Hey Bagger, I wasn’t sure if you caught today’s article, but one of the entries I found particularly intriguing and thought of you:
Myth: You should go ass to grass on squats.
Mythbuster: Mike Robertson
If you have the mobility and stability of an Olympic weightlifter, and can go to full depth on the squat without rounding your lower back and tucking your pelvis, by all means go as deep as want. A tucked pelvis stretches the hell out of the ligaments in your lower back, and puts your spinal discs under more pressure.
If you’re part of the 99 percent of lifters who can’t squat that deep without distorting your spinal alignment, you have no business doing so.
Not at first, anyway.
Your body should have 3-D stability: in the back from spinal erectors, in the front from the rectus abdominis and external obliques, and on the sides from the obliques and quadratus lumborum. This will create a nice “weight belt” of support. Your anterior core has to be just as strong as your posterior core, or you’ll always put your lower back in jeopardy.
The only way you’re going to know how your squat stacks up is to film yourself. Head to the gym with a friend, set up a camera, and watch where your pelvis tucks under. For many, it’ll be right around the point at which your thighs are parallel to the floor.
Now that you’ve identified the problem, you need to tear down your foundation and re-groove your squat pattern. You need to learn how to move through your hips, load your hips, and limit motion in your lower back. I’ve found the best way to do this is to limit your squat depth and get into your “functional range.”
Look again at your video, and see exactly where your pelvis tucks. Set up a box that’s slightly above that level. At first you may not feel like you’re getting low enough, but this is an important time to keep your ego in check and focus on having perfect squat form within that range.
You should also start aggressively foam rolling, focusing on your glutes, tensor fasciae latae (a strip of muscle on the front of your hip, in between your hip flexors and your gluteus medius), IT band (the sheath of connective tissue on the outside of your thigh), and quads. You also want to do some serious core work, including dead bugs and the other exercises I described here , along with ab-wheel rollouts and variations described by Mike Boyle here.
Once you’re taking care of all of the above, start lowering the box over the next few weeks or months. But don’t rush it. Go for the smallest increments your gym equipment will allow, even if it’s just an inch or two at a time. Keep going until you can get as deep as you want without tucking your pelvis. It takes a while to get used to, but when you finish the process, your squat will be a lot stronger.
And if you still want to continue to load your legs while you’re re-grooving your squat pattern, make sure to do some single leg work like lunges and split squats, along with a few exercises that allow you to go heavy and require less hip mobility, like trap-bar deadlifts and rack pulls.