Hey CT,
I have seen a lot of articles on hip mobility and exercises to do in order to get a deeper squat. I just recently bought olympic lifting shoes and wanted to squat deeper, basically an olympic squat. But I am unable to do so because my lower back starts to round and my hip flexors start to hurt. Just wondering what you would personally recommend to help squat deeper and keep an arched lower back.
Thanks in advance.
I can’t wait for CT to reply to this because I have been trying to solve the same issue. I stress over the rounding because I have a low back injury and I don’t like the rounding that occurs when I go below parallel. Barring CT’s answer, this is the best explanation I have seen. According to this, if you low bar squat below parallel, you cannot eliminate it. Stretching will not help. If you want to squat below parallel, squat high bar.
CT?
Check out DeFranco’s Agile 8
The site is Biomechanics Fitness and Performance. The article is “Maintaining a Neutral Spine in the Squat”. Easy to google. Makes it crystal clear.
What kind of lower back injury do you have? I currently have a lower back strain and so I can’t squat or do high pulls at the moment and I’m not very happy about it.
I just checked out Joe DeFranco’s Limber 11 and it looks like a really good warmup routine. And might solve by lower back issues as it might be just tight and not a strain but we will see.
I like laying on a foam roller (long ways back of your head to your tailbone) 15 minutes pre workout. It’s very good for posture. I’d focus on posture heavily if you have been injured. Get healthy & work on posture & mobility. Even if you have to do goblet squats just to go deep at first. Perfect form & technique will help more than anything.
I do DeFranco’s Agile 8 every day & have never had a lower body mobility issue since I got good at it.
Pay attention to your sleep posture too. No one ever talks about it, but I think it’s vitally important. Muscles are plastic. They will adapt to what you do or don’t do to them. I know you know this, but sometimes just hearing it is refreshing & very helpful.
I could do a deep squat with weights to act as counter-balance/with a barbell on my back, but I could never do one without either.
Then I started doing a lot of hip hinge practice/good mornings and did my squats with a much wider stance. Also did a number of goblet squats with light weights (just 45lb) as part of a conditioning routine 1-2x a week.
Now I can do bw deep squats quite well.
[quote]sput79 wrote:
I like laying on a foam roller (long ways back of your head to your tailbone) 15 minutes pre workout. It’s very good for posture. I’d focus on posture heavily if you have been injured. Get healthy & work on posture & mobility. Even if you have to do goblet squats just to go deep at first. Perfect form & technique will help more than anything.
I do DeFranco’s Agile 8 every day & have never had a lower body mobility issue since I got good at it.
Pay attention to your sleep posture too. No one ever talks about it, but I think it’s vitally important. Muscles are plastic. They will adapt to what you do or don’t do to them. I know you know this, but sometimes just hearing it is refreshing & very helpful. [/quote]
I’ve read a lot about sleep posture as well. I have read that sleeping on your side is best. And for some reason I will wake up in the middle of the night sleeping on my stomach and instantly I can feel some back discomfort.
I recall CT teaches the wall squat and that allows you to identify muscle tightnesses for squatting.
[quote]jtbrown0511 wrote:
What kind of lower back injury do you have? I currently have a lower back strain and so I can’t squat or do high pulls at the moment and I’m not very happy about it.[/quote]
I herniated a lumbar disk in a sledding accident worthy of an episode of “World’s Dumbest”. I couldn’t rack a 135 lb barbell 3 months later. No pulls, presses, squats - very depressing. going on three years now and I now squat dbw for two reps, but I just took it slow, did single leg body weight work until my back healed up, and once I could squat again, worked hard on keeping a neutral spine. I squat low bar and stop at or just below parallel because my back rounds dramatically going below parallel and my ass and left leg go numb. I go ATG with front squats with no rounding or pain. IMO, and based on that article I mentioned, I think that for most people, it is not possible to eliminate rounding if you squat below parallel with a low bar position. I don’t think stretching helps - at least it did nothing for me.
Is your back strain a disk issue or a true muscle strain?
[quote]bartop wrote:
[quote]jtbrown0511 wrote:
What kind of lower back injury do you have? I currently have a lower back strain and so I can’t squat or do high pulls at the moment and I’m not very happy about it.[/quote]
I herniated a lumbar disk in a sledding accident worthy of an episode of “World’s Dumbest”. I couldn’t rack a 135 lb barbell 3 months later. No pulls, presses, squats - very depressing. going on three years now and I now squat dbw for two reps, but I just took it slow, did single leg body weight work until my back healed up, and once I could squat again, worked hard on keeping a neutral spine. I squat low bar and stop at or just below parallel because my back rounds dramatically going below parallel and my ass and left leg go numb. I go ATG with front squats with no rounding or pain. IMO, and based on that article I mentioned, I think that for most people, it is not possible to eliminate rounding if you squat below parallel with a low bar position. I don’t think stretching helps - at least it did nothing for me.
Is your back strain a disk issue or a true muscle strain? [/quote]
Its hard to say. I don’t go to doctors unless I have to. My guess is a strain from heavy high pull work but I’m also a police officer and wearing a duty belt and sitting in a car for long periods of time does not help the situation at all. I haven’t done high pulls for about a week now. My back would hurt when the weight was descending so I"m not sure if I was trying to catch the weight somehow with my lower back or what the issue was. I’m going to try high pulls again on Monday and really focus on my form before adding a lot of weight. And I’m not sure if it was doing them from the hang that was hurting my back or not so for now I will stick to doing them strictly from blocks.
jtbrown, how’s the recovery goin?
Hi, I’am not en expert and don’t know a lot about it, but what I do and is helping me a lot is to train body squats almost everyday I go to the gym as a warm-up, every time trying to go deeper. in my warm-ups I start doing 3 sets or 2 of 25 rep body squat and now I can pass the parallel point very easy. maybe you can try this to.
Recovery is going quite well. I’ve been doing Joe DeFranco’s Limber 11 before every training session which I think is helping a lot. Also, I bought a pair of olympic lifting shoes, the Nike Romaleo’s 2, which is also helping with squat depth. My lower back was a little sore after high pulling last Monday but not nearly as bad as it was 3 weeks ago. So now just focusing on perfecting my form. Going to the gym in a few minutes to do high pulls.