the king of all lifts
By far my favorite of all lifts is the squat. If you follow my social media pages that should come as no surprise. The reason for that is more than just the benefits of the squat but also what the squat tells me about your ability to perform optimally during anything that requires athleticism. Although every athlete should squat, not every athlete should squat the same. What the fuck does that mean? I get a bunch of clients that complain of mostly knee or back pain when squatting so I will hear “I have bad knees” or “My back hurts when I squat” so immediately follow with “Do you avoid squatting?” usually it's a yes. I will always follow with doing a movement screen.
What are the usual suspects when I look at an athlete and see something wrong? THE MOST COMMON FAULT IS THE ANKLE/FOOT, what I see most of the time is a lack of ability to dorsiflex the ankle. What the hell does that mean? That is just a fancy way of saying not being able to bring your toes toward your shin. Why would that stop you from squatting with good technique? Think about it like this, your entire body is connected so when you squat and the ankle which is a mobile joint has a limited range of motion something in the system has no choice but to make up for the lack of range of motion and could show itself as knee pain, back pain or sometimes both. But sometimes the ankle is moving great and the squat is still all jacked up so what then? I would then look at what the hip is doing. Do we have a normative range of motion in the hip, again what the heck does that mean? Just like the ankle it is a mobile joint and needs to move in several different directions. Now the hip can be limited in several ways, the most common is rotation and extension. I'm not going to go too far into detail in this blog post on how to fix dorsiflexion or hip range of motion but I do want you to understand that sometimes by clearing up that lack of range of motion then looking at what leverages best suits you you're able to squat much more effectively.
I don’t always find any issues in any one thing that could be causing the issue when doing a loaded squat. So when talking to the client that usually reaffirms the bad knees theory or they think they have a weak core. But I don't make assumptions about what is going on in the pattern, I have to see it. So we test the unloaded pattern with no cues from me at all and what I tend to find is people emulate what they see rather than what the best squat pattern is for them. First I get a general idea of femur lengths (what is the relationship between your femur length and your tibia length) this tells me where the bar should be when it is on the client’s back. If you have long femurs like myself you should be in a generally lower bar position if you are one of god's chosen squatters and have a “50/50” relationship you would be in a high bar position and if you have long tibias you would be in a high bar position. The reason behind this is that the bar moves in relationship with your center of gravity. If someone like myself tried to squat in a high bar position a couple of things could happen, I could lose my upright position putting unwanted stress on my lower back, or on the opposite side of the body, I would need to drive my knees way out in front of me to keep the bar over my center mass. When either one of these things happens I have no choice but to create a super compensation and more than likely I'm in some sort of discomfort when I squat. The way I explain it to clients is that our bodies are incredible machines that will do A LOT, (unless the movement is self-limiting) even when we may have some sort of issues up or downstream that we don't realize are there, so after the screen, we can get an objective look at what the system is doing to put us in this situation.
What happens when I get a client that has a great range of motion and knows how to squat but is either in discomfort or just hitting a plateau? This is the most fun I get to have as a trainer. Now we push the pattern and see what is going on under heavy load. First, I obviously start with watching the squat when it is unloaded. Once I get a good idea of what is happening I start queuing. The first and most important que of them all is intra-abdominal pressure. Here is another “what” moment. To put it simply make yourself “pregnant” and then squeeze your belly like Mike Tyson is going to hit you with a body shot. What you are doing here is stabilizing your lower back. I don't want you to do the drawing-in method, this is no help for max load and puts your upper back in an altered position. Once you have that down we go to the feet, think about trying to rip the ground apart with your entire foot engaging the legs from butt to toes. Now that we have that dialed in we hit your upper back in the case of the barbell back squat think of it like doing a pull up this should cue the entire upper back. Once you are at the bottom of the squat, push through your traps.
If you've gotten this far, thank you for visiting my site. I hope this gives you some insight into how I view and break down the squat pattern.
Here are some of the key benefits of the squat.
When squatting properly you are bringing the ankle, knee, and hip to its end range while having to use a tremendous amount of core strength to keep the spine in a neutral position.
The squat will improve your vertical which is one of the key markers for success in any professional sport.
The types of squats that you can perform are endless, with each squat having a key reason as to why they are more beneficial for a given athlete.
The squat can be used at any level of fitness and can be used towards any fitness goal.
You can use the squat as a cardio underload exercise. This will help you avoid painfully boring trips to the treadmill.
These are just a couple of reasons why everyone can be squatting. If the squat is the king the deadlift is the queen. Stay tuned for my next blog post where I will break down the deadlift the do’s and don'ts and why the deadlift is a safe lift for people of all skill levels can and should be doing.
