The Squat: Going Deeper

The perfect squat. Highly coveted in the gym. Therapists have made their entire career surrounding how to achieve it. And with good reason!

Squatting is an exercise that profoundly transforms the body for strength, aesthetics, athletic performance, and simply getting up from the floor. Even activities which you would not normally associate with the squat can be influenced by your ability to perform the squat without issue.

For example, look at different martial arts styles. The more obvious cases are the traditional martial arts that use horse stance and other calisthenic like exercises to condition the body. If you look at the deep traditional stances in Japanese and Chinese systems, you will often see the lead leg is in a variation of a squat like motion. If modern combat sports are more your thing, think of basing in judo and jiu jitsu, "sitting into your punches" in a power focused style of boxing, and clinching in Muay thai.

And if you prefer other sports, think of landing from a height, tackling, rowing, horse riding and virtually every other sport that uses your legs in some capacity.

As fantastic a movement as the squat is, many people have lost touch with this foundational human movement. Which is a shame, because it yields so many benefits.

Where I have seen patients go wrong , is that they inevitably want to start squatting to help themselves reach their goals. They get into squatting without necessarily having the ability, coordination, or range of motion necessarily to make it happen safely. The reps start adding up over time, and some people may experience niggles, aches, pains and even an injury due to issues with their squat. Which then leads to people being delayed and in some cases not able to reach their goals.

The thing to remember is that how you squat and how deep you go can be impacted by a variety of factors. A short list below includes:

1. Muscle tightness around the hip

2. Capsular tightness

3. Joint restriction in the ankle

4. The shape of your bones around the hip

5. Muscular weakness

6. Pain

7. Nerve tightness

An obvious case is tight hip muscles from a sendentary lifestyle. But what is less obvious is the bone structures underneath. Different people have different hair, eyes, and skin. And just like this, you can also have different shaped bones within the hip itself. Without getting too technical, some people have very deep hip sockets with a very large ball. Sometimes, people with this variation are simply not able to squat deeply and would be best served by keeping to a more shallow variation. Others may have hip sockets that point more to the sides than others, and these people need to squat with their toes pointing out as opposed to pointing straight ahead in order to comfortably achieve deep positions.

And then there are the less common causes. One case springs to mind of a patient who was experiencing significant knee pain when squatting. This was really frustrating the patient, as they were on a muscular hypertrophy program and squats are a king exercise for bulking up the legs. Their hip and ankle mobility were where they should be. However, their sciatic nerve range when tested was severely limited in comparison to the unaffected knee. So in order to treat their knee I had to work on their back.

I am definitely not saying that every case of knee pain is due to someone's back. But the take home message is that in alot of cases, working in with a physiotherapist for detailed assessment, treatment, exercise prescription and guidance can be incredibly wise. This pathway can help people improve or continue squatting and reaping all the benefits that this popular (and rightly so) exercise has to offer.

If getting the most out of your squat is what you are after, we at Top Performance Physio Chatswood are available to help.