Top 5 Fridays! 5 Ways to Improve Deep Squat

Do you want to improve your deep squat or overhead deep squat? One is an exercise and the other is normally part of a movement screen.
For this post, we'll take a look at improving the deep squat (not the arms overhead with a dowel)

1) Thoracic Mobility

• thoracic spine is often limited in extension/rotation
• screen with seated thoracic rotation to look for asymmetry
• previous posts on thoracic treatment, why you should look at it, and another thoracic post is here

2) Dorsiflexion Mobility

• if someone fails the half kneel ankle dorsiflexion test, start here
• but also look at tibial IR, and lateral tibial glide - when limited often cases the typical fault of genu valgus
• 5 Easy Ankle Resets post here

3) Hip flexion Mobility

• this is often painful or tight at end range passive/active flexion
• I assess ability to hip hinge, plus ASLR and PSLR
• when limited, corkscrew plus reinforce with Core Activated ASLR works well

4) Hip Flexor Tone

• having too much tone in the hip flexors often causes excessive anterior pelvic tilt or a feeling of anterior impingement
• this also causes a movement fault of hips moving posterior too early as they start flexed, so the only way to go is posterior and not inferior
• Pain Free Psoas Release and Positional Inhibition of Hip Flexors work great to reset this

5) Knee Mobility

• check for passive knee extension, The Easiest Knee Test Ever
• if limited, other than working on tibial rotation, hip mobility, IASTM to lateral and anterior patterns, have the patient self reset and reinforce with Knee Extension Reset

Remember, squatting as a screen and squatting as an exercise are two different things. If you or your patients have tibial IR, ankle df asymmetries, squat with one leg turned out more or use a shoe with a bigger heel. Not everyone has to train barefoot or minimalist. Don't use the strict positions of the screen in your training. Sometimes asymmetries are bony and all the wrapping, needling, scraping and mobilizing is not going to change it.

For reference here and here are a few older posts I wrote on The Overhead Deep Squat. Check them out and let me know common dysfunctions, resets, and treatments you use to improve the deep squat. Thanks for reading and watching!

Keeping it Eclectic...