Squatting can be a life changer, once you get the hang of it, there’s no return. As our sedentary lifestyle takes a toll on our health, relearning basic human movement patterns become necessary, a fundamental part of which is squats.
Squat more often
Although I firmly believe that everyone should squat regularly, certainly, there is life beyond squats, because honestly, it’s damn hard to perform them correctly. Instead of blaming the era of the Homo Sedentary, I rather believe, that everyone is different, and for some individual, squatting is a piece of cake, while for others, even the thought is depressing. The long term benefits of squatting are to some degree dependent on your anatomy, like joint morphology, bone length, limb dimensions.
In other words, if you feel discomfort, pinching hip pain or unnatural twisting joints when squatting, you’re going to have a harder time getting the nuances of this great exercise. Fortunately, there are many many ways to come around your limitations, don’t use the first bad impressions as a cause for not doing it. Though it’s impossible to alter your anatomy, the good news is that most of the difficulties of squatting can be in fact influenced through practice by identifying the causes.
Try to discover these: play around with different variations like changing your stance, foot angle, elevating your heels, flexing/relaxing. Spending more time moving around in the bottom position should give you answers and will be your number one asset for developing yourself.
Common issues with squat
While there are many variations of squats, for now I highlight an exercise that could help you prepare for the conventional squat, or more specifically, the type of squat you most likely see people do in gyms, especially with weights, heels down.
Let’s start with a few common errors that you probably come across when asking someone to squat with his/her heels down:
- Head throws up for balance, often hyperextending, creating the false sensation of an upright posture, or makes up for poor thoracic extension
- Upper body stuck too vertical, causing lumpy movement. Yes, contrary to the first sentence above, an upper body stuck in too much extension is rarely ideal
- No hip control, the front of the thighs dominate the movement, causing ankles to run out of their range prematurely
- Ankles/knees collapse, feet turn out excessively to make up for a lost balance
If you step back and just watch the silhouette of the person squatting, it looks like as if the different body parts just act and move individually on their own, without any integrity or “higher governing authority”. That is due to lack of strength, which comes down to control and body awareness – for beginners especially, this latter should be the utmost goal of your training, pushing everything else behind.
The quadruped banded clam – and its variations
Basically, you want your body parts to move in a synchronized way, creating stiffness where stability demands are higher and staying semi-loose where mobility is essential. This requires accurate and controlled signaling which is overkill if you throw at a beginner.
There are many ways to build strength for an exercise. For some, it’s safe to start right over with squatting, mastering the movement itself just by practicing it over and over. On the other hand, some coaches have success in strengthening the body’s weakest links first, then gradually integrating them into more complex movements that better mimic the main exercise in question.
I have seen both clients, the ones who just needed minor adjustments and those who had to start from scratch.
Whichever the case, here is a great exercise (first exercise in the video) that can hit the nail on the head for better stability, control, and feedback to prepare your senses for squatting. This drill mainly targets one of the most common errors, namely when the knees fall inward aka knee valgus.
One of the obvious corrections of this flaw is to push the knees out. However, in many cases I see clients solving one problem but creating another. Their hips are not properly stabilized, so while they attempt to force their limbs laterally their pelvis tends to shift forward and tilt to the side. The reason I like this exercise is that it prevents just that. The position inherently forces you to brace your abs, better stabilizing your pelvis.
Cues:
- Keep your head up, but tuck your chin
- Pull your shoulders towards your hips
- Push against the ground, drive your scapula forward (but do not let the shoulders shrug)
- Maintain a neutral spine
- Exhale forcefully then push your knees out against the band activating the side of your hips
- Breathe normally when in no action, but keep a stiff torso throughout
- Pumping against the band should not influence your set position, keep your posture solid
- Actively keep your feet pulled up, flexed
Pros:
- The ground provides you greater stability which means you can turn your focus on areas where you need more control.
- Being parallel with the ground gives you better cue to stay aligned with it, aka achieve a more neutral cervical, thoracic and lumbar spinal curve
- Many of us are in a constant hyperextended position, as Mike Robertson explains in this great article reaching exercises can prevent this faulty posture and create stability demands rather in the core where you need it and force you to find a bigger range of motion through your hips.
- Feet is pulled up activating the front part of your shin, actively pulling your feet towards your shin (dorsiflexion). This is an often overlooked aspect of the squat, where the foot is the only contact with the ground and as such your only chance to receive feedback about your balance. For this reason, the muscles surrounding your foot/ankle/shank need to stay conscious during your squat and not just passively conducting force to your hip.
- The depth of the squat can be varied easily, going into more hip flexion does not increase perceived difficulty as opposed to real squats.
Cons:
- The above advantages can also be disadvantages. While this drill mimics a squat, the carryover of the benefits is greater when you choose drills in the squat itself. So the more the accessary drill resembles your target exercise the greater its specificity. Bret Contreras points this out in his article where he talks about knee valgus and band walking drills.
Progressions
No need to overcomplicate things here, anything that challenges your set position can be a way to progress the first exercise in the video. I made up the rest, just to show you examples but you can add variety as you wish, depending on your goal and weaknesses. For example, I lack dynamic shoulder stability, hence in the 4th exercise, I slide and reach forward with my arms while in a quadruped squat position. This can come handy before overhead squats when your shoulders are flexed nearly to their end range under load.
When you are fed up with the quadruped version, standing up is where variations of the sumo walk come to the picture. However, I use both, ground-based and standing, depending on the current alertness of the client. You can also progress them right one after the other.
Note that standing up is not necessarily a progression compared to the quadruped version. Experiment as you like and decide which prepares you better for your next squat session.
I hope you found this article helpful, have a great squat!
