Jordan Buchla squatted 820 pounds at a bodyweight most raw lifters wouldn't consider competitive in a lighter class. She's earned world records in multiply. She put 854 on her back in training.

When I asked her what it felt like, she said it was the most extreme focus she'd ever experienced in her life. Not the heaviest thing she'd ever felt. The most focused.

That distinction is the whole article.

Dumb strength. That's exactly what it is. You see it every week in every gym. Guy loads up more than he's ready for, gets under it, takes a half breath, picks it, the bar shifts, and then he fights it the whole way down. That's not a strength. That's survival. There's a difference.

Jordan figured out something early in her multiply career that a lot of lifters never figure out: the setup is the lift. Not half the lift. Not most of the lift. The lift.

Here's how she does it.

She Didn't Figure This Out Right Away

In her first multiple meet, she squatted 700. She walked out thinking she could have done more. Second meet, she hit 780 and felt the same way. Easy. Let's keep going.

But it was in the warm-up room for that 780 meet where something clicked. She looked at her handler and her coach and said, "I think I understand now." The pick had finally made sense to her.

What changed was simple. She stopped treating the unrack as something to rush through to get to the actual squat. She started treating it as the first rep. The most important one. The one that determines whether every step after it is a lift or a fight.

Everything has to be settled before you go down.

When you're holding 780, 820, 854 pounds on your back, you don't have the option to correct on the fly. The pick has to be flawless, and you have to know it's flawless before your hips move. Those extra seconds aren't hesitation. They're the difference.

What "The Pick" Actually Means

Jordan can walk through her setup in steps. She has them written down. She can visualize every second of it.

That's not obsessive. That's elite.

The pick is not just taking the bar out of the rack. The pick is the moment the bar becomes part of you. She describes it exactly that way: "That bar is standing with me." Not sitting on her. Not pressing down on her. Standing with her.

When you see a raw lifter unrack sloppy and grind out the squat anyway, you might think the setup doesn't matter as much. What you're actually seeing is someone burning energy they could have used for the lift. In multiple, that slack in the system gets amplified. The bar shifts, the suit reacts differently, you're in the wrong position going down, and now you're asking the equipment to compensate for a problem you created before you took a single step.

Most missed squats I've seen, the lift was over before the lifter left the rack. They just didn't know it yet.

Jordan's Setup, Step by Step

This is the technical core. In the order she does it.

The Descent, the Hole, and the Way Out

Hips break first. Knees follow. She pulls that bar as tight into her back as she can on the way down.

The cue that changed her squat was learning to externally rotate the femur inside the hip joint. Not "knees out," which she heard for years without fully responding to. The cue that worked was more specific: take the femur head and externally rotate it. When she did that, her quads lit up, her hips opened, and sitting back became easy. She adjusted her foot position, found more pressure against her briefs out of the bottom, and started getting a better rebound.

She goes deep on purpose. The spring analogy she uses is accurate. The deeper you go while staying in position, the more energy you can load and release on the way up. Cutting depth means cutting power. That's not a trade worth making.

She trains the grind. Specifically. Some lifters, when the lift slows down, let it go. They feel the wall, and they drop. Jordan holds it. She stays. She grinds until her body says it's done. That's where strength gets built. Not at the top of the lift.

"I may pass out or pee or something, but I'll be fine."

Why Most People Rush It

The bar is heavy. The gear is screaming at you. Everything in your body says, "Go now."

Those extra seconds under the bar before the descent feel like weakness. Like stalling. Like you're not sure.

They're not. They're the lift.

Jordan still watches people start the descent while the bar is still moving from the unrack. The bar is settling and they're already in motion. That's not aggressive training. That's sloppy training. Those are different things.

I've said it for years. Most missed squats are lost before the lifter ever takes a step back. It happens in the setup, or in the decision to rush through it. The hole is just where you find out.

The Bigger Principle

Jordan is not a large person. She doesn't have leverages that make 800-pound squats look inevitable. What she has is control. Patience. A setup so dialed that by the time she breaks hips, the lift is already mostly done.

She knows her weaknesses. Her back is her weak point. Her grip is her weak point. She built her entire system around protecting both. That's not a compromise. That's intelligence applied to a weight room problem.

The same principle that drives her setup drives everything else she's described. Eight to nine weeks breaking in a new shirt, from a three-board down to a touch, over months. Learning Titan gear that was miserable until it wasn't. Watching film every night before bed, zooming in on her ankles, her wrists, her head position, finding the half-inch that cost her.

Taming your dumb strength is a full-time commitment. It means slowing down when everything tells you to speed up. Taking the extra half second under the bar when the weight is screaming at you to go. Knowing your weaknesses well enough to build around them instead of pretending they aren't there.

The lifters who learn that get stronger. The ones who don't keep fighting the bar all the way to the floor.

Live, Learn, Pass On.

Dave Tate

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