Hey, what's going on Nation? Today
I'm going to show you with you guys two things that you can do to help improve your squat depth and squad depth is
Important for a few different reasons or should say improving your squat depth is important for a few different reasons number one
The lower you'll able to go the more you're going to be recruiting glutes and hamstrings into your exercises
And that's a big deal for a lot of people a lot of people when they squat
If they're stopping halfway like this
And then going back up granted if you're powerlifting and you're doing competition rules you only have to brake parallel
But you're basically missing out on
Extra work, you could be doing
Activating your glutes and hamstrings you're going to be squatting
And you're going to be trying to lift a lot of weight why not take advantage?
Of that and get some glute hamstring work as well the guys that watch my videos even when I'm squatting
315 or more I'm going to ass to grass all the way down and all the way up
I'm sure a lot of you guys watching this video right now
You can't just stand up straight and do this and keep your chest up, and then go back to the top why?
because you're tight in your hip and there's two
Specific things that I had to do in order to get my squat depth that low and I share that with you guys right now
So a lot of the times when you guys are squatting actually losing a lot of power
Because of this tightness in your hips because what happens is when you have the barbell on your back
Instead of keeping your chest up and going all the way down and then keeping your body
Underneath the barbell and pushing through your feet and activating you know your glutes quads the hamstrings as much as possible
What happens is as you start to go down you start up how to bend over forward like this
And that's obviously it's a combination of your shoulders being tight
But for most people is because their hips are so tight that they can't really get that
Also forces them forward so instead of being like this, you're stuck like that
And then what happens is your upper body
Just starts to bend in half so in your head you might think you're going really low
But what's happening
Is you're stopping right about where your hips can't really go any lower and then to compensate you kind of do one of these
And then you come back up like this and then push through your feet squatting is supposed to be one smooth motion
going down and up, but if you're doing this
You're taking a lot of power away from your feet
And you're forcing it your upper bodies to go from here to [here] like a mini
Good morning
and then you push to the top of the movement, so
The first stretch that I want you guys to do you can do two different ways number one
Practice getting down put your feet where they would normally be when doing a squat
So my feet are about here
And then get down as low as you can and for some of you you might be like this because you're not that flexible
put your hands together and start pushing your knees out like that and
Holding this position for like ten fifteen probably twenty seconds Max
Really push your legs out you're going to see that each stretch all through here
This is very similar to a different stress you might have done if you were a wrestle up called a buddha
Which is when you go like this, but I like doing it this way
more
Because you can actually utilize your own strength to
Really spread your legs and crack your nuts just kidding your nuts won't crack what you will feel it throughout the groin
So push it out
Just like this and another way
I like to do that stretch and actually the way I prefer doing it is I like using a pole and you guys have seen
me do this in the past but
When you're squatting what I want you guys to basically do is teach yourself to keep your chest upright
If you have a steady pole
That you can put your feet around like this again put your feet where they would be when doing the squat
You can utilize the pole to force you to keep your body upright
And this is going to allow you to maintain your balance as well so
You don't fall over and then you can do the same thing from here
You can bring your elbows in while still holding the pull and now from this position
I'm still pushing my knees out, but I'm bringing my chest in as well
So this is like basically this position
I want to be in at the bottom of a squat and so it might take some time to get used to this
but this stretch really helped me out to go ass to the grass on my squat and
another thing that I like to do and
You have to obviously do this with light weight guys is
take a barbell and for me. I was basically putting like [135] pounds on the bar
[so] just a 45 on each side and what I would do is I would unrack it and then I would just
Get into my position and that would just go as low as I could and really try to just sit in that
bottom position
So I would sit here for like maybe up to 10 seconds Max
and then hopefully I would still have the strength to go back to the top and kind of shake things out and
Then I would go back down like this
And then obviously if you've never done this before
You guys can easily just go over to the rack and set up the rigs so that if you get stuck at the bottom
You know the rig can catch you so for example if I was going to the gym
I'm going to put the safety on is on the wrap itself and if I got to suck at the bottom I would just go
To barbell rest on those and then I will pick myself back up and by doing these two different types of stretches
You're going to really force yourself to come figure out how to get into that bottom position because everyone's different
You might have your feet closer to me
You might have them wider than me, but as soon as you find that sweet spot
And you get down and stay in there and you focus on stretching out
That's really going to help you get your squats to the next level to go ass to the grass and start getting a lot more
glute and hamstring
activation
Which means more gains obviously so I hope you guys enjoy tips like this you do please
Show that love and hit that like button the more likes the better obviously
subscribe if you haven't already and I do have a more in-depth video on
different exercises and different
Stretches you can do to help improve your squat form and I'll close to link a link to that down in the info section
below and then you guys are probably wondering why I'm doing this in jeans and
Because it is actually one of the sponsors for my 12 week challenge
And I just want to show you how flexible these things are it called Barbell apparel
I actually had to buy more to keep wearing the same jeans all the time and I had to get some more
so I just got a new color and I actually have a link to these guys down the info section below to
Where you guys can get a discount
But they come in a really cool package just like this
and they're basically stretched fit jeans that look nice as you guys can see they're not too big not too small not too tight and
You can squat in them which definitely makes it a lot more comfortable when you're doing daily activities
And when you actually have big glutes and quads
So I just got another pair you guys can see the coming out different shapes and colors and they make them for women, too
Erica loves herself
Barbell apparel make sure you check them out make sure you get those squats ass to grass and as always guys
More good stuff coming soon. See you