The Chain Effect Podcast
A Physical Therapist and a Registered Dietitian discuss health, fitness, kiddos, and fun in practical ways for real people and families.
Dr. Taylor Pope and Caroline Pope founded Chain Effect, a comprehensive wellness and fitness studio combining physical therapy, nutrition counseling, personal training, and active recovery services under one roof in Raleigh, NC in 2015. Their mission is to show people how every link strengthens the chain of health to feel better, move better, get strong, and increase health span.
Learn more about Chain Effect at www.chaineffect.com
The Chain Effect Podcast
Drop It Like a Squat
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A cornerstone movement of strength and mobility, the squat is something most everyone does in their exercise and training. Whether you want to build that booty safely or learn about the intricacies of partial vs full depth squats and hear a physical therapist’s take on the controversial “butt-wink”, this is a solid listen for anyone who works out!
Thank you. Welcome
SPEAKER_02to the Chain Effect podcast, where a physical therapist and a dietitian married with two kids juggle the struggle of running a business, raising a family, and prioritizing our own health, all while trying to have as much fun as possible.
SPEAKER_00We're your hosts, Taylor Pope, doctor of physical therapy, and
SPEAKER_02Caroline Pope, registered dietitian.
SPEAKER_00Together, we own and operate a health facility, bringing together physical therapists, dietitians, personal trainers, and active recovery services to create what we call the Chain
SPEAKER_02Effect.
SPEAKER_00All right.
SPEAKER_02Today, what are we talking about?
SPEAKER_00We're talking about squat, deep squats, dropping it like it's hot, and the butt wink.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, everyone wants that booty
SPEAKER_00these days. Yeah, well, you get it from a variety of things. You can get it from deadlifting. You can get it from squatting. But today we're going to focus on squatting, hip hinging and knee hinging in particular. Those are your deadlifts versus squats.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I usually have been prioritizing deadlifts, but the other day I did some deeper front squats. And I'm very sore. And it was like quicker pace as well.
SPEAKER_00You really need both. Yeah. You need
SPEAKER_02both. Yeah. I know. I should probably concentrate more on the squats, to be honest. But we're going to get that booty, booty, booty, booty rocking everywhere. Booty, booty, booty, booty rocking everywhere.
SPEAKER_00You're going to do that as I make my font bigger because all of a sudden I turn 45 and I can't see anything. I
SPEAKER_02know.
SPEAKER_00Like all of a sudden, like words are blurry. It's kind of concerning. Like
SPEAKER_02all of a sudden last week, you're like, I just, I can't read my phone.
SPEAKER_00Like what? It's like all of a sudden. You've never had
SPEAKER_02vision. You've always been bragging about your eyesight
SPEAKER_00to me. Well, my distance eyesight is still. And the last time I got my eyes checked was just like a year ago. Yeah. Because I had that weird like ingrown eyelid hair. And then all of a sudden I had my eyes checked. I was still like 2015.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So I can read from real like far away. I can still read really well. But all of a sudden now I'm like moving things like closer or farther away.
SPEAKER_02Got to get those little thin readers. reader class. I've got to go to Costco Optics Center and get some readers.
SPEAKER_00I like was handing mods his readers that I was just like, just like glance through them. And I was like, holy crap, everything is really clear. So
SPEAKER_02you can see a lot better. Okay, well, maybe that Yeah.
SPEAKER_00All
SPEAKER_02right, let's get going. What are you going to inform educate us about?
SPEAKER_00Well, this is Yeah, this is more of a performance physical therapy type episode where we're going to talk about squatting, we're going to talk about the deep squat, we're going to talk about why squatting matters. So considerations for performance, general population, partial versus full depth squats. And we're also going to talk about some of the mobility things that you need to perform deep squats really well, and some things that might be holding your squat back. So we're going to really sort of dive deep into those considerations. So first of all, why squats matter. I remember taking an SFMA course. And that's the selective functional motor assessment, which is an FMS course to do motor screens and really identify if injuries are from limitations in mobility, strength, or motor control. And the deep squat is one of the core fundamental movements that they do. And in that course, they talk about how the full squat is almost a perfect expression of strength, mobility, and motor control when done. And so some of the things that we're looking for in that deep squat is we want the knees to track forward over the toes. We want the hips to drop down and we want the torso. And once again, this squat is performed with your hands up in the air. So we want the,
SPEAKER_02that's harder.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. We want the hands to stay up and we want your torso. So if you imagine your torso and your hands, your shin angle, which is the bone right below your knees, we want to imagine that that torso and shin angle are approaching parallel, but that your torso is not breaking parallel, that parallel line of your shin angle. So basically, if you have to hunch way forward, or if you have to bend way forward at your torso, and you're not able to get that shin angle that same distance forward, then we might have some limitation in your mobility. And so that's something we definitely want to look at when we're assessing your squat. It's completely fine for your torso to be more upright, but if you're finding that the only way for you to get into that deep squat is to bend way forward or actually like
SPEAKER_02round
SPEAKER_00your lumbar spine to get into that position, that can be a sign that there's some mechanics of your squat that we need to work on. So deep squatting is is sort of controversial in the physical therapy, but also performance field. And we want to address some of the reasons that it might be controversial from like an injury standpoint and also a performance standpoint. So first of all, there has always been this sort of, you know, in physical therapy, there's been this saying like, we want to maintain the deep squat, but we want to be a little bit careful and how we train the deep squat. So from just an overall movement, deep squatting is something that we have done since babies.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I'm like, you think about our kids growing up, like they can do a perfect deep squat. And
SPEAKER_00they can just hang out there. Yeah. Right. On their feet. And it's a great expression of your hip mobility, your knee mobility, your ankle mobility, and also the stability that you're able to maintain through your spine. And so In a lot of cultures, not ours, the deep squat is prioritized as a movement throughout life. A lot of countries will, instead of a nice porcelain toilet to sit on, there's just a hole in the ground. And so they're going into that deep squat. And now you're seeing the squatty potty come back because that actually puts you into a better angle for getting everything
SPEAKER_02out. I've seen that more and more in friends' and I mean, yeah, people, more and more people are using those for sure. I want to try one. Anyway.
SPEAKER_00So we want to, we want to maintain, we want to understand that the deep squat is something that we want to be able to get into. We want to be able to get into that position. And really, you know, there's a lot of research that shows, you know, you want to be able to like hang out there comfortably and that might take some work. We want to, when we get into those deep squats, we want to be assessing where things might be hurting, what might be hurting. Um, so that that's going to give us a nice roadmap for some areas that might need a little bit of extra attention from a rehab standpoint.
SPEAKER_02I'm just laughing. Cause I feel like in high school and college, I used to love like chilling in that squat position when I was wearing heels, but I'd be like on at a party, I'd be like on the ground. And my friends would be like, why can't I stand up? I'm like, it's just so comfortable. I'm in this squat, but that's when I was more limber. I was younger. I was dancing, but in heels. I was
SPEAKER_00also in heels. But why in heels did it feel comfortable is the question.
SPEAKER_02Because my calves didn't have to stretch as much.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, your calves didn't have to stretch as much, but you've also chronically sprained your ankles. So you have really tight ankles, particularly in that dorsiflexion. So your ability to get that forward shin angle with your heel down is somewhat compromised. And so that's why that deep squat now when you're not wearing heels is a little bit trickier. Yeah. And it's because you have those tight heel cords, but also you have some restricted ankle mobility, which is limiting that ability to get that shin angle forward, which is what allows you to sink down into that deep squat comfortably. If you don't have that ankle mobility, then as soon as you start to go down, you're going to feel like you're falling backwards. Yeah. So that's why we use lifts sometimes in the gym. And we'll talk about that in a little bit so some of the benefits for squatting definitely it's a foundational strength movement heavy squats actually drive hormonal regulation and as well as neuromuscular adaptation so it's a full recruitment activity but it also is really good for you know firing up your hormones actually wow and so there's been some studies that you can
SPEAKER_02we love to hear that term
SPEAKER_00you can get an adrenaline rush from doing like deep squats and kind of priming the engine So it can be really good for, you know, right before you play, or let's say you've warmed up and you're about to go in doing some deep squats and you'll actually see people on the sidelines sometimes like go down into a full deep squat and then like jump up. Like a jump squat. to get into that full range of motion. Um, and it's, you know, so a little bit better for, uh, quads and glute growth.
SPEAKER_02So if you want to grow that booty, we've
SPEAKER_00got to do a full range of motion. And there, there's also some implications to, you know, prioritizing glutes versus prioritizing the, um, the quads as far as if you're tilted a little bit more forward or if you're a little bit more upright. So a little bit more upright, you're going to be prioritizing quads because you're going to be relying on those... Like a
SPEAKER_02wall sit. Think about a wall sit.
SPEAKER_00That's right. That's right. Versus if you're going a little bit more forward, you're going to be stretching your glutes a little bit more around that curve, which is not happening as much when you have that more vertical torso. So just depending on what your training goal is, great for bone density and also really good for joint health if it's not hurting. So that's the big caveat with squatting. Squatting should feel good. And if it's not feeling good for you to do an unloaded squat, then we need to explore that before we start putting a training load on top of it. So that's a big consideration. And I've seen a lot of personal trainers over the years, not our personal trainers, but I have seen other personal trainers over the years, just throw that deep squat into the first session without doing a lot of assessment to see if that's a safe movement for them. And so So the best trainers that I've seen in their initial screen, they're assessing that deep squat. And again, that's part of the FMS, which has been adopted by a lot of, yeah, doing some good screens. It's really good. Like we talked about for functional mobility and it's really good for, you know, your metabolic, there's good longevity benefits because, you know, let's face it, you know, deep squat is getting in and out of a chair. I mean, I guess that's more of a partial squat, but getting, you know, on and off the toilet. you know, getting in and out of a chair, getting in and out of your car and doing that safely with control is really important. But also just, you know, being able to get up, up and down from the ground is heavily reliant on that quad strength, heavily reliant on your glute strength balance. And so from a longevity standpoint, you know, everyone's talking about, you know, a great indication of your overall longevity is your ability to get off the ground without using your hands. And And that is in part, it's not an exact movement, like you're not going to just pop up from a deep squat, you know, most of the time, but the lunge and the different mobility movements that you would use to get up from the ground are reinforced from deep squatting and squatting in general. Yeah. So it is really important from a longevity standpoint. So as we're talking about, you know, full depth squats versus the partial squats, the pros for the full depth squats squats are that you're going to have greater muscle activation at those long links in the quads and glutes. You're going to have greater hypertrophy potential and joint mobility gains. So you're taking the joints through a bigger range of motion. And anytime we do that, we're going to be strengthening more of the muscle because we're going to be putting it into a longer position. So we're going to be increasing the demand of the muscle at those deeper squat ranges. And we're going to be taking the joint through a greater and more full expression of that range of motion. So that is really important. And again, that should be mostly pain-free, especially when you start. There's also stronger carryover for your sports, especially ones that are requiring a deep knee and hip angles. And if you imagine like a sprinter coming in and out of their cuts, one of the things that we look for is that, you know, what's your ability to get a really dynamic or a steep angled shin angle? And So that's happening, you know, when you have good ankle mobility, when you have good knee and hip control. So coming in and out of your cuts and starting off for a sprint. So really good carry over for sprinting. Also, you can imagine, you know, jumping, things like that coming, you know, from that squat and jumping up. All of that is going to be prioritized. And if you think about, you know, we've talked about velocity-based training. So not just your ability to do, perform that motion. and perform that motion under heavy load, but also your speed of coming out of that motion. And so, um, you can reference our velocity based training episode. If you want to learn a little bit more about that, the cons of the deep full squat. And when we're talking about the deep full squat, let's, let's be clear that we're talking about dropping down below 90 degrees. Um, and you really, you're looking at, at, uh, knee angles of roughly like one 10 to one 40 or all the way down. to like heels, you know, they'll say, you know, butt to grass or like, you know, yeah. Ooh, now we're gonna have to, you have the explicit on our, well,
SPEAKER_02that's what you hear.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. You hear that. So, um, getting your butt down, uh, to your heels. Um, so we're talking
SPEAKER_02about, I guess some people
SPEAKER_00abbreviate those. So getting those, getting all the way down into that deep squat versus a partial squat, which is going to be anywhere from zero degrees or basically standing straight up all the way down to 90 degrees. So the cons for that full depth squat are there are higher patella femoral stress at those deep angles. And what that means is basically your kneecap is sitting in a groove in your knee that's created by the end of your femur. And as you go into those deeper knee angles, the pressure of that kneecap into your groove, which is lined with cartilage, does increase. So if you have not so great alignment of your shin or not so great alignment of your femur, maybe your knees are sort of buckling together or because of your hip mobility or ankle mobility, you're unable to get your knees into a good aligned position, then you can be dragging that kneecap at a sort of an off angle through that femoral groove. And that will create what's called patellofemoral pain, which happens a lot with runners, which happens, you know, super common, probably one of the most common knee injuries that we see is overuse injuries from that patellofemoral stress. And so we want to make sure that we have balanced tissue on the outside of the leg and the inside of the leg, meaning you're, you know, underneath the IT band with the vastus lateralis, so your outer quad muscles and your inner adductors. We want to have good balance there. We want to have good flexibility through our quad so that when we start to get into those deep angles, we're not just driving that patella more and more into, uh, the, the femoral, um, that femoral plateau, but we're actually sliding it up and down, uh, through that groove. So really
SPEAKER_02anatomy physiology going
SPEAKER_00on. Yeah. Really important to, to make sure that you can get in, you know, into those angles. And that's why we say, you know, do it unloaded before you start to load.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I'm just thinking it's interesting because we looked at my squat last week or a couple of weeks ago because I've been having some inner knee pain, which may actually be like the hamstring we're figuring out. But, you know, I am doing the squat slightly incorrectly. You know, I would think my squat is pretty good form compared to a lot of people. But when you actually look at it, my position isn't correct and it could be leading me to some ankle pain, some knee pain. pain that's starting so it's interesting the slightest little things that you're doing wrong could lead to some serious injuries
SPEAKER_00right and we want to you know that's that's really interesting you bring that up to like you know we've talked about that specificity versus variability component too so we don't want to to think about having to go into a squat with the exact knee you know foot alignment being like like we're in a machine because that's not how the body is used in general like our foot's going to be in all different directions if you're
SPEAKER_02playing sports
SPEAKER_00right
SPEAKER_02yeah
SPEAKER_00but when we're under increased load right we do want to be you know cognizant of how things are feeling when we're going through that range of motion we do want to be thinking about having that center of the patella tracking over the second toe so if you're a looking in the mirror and your feet are straight, we do want to try to have that patella, the center of your kneecap tracking right over that second toe, or it can be a little bit pushed out to the, to the outside from that. But what you don't want to have is it driving internally. So imagine your sort of knees coming together and that can happen throughout the squat, or that might happen at just one particular moment during your squat, right? And that can be a sign that someone needs to really build up some glute strength. They need to build up some external rotation strength because that can be, that little moment might be a point where you land just right in that little moment, have that, it's called valgus, have that knee valgus moment, and then boom, the ACL is compromised. So that's why we want to be, when we're training the squat, we do want to be really diligent about our alignment throughout. throughout that full range of motion.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I'm just thinking too, and you might go into this, but like a box jump also, like the explosive movement going into a squat. I know not everyone lands in a squat, but a lot of times you are like jumping up, squat, then come up. So I can imagine you could get hurt with that repetition if you're not doing the correct form.
SPEAKER_00Right, exactly. And so I would never really start one of my athletes. I mean, I might start like a young athlete before we've done any like, I would probably still want to screen them and make sure that they can squat appropriately, have them do some, some good reps where they're reinforcing that alignment before I just said, okay, let's do some box jumps. Right. And then, and then the other thing that, you know, actually jumping up onto a box is relatively low impact. And it seems, it seems crazy, but you're actually like jumping up. You're not actually landing all that hard, but what you're seeing a lot of athletes really work on is jumping off the box now
SPEAKER_02onto the ground
SPEAKER_00onto the ground and landing with control now that is a really good and you would obviously start someone off with a very impact with a very low box you're not having them jump off anything really high but you can have them you can set it up where they have a box that's facing the mirror and or you're filming them and then you're having them jump off the box and trying to maintain that really solid knee alignment, knee cap over the second toe, not caving in as they land and throughout that landing motion. And what's great about that is you can video it, slow it down, show the athlete, hey, when you're landing, this is what's happening to your knees. And then that's going to really show them, hey, we need to make sure that we're landing appropriately. And then the more reps that you do where you're landing with control, landing in good alignment, softening the land making sure that you're cushioning you're not just landing you know with your knees straight or or totally upright then you're building that motor programming you're building that muscle memory to do it correctly when you're in your sport so there's you know there's a lot of techniques where people will do I think it's called the French method but it's the idea is that you do these compound lifts deadlift deep squat, and then you perform an explosive activity like box jumps. So you're taking that motor program that you just did heavy, and then you're applying it immediately after. So it's like you put down the bar or rack the bar, and then you're going immediately into your box jumps to reinforce that more athletic adaptation.
SPEAKER_02I can see that with running too. So let's talk about the pros and cons of the partial depth. You did the pros and cons of full depth squats.
SPEAKER_00Well, there are a couple more cons. So we really were just talking about patella femoral stress. It does seem like one. But there's also just a couple of cons. If you have any sort of PCL injury, going into those deep squats does produce a little bit more tibial forward shearing force. So if your PCL is compromised, there's going to be an increased demand on going into that deep squat. And also, and we talked about this a little bit, it does require a lot of ankle mobility and a lot of hip mobility. And sometimes the structure and angle of the ball and socket as it relates to the hip, and this is sometimes just an unfortunate anatomical difference between people. Sometimes there's just an anatomical alignment or a limited mobility of the ball to fully sort of go back in the socket and then rotate all the way up without running into the acetabulum. So sometimes when you're going into that deep squat, even with a completely vertical upright torso, you're going to run into a little bit of that, into the front of that acetabulum, which can create some hip pain. And also over time, if you did it repetitiously under load could compromise the labrum. And so, you know, we just want to have like I said, we want to do these squats, but we want to make sure that we're not having a lot of pain while we're doing it. Okay. So now going into the partial squat and a lot of, you know, some, you know, fitness enthusiasts are like partial squats. Well, there's no real reason to do those. You're, you know, you're not really moving through a big range of motion at all, but there is some benefits and particularly, you know, athletes who are trying to really increase their overall, um, their overall load. So let's say you're trying to get into an overload situation, but going into a super deep squat, you're not able to tolerate that full depth. That's where a partial squat can be really beneficial because you can train at a higher load without going into the range of motion where you will tend to lose that stability, that spinal stability. And so it's really beneficial for like working on max strength and then you can sort of step it down and try to get deeper and deeper as you're doing that. And so usually what I recommend for people as they're trying to do that from a safety standpoint, put something behind you, give yourself a bench or some sort of stool that you can, if you had to bail out as you're really trying to catch yourself. Yeah, exactly. You're going to basically sit down on it. There's also less joint stress at, you know, at the range of motion for the partial depth squats. So if you're someone who just unfortunately has a lot of, uh, degeneration in your cartilage and your knee, or, you know, you've never squatted. And so you're really just not tolerating, uh, going into that full depth. Well, you know, you are going to be taking that joint through a smaller range of motion as you're, um, as you're going into that partial depth. So you might find that like your cartilage feels good going to 90, but doesn't really feel good going past that.
SPEAKER_01And
SPEAKER_00that would be fine. So in that situation, we would want to, over time, try to challenge your mobility and make sure that we have proper mobility in your ankles, proper mobility in your hips, and try to increase that unloaded squat from a full mobility standpoint or a full depth. But maybe as we're trying to just build strength, we're going after more of a partial squat. And so it can be a great progression for you to to work on your full mobility for your full squats and then use partial squats as your strength training. The cons, of course, because you're not going as deep, there's less total hypertrophy stimulus for some of the muscle groups and there's a little bit less, there's a reduced transfer for athletic movement per se. Next, we're gonna talk about a couple, and we've already gone over some of this stuff, but some of the safety concerns when you're going into full depth, we talked extensively about the patellofemoral pain. We've talked about the PCL type pain, but it's really good to talk about, this is where we kind of get into the butt wink. It's good for us to talk about what's going on with the spine when we're going into those full deep squats. Now, the butt wink. Super controversial, right? Because as you're going into your deep squat, it is totally normal for you to have a butt wink or basically a posterior pelvic tilt at the bottom because you're basically running out of room for hip flexion. And so therefore, you're going to tuck that pelvis a little bit underneath you. Where we run into problems is when under heavy load, if your spine is not tolerant of those posterior forces, you can get into some shearing posterior wedging of the lumbar disc. And so we'll sort of dive into that now.
SPEAKER_02But give us for the lay person, give us, okay, when you say butt wink, you described it, the pelvic tilt, but what does it kind of look like? Like if I'm doing it and I'm looking in the mirror, can I see myself doing it or is it very specific, very subtle where like someone behind me would
SPEAKER_00have to see it? Yeah. And actually it's more from the side. So what you're basically, the best way to do it is either to have someone looking at you or you filming yourself from the side, but you're going to try to go into, so the best way to do this would be unloaded and see how low you can go. Yeah. Or, or just like, uh, you could put like a, like a dowel or a very light barbell, something very light. to hold and see how low you can go. Film yourself with something very light, very light load. Um, and, and really we're, we're saying, you know, have some sort of load because honestly, a little bit of load helps people who have difficulty getting into their deep squat without load. So I
SPEAKER_02can see that. Yeah. So what I like tipping back.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Cause you're, you're going to like fall backwards. Like you and me, our ankles are so stiff and rigid that like, when we try to just go into like a full depth squat, we're going to like roll on our backs, but give me a 10 pound plate and I can start with it right away. These are called heartbeat squats. So I can start with it right on my chest. And then as I go lower into my squat, I can hold that plate out in front of me and now I can achieve full depth. And it's just giving me a little bit of counter leverage so that I can go into my full deep squat. Now, at some point during that motion, I'm going to start to lose, and me, I'm going to start to lose spinal control. Now, there are people who can go into that full depth squat under load. They'll have a tiny bit of posterior pelvic tilt, but they never really start losing control of their spine, that lumbar flexion. That's the part we want to be really cognizant about. So if as you start to tuck your hips underneath you, go into that posterior pelvic tilt, if you're also having a little bit of lumbar flexion there, meaning that you're basically think about bending forward, but you're bending forward from the bottom up because you're trying to stay more upright. What's happening there is you have the discs that are in between each of your vertebrae. And if you imagine the front, if you're going into that flexion, what's happening is the front side of your vertebrae are approximating and that's driving the disc pressure posteriorly toward the spinal cord. So when you herniate a disc, it's typically, well, it's always backwards. Sometimes it's off to one side. Very rarely is it what we would call central, but usually it's off to one side and then that's where the nerve roots are. And so you can pro there's all different stages of herniating and disc or injuring a disc and the discs are pretty resilient, but it's, you know, it was always explained to me, like it's a duty cycle. So like the more you do it over time, you could be going in two, two different ways. So if you have good mechanics, you can be strengthening and building your resiliency there. If you have bad mechanics and if you have some strength imbalances, it can be only a matter of time before, if we're putting a lot of pressure on the disc before the disc starts to prolapse or herniate. And that is, that is, yeah, that's going to, that's going to put you out for a long time. You're going to have radiating symptoms. And it's, you know, obviously super painful, but it's also going to, you know, close down your training window. So we want to be building up your squats without having ourselves subjected to those posterior forces. And so what's required there is we need to have good mobility into hip flexion. So you need to have the ability to, you know, get into deep hip flexion. You need to have good hamstring length. You got to have good ankle dorsiflexion and you have to have good control over your pelvis and lumbar spine. And so we call that, um, when you have bad control, it's, uh, uh, or, you know, if you, if you, it's a lack of lumbopelvic disassociation. So your ability to control and stabilize your spine and move the pelvis. I was just talking to someone about this today because we were talking about golfers and golfers have this insane ability to control their lumbar spine, keep everything nice and stable, and then move their pelvis forward back, but also side to side with a little bit of rotation. And frankly, I'm not able to do that very well, but that is what's required to to have minimal shearing forces on the lumbar spine when you're doing those big golf motions. Well, the same thing is needed when you're going into that deep squat. You need to be able to maintain rigidity in your spine as you're going into that deep squat. Now, the thing that I always tell people is if you're a competitive athlete and your job is to train on a regular basis, you're not spending a lot of time sitting in chairs. But if you're an office worker and you're spending a lot of time sitting at a desk working at a computer, that whole time you're in that seated position, you are stretch weakening your posterior chain. So just staying in a seated position for long periods of time, we've talked about this before, it's that lower crossed syndrome. You're getting tight in your hip flexors. You're getting tight in your quads. You're getting weak in your abdominals. and you're getting weak in your glutes. And so that's why we prioritize these posterior chain exercises for everyone because they're so necessary. And, you know, anyone with low back pain probably has some posterior chain weakness.
SPEAKER_02And you can't just expect to do that all day, 40 days a week, or I mean 40 hours a week, and then get up and go play your sport or something you're trying to get better at without working on these specific exercises or functional warmups or whatever,
SPEAKER_00right? Exactly, exactly. And what's Versus like what we tend to do is we tend to sit at a desk all day and then drive sitting more to our workout, our gym, our group fitness class. And then if, you know, we go to some group fitness classes and the warmup, you know, might leave a little bit of room, you know, things to be desired. They're not really going through like a big warmup. A lot of times people are just like, yeah, sitting, sitting down, like while the instruction is going on and then boom, you're jumping into these. deep squats, these deep loaded squats. And so anyway, it's a recipe for, um, it's a recipe for having, uh, those forces in the back just be, you know, too much for what your disc can handle. So anyway, we want to, one of the takeaways is we want to match the depth and technique to the individual. And so again, what that means is if you're able to go into a deep squat and you're able to keep your torso tall drop all the way down arms above your head and you really have that perfected then you're probably a great candidate to start performing increasing loads at that depth if you're someone that is unable to go into a deep squat without falling backwards or without bending way forward you're going to want to work on those aspects that are inhibiting that mobility to start while performing some partial squats where you're able to maintain good motor control and have at least that part of the squat look good before increasing your depth under load so you can do both things at the same time you can work on gaining that mobility into the deep squat while also working on building strength through the partial squat and i think that that for people who are starting out is probably a good place to be and then you know for your obviously for your um Experienced lifters, you know, they're not going to have as much problem going into the deep squat. So just to recap, squats, they're a cornerstone movement of strength, mobility, long-term joint health, depth should be a tool that we use. And, you know, again, if you have great mechanics, go ahead and explore that under load, but listen to your body. If you're having pain during or you're having pain after, After address that, figure out what's going on. Don't just keep going. Don't just keep increasing the load because your program says so. Yeah. Make sure that you're, you know, figuring it out. And also
SPEAKER_02don't. Yeah. If you don't, you're going to hurt. Then go see
SPEAKER_00a physical therapist. Right. Or, or, or you're going to be, you know, go into the urgent care.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And, and I would also say like, don't just do one type of squat. So don't just do back squats. Also do front squats. Yes. You're not going to be able to do as much weight. weight with the front squat, but that's okay. The, um, actually the front squat, because your torso is taller, it's going to put a little more load into your quads. So you can really give yourself a complete squatting program is going to have you doing front squats, back squats, and also split squats, but also some goblet squats. So use all of those as a tool. And then regarding the butt wink, it's not automatically bad, but under, under heavy load with With poor control, it can lead to some problems. What I would say is film your squat, email it to us, taylor at chain effect.com. And I will assess it and tell you how you're doing. Um, and you know, there's plenty of services out there that will also do that, but I'm, uh, inviting you to go ahead and email me, um, a video of your squat and I'll, I'm happy to give you some feedback there.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Next should be the deadlift, huh?
SPEAKER_00I guess so.
SPEAKER_02Although I'm thinking I have not been, I've been forgetting about squats cause I've been doing more deadlifts, you know, single leg. RDL, things like that. So I do need to do the full depth squats more.
SPEAKER_00And that honestly, a lot of, so, you know, without going too much into this, a lot of people think that they're doing, you know, a deadlift when actually it looks way more like a squat. So, you know, we always try to talk about trying to draw bright lines around knee hinge and our knee dominant and hip dominant movement. and really sort of view that as a spectrum. So obviously the deep squat is all the way on the spectrum of the knee hinge. Whereas like something like a good morning or Romanian style deadlift is going to be all the way on this, on the end of the spectrum for the hip hinge. And so we want to have both of those ends of the spectrum covered. We want to train both of those. And then we want to color it in with all the movements that use both of those patterns
SPEAKER_02yeah well said thank you so much for this education today a little class on squats if you have any questions or you do want to send a video again that's taylor at chaineffect.com and do us a favor send this to someone who you know does squats or basically any sort of fitness class you know goes to the gym power lifter I think this could be beneficial for most people maybe someone older who's getting into strength training someone coming out of surgery Text it to them and hopefully it helps them as well.
SPEAKER_00All right. We'll catch you next time.
SPEAKER_02Thanks for
SPEAKER_01listening.