Ignite The Fire

Hi Katie! I have been struggling for sometime with squats. A front squat, back squat, body weight squat, you say squat and I have trouble. My hamstrings don’t seem to do the work for me. Even though I am staying in my heels as much as possible, my quads seem to give out early and I am real slow out of the bottom. So when we have a workout with body weight squats, my time suffers. My coach says its an anatomical issue. He says I have short Tibia’s and therefore I must squat deeper than most and then I don’t have as much leverage coming out of the bottom. I can’t stretch my tibia’s, so I feel stuck. Do you have any advice on how to make them better? 

Thanks!!
Cindy 

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Take a close look at your hip and ankle mobility.  Begin a regular quad mashing program where you sit on the floor with a barbell across your quad and smash until you want to die.  Stretch your hamstrings on a regular basis.  Sit on a foam roller or softball to dig into your glutes.  Once your body is ready to work for you then you can work on your squat. 

For those of us who are more quad-dominant in our squat (whether due to anatomy or poor mechanics) there are ways to improve this.  To start, take a look at your starting position and if you are setting yourself up for success.  Are your toes turned out so far that you have no hope of engaging your glutes?  Are you rotating your legs with your wt in your heels so as to create torque in your hips before you descend?  Your posterior chain needs to be active before you lower into your squat.  Trying to turn all of that on in the bottom will never work.

Next, consider how you are lowering yourself.  Do you sit way back and drop your chest?  Do you go straight down and lead with your knees/quads?  You need to begin with your hips going back and continue by driving your knees out hard in order to keep your hamstrings and glutes engaged and loaded.  

Coming out of the bottom of the squat, you need to further push your knees out.  Any shifting forward will take the power out of the hamstrings and glutes and put it on the quads.  Drive the chest up out of the bottom and stay back on those heels. 

To train all of these elements at once can be overwhelming.  Squat therapy is a way to isolate one or more of these issues and really try to improve on them.  Squat to a box, don’t release tension while on the box, but work to make the position better.  Or you can squat with a pole in front of you to hold onto for support.  Use the pole as balance and to force your chest up, while you work on the descent and ascent to find your perfect squatting track.  I’ve also found it helpful to squat and hold in the bottom for 1-2min while concentrating on whatever points of performance that you can.  You should be able to sit in the bottom of your squat with your “side butt” turned on and ready to fire.  I think everyone could use some form of squat therapy in their lives, so lead the charge at your gym and get yourself moving better!

Katie