Does your squat lack depth?

Does your squat currently have the depth of a Love Island All Stars contestant?

This is a common problem but one with a few possible fixes that will help you improve your squat depth and therefore your results when trying to build muscle.

1. Ankle Mobility

   Your ankles ability to flex could be causing your body to be unable to hit the depths you are looking for. Here there are 2 fixes:

   Elevate your heels

   Doing this will create “false” mobility in the ankle allowing for the knee to travel further and doing so is really easy, either use 2 plates or if your gym has one a heel raise platform. If you look at weightlifting shoes the heel has a raise to help with this and this is a cheaper way of gaining this advantage. Use these for all your squat variations

Improve Mobility

Improving your ankle mobility could be one of the best things you can do. As we get older we spend less time in the bottom range of a squat position and push the limits of our ankle less and less - the old adage use or lose it is really applicable when it comes to mobility, not just in the ankle but everywhere.

Squat University are one of the best when it comes to this so here’s theirs ankle mobility exercises which I have used and definitely improved my ankle mobility in the last 6 months when it comes to squats.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IikP_teeLkI 

2. Drop Your Ego

I get it, we all want to be the big dog lifting big weights but if you’re quarter repping it, it’s about as much use as a BMW drivers indicator. Find a weight your can get full depth with, build from there with additional reps or even paused reps where you hold that bottom position for a couple of seconds to improve strength at the weakest part of the squat and you will get the results you are looking for with the added bonus of having to drag less plates from the bar to weight rack.

3. Change your stance

This one is pretty individualised - whilst there are guidelines on how to set up for a squat our leg and hip structures make this much harder to give a one size fits all. You see mine and your hip sockets could be very different and the length of our upper leg (femur) could be different so how the hell would we squat the same? Taking your feet wider, even pointing the toes out a bit further than you normally would could help. This is something that you would need to play around with and find what feels right for you.

Working with these 3 things could really improve your overall squat performance and are so simple to do.

Personal Training with myself is current fully booked with a one in one out system now in place until at least March.

If you are interested in personal training you can join the waitlist using this form https://forms.gle/LkGEtTFGFyq7My3z9

Coming soon… ATT Challenge Crew

I posted on socials yesterday about creating a WhatsApp Community group where at the beginning of each month I set simple but effective challenges which will range from 7 days or full months. Each one designed to build great habits to improve your overall health and fitness. If you are interested pop me an email at [email protected]