This is what an Improper Squat looks like... (How to Fix it)

Have you ever seen anyone squat like this? It looks terrible. Hi, I'm Glenn Dawson with Reset U Fitness. Today I'm going to show you how to correct your squat, especially if you're, you know, in aerobics class or a CrossFit class. You see everyone out around you all squatting different. If your squat looks like the one I just showed you, today is your day. We're going to show you exactly how to fix it. Now at Reset U Fitness, we've seen thousands and thousands and thousands of assessments for muscular imbalances. And muscular imbalances is a science-y term for just dominant muscles pulling really, really, really hard in one direction and limiting your range of motion and ability to access different muscles, and they cause pain. So if you have this squat where you're really, really tight in the hips, a lot of bad things are happening. You're not accessing your glutes and hamstrings, the back of your legs. You're using most of your quads. Your lower back's taking on a lot more damage than it should, and your knees are taking on a lot more damage than it should too. And it's very, very, very common. So what I'm going to show you right now is an assessment we do at ResetU weekly with our clients and teach you how to do it on yourself. This is called an overhead squat test assessment. So what we do at ResetU is we'll do a simple cell phone video, 3 reps to the front and 3 to the side, which I want you to perform too. So start with a PVC pipe or a light bar. You don't want anything heavy. It'll change the way you squat. Press the— start at 90-degree angles and press the bar above your head. Start with your feet shoulder-width apart and squat 3 times to the front and then 3 to the side. With that, you'll be able to see pretty much every single muscular imbalance if you're trained. Now, if you're not trained, I'm going to show you what to look for. So first, we're going to see if you have tight hips. And the first movement you're going to look at is from the side. If your squat goes forward, if that is happening, you have tight hips. The bar should literally just go straight down and up the whole time. If it goes forward even a little bit, there's a dysfunctionality, and those tight hips are going to take away from your ability to use your glutes and hamstrings. And it's 2020. No one wants mom butt. No one does. I know you want a big juicy booty, so we're going to help you with that and also take away your lower back pain. Now, it may not be just the hips. You may have another problem too. This is one that we see in like 95% of people that we come in contact with. It may be your ankles. Now, if you watch your video of you squatting and you have— let's just say you move forward this much, right? Then we're going to have you elevate your heels. Now what this does is gives you like an extra inch on your Achilles tendon, because a lot of people, like 95% of people, have really, really tight Achilles tendons and you can't push through your heel. You can't push your heel, you can't access the back of your legs, your glutes and hamstrings, and you can't balance your weight backwards. So it creates a lot of problems. If when you elevate your heels, your squat's perfect all of a sudden, or it drastically changes. Say it's still bad but it's a lot better, then you have a huge, huge ankle problem. Now this is extremely common. Most people are raised wearing tennis shoes with big heels in them, or high heels, or basketball shoes, or even most running shoes. The back of the heel is way thicker than the front, and that tightens up and binds up this Achilles tendon, and that throws off all of your movement patterns. So if you have both of them, which most people do tight hips and tight Achilles. We're going to show you how to fix it. But there's one more thing that I want to show you how to fix. And that's when the knees come in. And basically what's happening when those knees come in is the muscles here in your groin are really tight and the hips are impinged and the outer glutes aren't firing to pull the knee outward. So we've got a fix for that too, as well. Now, if you do these 3 movements, your squat should drastically improve. So the first one we're going to do is we're going to do a hip flexor wall lunge. Now this is an advanced move, but basically all you want to do is pad your knee first. If your knee is not padded, it's going to cause pain. It's going to lock up your nervous system and you will not be able to stretch. You're going to guard, tighten up your muscles. So always pad your knee. You're going to take your spot in front of the wall. Put your toe against the wall and then come up into a lunge. Now, if this is too aggressive, I'll show you a starting stretch before, but you should feel a stretch in your quad, maybe even your hip flexor right above that. Once your hip flexor or your quad releases, then you can push your hips forward into your hip flexor lunge stretch. So you can put your arms up, push your hip forward and down, and your chest back. Try not to create too much extension in the lower spine. After about 30 seconds, rotate over and then do it for another 30 to 60 seconds. And I would do this twice a day if you have this problem. This will drastically change your squat pattern and get rid of a ton of the impingement that you have that's stopping you from using your glutes and hamstrings. All right, make sure you do both sides too. And like I said, if this is too difficult The beginner version is just your toe on the ground. So you'd start basically with two 90-degree angles, do your stretch the exact same way. After 30 seconds, rotate over and advance to the harder one afterwards. Now, the next thing we have to look at is ankle mobility. So if this elevated heel squat helped you out, made you squat deeper, it made it so that the bar didn't move forward as much. This is another thing you want to add into your routine. What we're going to do is an ankle mobilizer. Now, this is very difficult to do, so pay attention. I want you to put your hand on the top of your foot. So I'm using my opposite hand, opposite foot. I'm going to grab the back of my calf and I'm going to pull backwards. What we're doing is we're pulling the tib fib away from the talus, which is a bone in your foot and the bones in your leg. We're just separating them a little bit. To create space. Then you're going to push your knee forward, applying a little bit of pressure on top of the knee but keeping the heel down. What this is going to do is stretch out the Achilles tendon. So we're taking care of two problems at once. One, the impingement in the front of the ankle will go back, distract the joint. And the other one, we're stretching out the back of the joint right here, this Achilles tendon area. You would do 10 of these back and forth, and then I would even stretch and hold this stretch, applying pressure to the knee and keeping the heel on the ground for another 90 seconds. Now, it sounds like a lot, but you literally need 90 seconds for your body to release and create tissue change. So hold it for 90 seconds. Now, last but not least, if you've done those two, then you're gonna have mobile hips, mobile ankles, but we still have to get those knees to come out. What we're going to do is a corrective squat called the goblet squat, but we're also going to band this goblet squat, and your knees will have to force against the band to push outward. Now, if you had all those problems, I recommend starting your, your banded squat with your heels elevated. So how it would look is you would set up your heels on the elevation. Make sure your balls of your feet are touching the ground and your heels, and you have stability. I don't want you to fall over. And then you're gonna have a counterbalance weight. So this is 15 pounds. This isn't to weight your squat and make it difficult, it's just to hold you so you could sit backwards. Just gonna hold that weight in front of you as a counterbalance. You're gonna hold it right next to your chest and then squat, pause, pushing your knees against the band struggling to keep those knees out, activating these outer glutes here, and then come up just like this. Now, over time, with all your stretching, because you're doing it twice a day, your ankles will loosen up. Then you can move off of the plates and then squat correctly just like this. And then you'll be able to get away and get rid of your counterbalance. Maybe just use your arms as your counterbalance, still with perfect movement patterns and perfect hip tracking. Then you can even get rid of the band and squat perfectly without any other handicaps or things changing your movement patterns. Now guys, if that was helpful, make sure you share it with a friend that you know has an improper squat. See you later.