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.)

A common mistake people tend to make with their lunge, or single leg squat variations in general, is caving or falling over as they go down or come out of the bottom.  This can be due to abdominal, low back or hip weakness, improper breathing or just poor neuromuscular coordination.  Whatever the reason, it is important to stay tall during the lunge (looking at the reverse lunge here) while driving through the hip.  Here is a great exercise to help teach proper hip drive while staying tall.  It is also just a killer exercise in general that can be loaded real easily and also hits the entire core real nice.  Peep the vid.

As you may or may not know, I suffered a grade 2 strain in a couple of deep muscles on a spot in my lower back a little while back.  I backed off from most squatting and deadlifting movements for awhile and have recently been getting back into some lighter ones (Don't worry, I've found ways to train hard).  While it has been a pain recovering from this injury, it has forced me to take a step back and look at what weaknesses contributed to this problem.  A couple of them were in my hips.  My psoas and my glutes were both weaker than they should've been.  While my back has been healing, I have been doing exercises to bring up weak points and facilitate recovery.  Here are a couple of hip exercises that I've been doing a few times a week either as part of main workouts or as smaller extra workouts.  They have helped me and maybe they can help you.

Knee Raises-  The psoas major is a unique hip flexor that attaches to the femur and all of the lumbar verterbrae.  With its attachments to the vertebrae, it has some control with the low back.  If its too stiff, it can pull on it and bring it into hyperextension. If its too weak, the back will have less support and help from it, causing it to round easier.  The psoas is most active in hip flexion above 90 degrees.  Looking at this fact, guess where it might be of assistance.  In the bottom of the squat.  Where have I been weakest when squatting.  In the bottom.  A simple exercise like this can help a lot.  I usually do them for 3-5 sets of 12-20 reps.  I am using 20 lb ankle weights in the video but some people can start with just their leg weight and it will be plenty difficult.  Notice how I focus on the top half of the hip flexion to emphasize the psoas.

Kneeling Hip Extensions-I do these to strengthen my glutes with the added benefit of strengthening my low back without loading it much.  Abdominal stability also comes into play with these. I've talked about the importance of having strong glutes many times before so I won't get into it too much here.  I usually do these for 3-5 sets of 12 to 20 reps as well. 

While injuries suck for the most part, they do make you smarter.  I have brought up weak areas now with plenty of different exercises and my hips feel stronger and more stable than ever since I've started doing some regular lifts again.  If your squat, dead or anything else has stalled, or if you have an issue with pain or posture problems, maybe special exercises like this could be what you are missing. 

P.S.    I've been adding more videos to my youtube page so be sure to check them out! 

        Take two cars.  One has a v4 engine and one has a v8.  Which one is going to perform better in a race?  The stronger, more powerful one with the v8 of course!  Now, take two athletes.  Both have equal talent and abilities in their sport.  One has a 200lb max squat and a 135lb max bench press.  The other has a 400lb max squat and a 275lb max bench press.  Therefore, one is much stronger and probably more powerful than the other.  With equal talent and technical ability, which one do you think will perform better?  The stronger one of course!
        Getting stronger is like putting a bigger engine into your body.  Strength is the starting point for almost all physical performance qualities. It can be defined as the ability to overcome external resistance by producing force or to oppose it through muscular effort. The stronger you are, the more potential you have to be faster, more powerful, quicker, etc.  All you need to do is look at the equations for different qualities.  For example, power is basically producing force rapidly (forcexvelocity), and the stronger you are, the more force you can produce.   So, now that you know that you have to get stronger to perform better; lets look at another scenario. 
           Say the weaker athlete from above gets his squat up to 350lbs and went from a 20inch vertical jump (good measure of explosive strength) to a 30inch, and began performing better in competition.  He then gets his squat up to 400lbs, but his vertical stalls as does his performance.  In this case,  he needs to work on developing his explosive strength and rate of force development.  This way, he can use the new strength that he has to produce force faster; thus increasing performance. 
     All qualities of strength must be trained to develop optimal performance including max strength, speed strength, strength speed, explosive strength, etc.   I'll discuss the different strength qualities in more detail in a future post. 
   Thus, if you are an athlete and you aren't already lifting weights and training outside of practice, you are really limiting your performance potential.  Do you want to stick with your v4 or would you rather upgrade to a v8?  Get to work!