Coach Mark Ottobre watches a client squat and touch his toes, spotting poor core activation, limited thoracic extension, and glute and shoulder imbalances. He recommends planks, trap-bar deadlifts, and unilateral work before any barbell loading.
Yeah, all right, great. Yeah, do the other leg and, and just relax. Okay, whoa. Okay, so if we look at it real quickly again and just review bodyweight squat, I'm just going to put some things together so the folks can see. The abs are an issue, right? So number one, thoracic extension. We put this back in his hand. So I'm just flagging things in my head. None of this is diagnosis, but these are things that I'm noticing, right? Up overhead. When he gets in this position, he doesn't lock his arms out for some reason. Is there any injuries here or something that you've done?
Uh, not recently. Ooh, okay. Not recently? Oh no, I used to have a problem with my elbows, but it's fine. Tell me about that. It wasn't a big injury. It was just like a recurring kind of soreness, I guess.
Okay, see, I spot something. For some reason, he's not bending his elbows. It's not coincidence. Slight lordosis when he gets in this position, which means again consistent with when he does the bodyweight squat, he's not switching on through the abs. So classic person, he's going to do counterbalance squats, he's going to do planks.
We're going to teach him how to engage through his abs to hold his core tight.
Overhead squat. So what I see is again, he's not that strong through his thoracic extension. He bends forward. We need to do some upper back work. Reaches down and touches his toes. What do we see? He doesn't use his hips. When we reach down, touch our toes, it's not a test of flexibility. It's a test of how well does someone use their hips. He doesn't use his hips. So right now, if I'm going to move into deadlifts, I'm probably going to start with a trap bar deadlift to build in a hinge position. The backbend was phenomenal. That was A++. Way more range of motion than we need. Clack test. If you look at this, there is a diagonal that's going through here. He's shifting. This is rotating in. So he's not really stabilizing from his glute either. And his feet are working very hard. I mean, he's got magnificent feet, but look at his shoulders as well. Look at this. He's not centered. He's completely on a slant. He's compensating. Go stand on the other foot. It's somewhat present here too. So you can see the significant difference from left to right. Yes. So again, when looking at this, would I get someone like this to squat? No, not yet. You need unilateral work because there's such a significant hip shift. Compensation is coming from this side. You can see one side significantly stronger than the other. Either way, I'm not going to put this guy under a bar for squatting because he's going to be shifting way too much. And if I was going to do introduce any squatting with him, he'd be putting a band around his knee to switch on his glutes. Already now from these couple things, I'm building in myself a program of where I'm going to go.
