Can’t Squat Deeply? Here’s How to Fix It…
Are you having trouble with a full squat? Meaning
when you squat down do you get stuck halfway? Or do your heels pop up off the ground? Or do you
fall backwards? If you're working on your full butt-to-heels squat and you're just not getting
there it can be really really frustrating. Why are we so limited in our squats in the Western
world? Well, it has to do with chairs, it has to do with cars, it has to do with seated toilets,
it also has to do with elevated heeled shoes. All of these things train our
body to have a really really poor deep squat. That's the bad news. The good news is
you can get it back. Hip mobility is so important, it's a basic range of motion for functional
humans.
Picking up things off the ground, tying your shoes, and in our later years it really
helps us to avoid slips and falls, which can be a major cause of severe injury, even death as we
get older. All that said, hip flexibility is important, you can learn it and this video is
for you. Here's what we'll cover. Number one, the anatomy of your hip flexibility, specifically
in the squat, meaning what do we need to work on. Number two, we'll look at a self-assessment
tool, so you can figure out whether it's your hip flexion or your dorsiflexion of your ankles that's
causing you problems. Then number three, I'll show you two specific poses you can work on every day
to increase the range of motion in that full squat position.
Quick disclaimer: If you're a power
lifter, if you're a performance athlete, this video might not be right for you. I'm not
a sports performance coach. I mostly work with everyday people looking to increase their range of
motion, increase mobility, increase their health span and live a better life. With all that out of
the way if you'd like to skip forward to the poses you'll find a time stamp down below. If you'd like
to grab a PDF of the poses you'll find a link to that down below as well. Let's start off with the
anatomy. Our hip joints are big strong joints. They're the primary movers of our body. When we
lift, we like to lift with our hips. When we load, when we jump, we want to use our hips primarily.
They're really strong. Because of that strength we have over two dozen different muscles and some
of the strongest connective tissues in the entire body. So when you start to think about opening up
your hips you kind of look down, you think "OK, what am I actually working on?".
Let's demystify
the full squat specifically. When I squat down, down, down, down, down, the two main things that
are happening are number one, hip flexion, my knee towards my chest, and number two is dorsiflexion
of my ankle. I'll say that again. Number one, hip flexion, my knee towards my chest. Number two,
dorsiflexion of my ankle. It's usually one or both of those two areas that are keeping you stuck.
For hip flexion, knee into my chest, primarily I'm thinking about my glute max and then my hamstring
muscles, also a little bit into my adductor muscles as well. But primarily we're focusing on
our gluteal hamstring group, those muscles need to be long enough so I can do that full hip flexion.
When we get into my dorsiflexion of my ankle, that's primarily restricted or enabled by the
flexibility of the muscles upstream, the muscles of my calf.
Specifically, my gastrocnemius,
my soleus, and my plantaris, the muscles of our calf. So that's what we'll be focusing
on. Before we jump into the stretches, let's do a quick self-assessment, so you can figure out is it
hip flexion, is it dorsiflexion of your ankle, or is it both that's keeping you stuck. Let's start
off down on the floor. Lie down on your back. Lying down on the floor, lift your right
leg up into the air, bend at your knee, interlace your hands outside your knee and
gently pull your knee towards your armpit. In an ideal world, with full hip flexion there'd
be no space between your leg and your torso. This is essentially imitating a full bum-to-heel
squat, but we're doing it on our back.
So this is our first test. If there is space between
your leg and your torso I'd like you to measure that space so you can keep track.
You just do a straight line from your knee to your body. Keep track of that number and
over the weeks and the months to follow you should be able to see very steady gains until
your knee goes all the way to your armpit. The next assessment that we'll do is a
dorsiflexion mobility test. This is a very simple test, but it'll help you understand
how your ankles are doing. Here's what you do. Go up to a wall, make a fist, put the fist
between your big toe and the wall and now bend your knee into the wall. Ideally you'd like your
heel to be down, your knee to be against the wall, without that heel popping up. This would be basic
ankle dorsiflexion. That will help us understand, in a full bum-to-heel squat, is that hip flexion,
is it a dorsiflexion, or is it both. With all that in mind, let's now move into two stretches you
can use every day to work on both of these two ranges.
Let's look at two poses. The first
pose, blaster, is specifically for hip flexion. The second pose, a runner's lunge, is designed
specifically for that ankle dorsiflexion. A quick note here. These should always be done after, not
before a run, after, not before weight lifting. This is stretching with a capital S, meaning it's
very intense, it's designed to actually affect change in your soft tissues. You need to position
this after, not before, anything explosive, load, speed, or strength bearing. Let's get into
the first pose. Start off on your hands and your knees.
You'll need a stool and a cushion, like
I have here, and a timer. Hands and knees like a child crawling. I'll use the cushion underneath my
left knee, I'll then lunge my right foot forward outside of my crawling hands. I'll use this
stool, look at my ankle right under my knee, use this stool for my arms and again imagine
I'm doing a unilateral squat here.
Two minutes on my timer and I'll lunge forward, resting
on my forearms. Now, as I feel comfortable, I'll load this hip more, and more, and more. You
can see I'm heel toeing, wiggling my foot a little more forward to go deeper into the stretch. As
you're here in the pose take two fingers and you can poke around underneath your leg. You should
feel tension in your gluteal hamstring group here, that group of muscles we spoke about earlier
that might be limiting your hip flexion range. You can drop your head and we'll move into
the three principles of practice. When it comes to big S stretching, the first principle
is wet noodle, and that tells us that we should relax our muscles as much as possible
when we're stretching with a big S.
So let's attempt to wet noodle our front leg
as much as possible. The second principle is called nose-to-mouth breathing. Here's how
it works. Inhale through your nose for four. Exhale through your mouth for eight. And the third principle of the Science of
Stretching has to do with this timer. We need to spend a certain amount of time under passive
tension to actually affect change in our body. We're using a two-minute, which is kind
of our minimum hold time for all of our Science of Stretching poses. With
all those three principles in mind relax into this stretch, carry on with
your breathing here with this blaster pose. Good. Slowly release out of the pose,
get rid of your stool for a moment, wide knees, and let's do a child's pose.
We'll bounce one, we'll bounce two, and we'll bounce three. Reset. Switch that cushion
underneath your right leg, lunge your left foot forward outside of your left hand, pause here,
grab the stool, we'll get right into our blaster pose on the left side. As much as possible load,
load, load up that front hip, that left hip here. What am I doing? Well I'm approximating a full
hip flexion, just like I do in a full bum-to-heel squat.
So I'm attempting to move that heel towards
my armpit, just like what would happen in a squat. One of the advantages of working unilaterally, so
my right side and then my left side, is you might find imbalances. I'm right handed, so my right
side tends to be stronger, but unfortunately also tighter than my left side. When I'm doing poses
like this, if I discover that my left side is a little tighter, or in my case a little bit
looser, I can spend more time on the tighter side to attempt to equal out some of those
imbalances that naturally occur for all of us. When I'm in this pose I'm focused on hip
flexion, again that's knee towards my chest. I'm not worried about dorsiflexion in my
ankle.
In fact, just the opposite. I'll heel toe my foot more forward so that my ankle
stays relatively neutral, with my ankle right under my knee. Principle number one, wet noodle,
my muscles will stretch best when fully relaxed so i'll let it go. Principle number two is I'll use
nose-to-mouth, four to eight breathing, to help to turn off my myotatic reflex, my stretch reflex.
And principle number three, we're doing two-minute long holds to increase my time under passive
tension. Inhale through your nose for four. Exhale eight. Inhale four. And then exhale through your mouth for eight. Good. Release. Knees wide apart, let's
bounce down in a child's pose, one, two, and three. To reset get rid of this cushion
and we'll move into our next pose which is focused on dorsiflexion of our ankle. So we'll be
stretching our calves.
We'll again use a stool, but this time I'll take a lunging position. But
take a look at my back heel, right leg is forward, my knee is bent, back leg is straight all the
way straight back behind me. I'll again start my timer. There's two variations of this pose. One
minute each. Arms all the way straight and I want to drive the weight from my palms of my hands
into my shoulders and then back into that back heel. On my front foot I'm not so worried about
it. I'd like all the pressure to be ground down into my heel. When I do this straight leg runner's
lunge, it helps to stretch my gastrocnemius, which is the upper calf muscles. They're
very, very strong, fast twitch muscles, and they're often neglected in calf stretches.
And even though they're far away from your ankle, they can play a huge role in your ankle
mobility. When we do this straight leg lunge like this it helps to open up that gastroc
specifically.
Inhale through your nose. Exhale mouth. Good. For the second minute of the pose watch
my back knee, see how I softened my back knee? Now this knee is bent, this knee is bent
but my heel is still down on the ground. With my knee bent it tends to prioritize my
soleus muscle on my calf. Remember we talked about plantaris, gastrocnemius, and soleus? Your
gastric and your soleus are really the big movers. Your gastroc is stretched best with a
straight leg, your soleus is stretched best with a bent leg. The key thing here, make sure
that heel stays down on the ground.
You can kick your bum backwards and now imagine I'm doing
a squat, imagine my knees are carefully tracking over my big toe and moving out over my big toe,
just like we did in that self-assessment when we tested our ankle mobility. We want our knee to
move past our big toe with careful alignment. Good. Now switch legs. What that
means is my left leg comes forward, my right leg goes back, and again, I find that
place where I get a nice stretch in my right leg, up high in my calf where my gastroc is.
I do that
through a straight leg. My front leg is bent. My arms, I find if they're straight I can get more
pressure. If you need to drop down your forearms that can work, but I find I get more pressure
back into my heel when my arms are straight. My heel is really heavy and I'll lock out my leg back
behind me, nice and straight, and strong. Please remember that these are post-workout, post-run,
big S stretching exercises. Don't do this before you go running. Don't do this before lifting or
any kind of exercise. These poses are really, really aggressive, and your muscles will feel
temporarily weaker, and your joints might feel temporarily a little bit wobbly. So this is not
a warm-up stretch, this is very much a hardcore mobility exercise. The first minute we did with
a straight leg, as we move into the second minute carefully bend your right knee but continue to
drive the weight back into your heel.
Sometimes this takes a little bit of adjustment or wiggling
with your front foot to find the stretch. There we go. Now with your back leg imagine you're in a
squat. Imagine your knee is bending out over your toes, tracking over your big toe, and press your
heel down because, remember, we want to do a full bum-to-heel squat. That's our goal.
Let's inhale through our nose for four, and exhale for eight.
Inhale four and exhale eight. Good. We're at two minutes. Let's get rid of
that stool and let's drop down, down, down, and see how you're feeling, see if your
bum is a little bit closer to your heels, see if you're a little bit more relaxed
in this full bum-to-heel squat or if you're moving at least in the right
direction. Within a couple of weeks, couple of months for sure, you should be
able to achieve some pretty big changes. Hope you found this video helpful. If you'd like
more science-based yoga videos, hit subscribe down below. I do my best to answer all the comments
personally, if you want to drop a question or a suggestion down below. You can find my teaching
calendar, and I teach hip opening challenges, you can find that at yogabody.com.
Thanks so much
for watching and I'll see you in the next video..
