The zercher squat is an amazing strength exercise that can build solid muscle throughout your body and turn your hips, thighs and trunk into bulletproof walls of strong steel.  With the zercher squat, you rest the bar across your elbows and up against your body.  It is a brutal lift and because of the bar position, it forces the lifter to engage the abs and low back to a great extent and also builds great hip drive if done correctly.  It can be done through full range beginning standing or can be done out of the bottom off of a rack.  Zerchers can also be done with a cable, which is a great way to work the legs while deloading the spine.  They will force you to learn how to squat correctly because if you don't, both the bar and you are going forward.  They can be used for a max effort exercise for heavy sets of 1-5 reps or with the cable can be done for higher reps on a deload or high rep workout.  

So, walk up to the bar, get your elbows right under it and get the bar up against your body (usually around mid abdominal region); unrack it and set your stance (usually just outside shoulder width).  Keep your elbows tall, take a big breath of air in and sit back through your hips while pushing out to the sides of the floor that you are gripping with your feet, and engage your glutes.  When you hit depth (below parallel with a stable low back), drive up through your glutes while pushing through your heels.  Get ready to get strong.  Heres a vid of me hitting 335lbsx5 after pulling heavy rack deads a few weeks ago followed by Corri hitting a set of cable zerchers a while back.  These will build your competition squat and dead real nice.  If you are looking for a nice big bang variation to put into your program, definitely give zerchers a shot.  (Note: these are harder than a back squat and pretty close to front squats; you'll definitely do much less weight than a back squat and less than, a little more than or similar to a front squat depending on your individual strengths and leverages. Get these up and watch your other lifts rise.)

    The psoas is a very interesting and very important muscle in the pelvic and lumbar spine region.  Attaching to the lesser trochanter of the femur and shooting at an angle through to the front of the lumber vertebrae, it can have effects on both the hip and the lumbar spine. Its main functions are to flex the hip and stabilize the lumbar spine. When stiff or short, it can help tilt the pelvis forward (anterior tilt) and pull the lumber spine into an excessive lordotic curve (hyperlordosis), potentially causing low back pain.  When weak, it sacrifices much needed stability for the lumbar spine and can lead to injury in the lumbar spine or hip. Weakness in the psoas can put a bigger workload on the rectus femoris (only quad muscle to cross both the hip and knee), certain fibers of the tensor fascia latae (stubborn muscle that lays right off of the iliac crest and inserts into the IT Band) and the proximal anterior adductors (adductor muscles that lay on the upper, front and inside portion of your thigh that help with hip flexion), causing unwanted strain to these muscles.

     While there will almost always be other things that need to be done to fix the problem (i.e. strengthen glutes and external obliques, improve diaphragm function), when the psoas is stiff or short, it will usually need to be released with some kind of manual therapy.  Whether its ART, NMT, standard massage or whatever, release will be important.  Releasing the psoas is an often overlooked way to ease many cases of lower back pain and to restore proper mechanics around the pelvis and lumbar spine (IF it is a problem). 

    While many people now experience the many benefits of self massage techniques using tools such as foam rollers and la crosse balls, it is not common for people to perform self work on their psoas.  With a foam roller it is pretty much impossible to get to this muscle.  While a la crosse ball can provide some lead way, it still won't get into it specifically enough.  Today, I am going to show you a neat and effective way to release your psoas yourself.  Although it is pretty much impossible to duplicate the effectiveness of having a licensed soft tissue professional work on it for you (it is pretty deep and takes specific positioning and skill to get to optimally), this method is much better than nothing and can work pretty well if you do, in fact, need release on this muscle. 

To sum it up:   *Lay on your side and cross your hip over into flexion
                      *Take the point on your tool and sink it in just medial (inside of it for those who aren't anatomy geeks) to your                             iliac crest (big hip bone that you feel above your thigh)
                      *Move towards your abdomen  until you feel a wall or block of muscle
                      *Massage up and down on this muscle or sink in to a tender point and torque the tool to create some tension.
                      *Hold this tension and extend your hip and leg back to release the muscle.
                      *Repeat this up and down the length of the muscle until you feel that it is released. 

If it is a problem, working this muscle can work wonders for you so give it a shot and reap the rewards.