Many tips to improve your squat - and our upcoming workshop!
Welcome to the weekly warble here at Ideanthro Movement.
This week we're talking about squatting. And more specifically I'm going to give you some tips to help your mobility when squatting. This will make it easier to squat!
I picked this topic because next Sunday, the 18th of June, we're hosting a squat mobility workshop, so the topic is front of mind for me. Full details for the workshop are here.
This is a big warble, but hey, it's a topic worth a whole workshop of its own, so buckle in for lots of detail to help your squat!
If you've ever exercised at a gym or with a personal trainer before, you've probably squatted, or at the very least, seen other people squatting. Squats are popular, and for good reason.
They are a natural human movement that is useful in daily life.
And as an exercise, they are great for developing leg strength.
Almost everyone squats well when they're a young child, but if, as an adult, you haven't squatted for a long time, it can be pretty tricky.
So here are a couple of tips to help you on your way.
1) THE PROBLEM ISN'T ALWAYS WHERE IT FEELS LIKE IT IS
When you're new to squatting, you might feel like a certain body part is too tight to allow you to go any further. And maybe this is the case, but often it's deceptive.
A classic example is that people often feel that their hips are very tight when squatting, but when you dig into it, it's actually their ankles that are the problem, and the hips feel tight because they're trying to compensate.
And that leads us to...
2) ANKLE MOBILITY MATTERS
If you want to squat well, you need at least a moderate amount of ankle dorsiflexion.
Dorsiflexion is the bending of the ankle that occurs when you try to pull the top of your foot up towards your shin. It's the opposite of pointing your toes.
The problem is that in the modern world, where we sit a lot, and walk around in shoes with raised heels (even the modestly high ones in almost all sports footwear), most people have limited ankle dorsiflexion.
If you've tried squatting and found yourself getting stuck part way down and leant far forward, it's worth checking your dorsiflexion. You can find a post on how to do here. There's also a few tips on how to improve your ankle range of motion as well!
3) WHEN IT COMES TO HIPS, DON'T FORGET ABOUT ROTATION
And finally hips. There's so much focus on ankle mobility in the squatting world these days it's easy to forget that sometimes tight hips are in fact... tight.
What's even more overlooked though is that hip flexion benefits from improvements in hip rotation. Let me explain what that means.
Hip flexion is what occurs when you bring you knee towards your chest. In the case of a squat, you move into hip flexion as you lower yourself down.
Hip flexion might look like a simple case of bending at the hip joint, but in fact, there is also very subtle rotation (side to side) of the femur (upper leg bone) and ilium (pelvis) occuring at the same time. The more we can free up this rotation, the better hip flexion is likely to be.
The best ways to do this are quite nuanced, and beyond the scope of this already enormous warble! But we'll be digging into them in depth in the workshop on the 18th.
If you struggle to get deep into your squat, have tried to improve your ankle range of motion, and even tried relatively crude ways to improve hip rotation such as pigeon stretch, then we'll very likely have some new stuff for you to try!
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Okie dokie. That must be the longest warble I've ever written.
I hope that gives you some options to work on in your squat, and I hope it inspires you to come join us for our workshop on the 18th! We really do have a lot of great info to share!
You can find out more about the workshop and sign up here.
And of course if you have any questions feel free to ask!
Cheers
Jack