crucial in weightlifting. Your lats help lock your shoulder in place as well as your upper and mid back. If you don’t know how to flex your lat muscle, think about “breaking the bar.”

This phrase helps with internal rotation. When holding a bar across your waist or setting up for a deadlift, think about breaking the bar across your shins or waist. This motion helps engage your lats, and you should feel that engagement.

Some people say to “squeeze a lemon in your armpit” when setting up for a deadlift. Keeping the lats engaged allows you to keep the weight close to your body. Engaging the lats helps set your upper and mid back in a stable position.

2. Whole Foot

When doing any closed-chain exercise with your feet on the ground, you don’t want your foot rolling all over. Think about dispersing your weight through your entire foot. You could also say “grip the floor,” but this can cause people to curl their foot, which is undesirable.

Instead, think about spreading your toes and then pressing into the floor. This creates a stable arch with your heel, the outside of your foot, the ball of your foot, and all five toes on the ground. Ensure your big toe stays planted throughout the movement.

Foot stability is more crucial for some exercises than others. For example, it’s more important during a barbell back squat than a seated dumbbell shoulder press. Think about keeping your whole foot planted on the ground and pressing through the entire foot.

3. Compress

Learning how to breathe and brace is essential in weightlifting, particularly with axial-loaded compound movements. That’s anything loading the spine. I used to say “ribs down” or “ribs over hips,” and I am still for those cues.

I’ve migrated towards the idea of compression since relearning to breathe in my own pre and postpartum experience. This idea applies to movements like the squat, deadlift, overhead pressing, RDLs, hip split squat variations, and some machine work. If your spine needs to be stable and neutral, think about this.

Compressing and keeping the ribs over the hips go hand in hand. Apply it to a squat or a half-kneeling overhead press. We want the rib cage stacked over the hips, not flared out to the front.

4. Slower Down Than Up

Tempo is crucial for most exercises. Keep the lowering phase slower than the rising phase. Don’t stress about this.

The goal is to use a controlled tempo. As you reach the last reps of any set, the rising or concentric phase will likely get slow. This is desirable if muscle growth is your goal.

Do you currently use tempo in your training? Let me know in the comments below.

5. Screw In

“Screwing in” refers to externally rotating your upper leg bone in your hip socket and your upper arm bone at the shoulder. This helps engage the lats at the shoulder and the glutes at the hips. The cue generates stability at these joints during certain movements.

For the lower body, your feet are planted, but you screw in by externally rotating your femur. You’ll likely need a soft knee for this to happen. In a push-up, plant the hand and externally rotate to lock in the shoulder.

6. Find the Tension

In any exercise, we want to build proficiency. This cue helps build the mind-muscle connection. Instead of thinking “butt back” or “hinge” in an RDL, think about finding tension in your hamstrings.

In a chest fly, find tension in the pecs. In the lat pull-down, find tension in your lats. This works well in exercises with the highest tension in the stretched position on the muscle.

Wrap Up

That wraps up my six go-to weightlifting cues for beginners. There can be a lot to think about when starting out on your weightlifting journey. I hope even one of these is helpful in providing some focus in the gym and maybe even get you some better results.

If you enjoyed these educated gains, go ahead and share this with someone that’s new to weightlifting. I’ll see you in the next one.