- (upbeat music) Bob and Brad
the two most famous physical therapists on the internet.
- Hi folks.
I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist,
- Brad, physical therapist
- Together, we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion of course Bob
- Brad, today you want to talk about
how to squat properly, right?
- Exactly.
- Are we gonna do the butt wink?
- Yeah
- I did give a little wink right now Brad.
- Wasn't that that cute?
- Oh yeah.
- Yeah. The, quote unquote butt butt wink.
Yeah. Butt wink. Is it good or bad?
But let's talk about the mechanics about it
and what's it really doing to your lower back?
And is it gonna be good for you in the long run?
- Right.
- Okay. I've talked to some people who lift weights
and they really do like to get down
in the squat as far as they can, where the butt does wink.
So to speak, you get that poster, your tilt.
So we're gonna get into detail on that
and what you're really doing to your back.
Is it good or your bad?
- right.
- But first of all, let's talk about the squat in general.
I think the squat is a wonderful exercise
because you're working big muscle groups.
You're working balance
you're working hips, core a little bit.
- Getting some back strengthening.
- Quadriceps, ham strings.
- Yeah.
- It really is a good overall strengthening exercise.
And that's why so many people do it.
And that's particularly athletes.
- Right.
- You know, whether you're in track
and you're trying to get speed or you're in football
and you're working for the agility, strength and speed.
Everyone is doing the squat.
- Even provides good carryover
as to what position you should be in athletic event.
Brad, if you get your squat right then that carries
over to your athletic event.
So when you're in basketball or football
you start off with this position.
- Exactly. Exactly.
One thing I do wanna talk
about when we're talk about posture with the squat.
We'll just get into the basic posture first.
But, but before we do Bob, there are some people
out here that haven't seen our channel yet.
- If you're new to our channel
please take a second to subscribe.
Hit the subscribe buttons right over here in the corner.
Yeah. And we upload a video every day
and there are videos on how to stay healthy, fit pain
free, really wide variety of topics.
- Exactly. So, so let's look at the squat.
We have it here.
You have your bar here.
And obviously we're using our PVC pipe for our model.
If you look down at the red line here
you want to get square, shoulder width
or a little bit wider, feet down on the ground.
Line up your toes on one line.
Obviously you don't have a line a lot of times
but just get square.
- I think it's not a bad idea to put a line down, Brad
wouldn't you say?
- It can be a good way to start out.
- Yeah, and know that your square.
- Yep. And then your knees and your hips.
If you do a visual, as you bend down, your knees
should hit that line at the same time.
In other words, you're not gonna go like this.
If you squat, some people may do this without even
realizing.
- Yeah, they're turning.
Yep. They go to their strong side or their weak side
and they compensate without even knowing about it.
- Maybe not that much, but even it's just subtle, you know
it's a slight turn
- I'm exaggerating so we can see it.
Okay. But that's important.
So we stay square and then we're talking about the chest out
and the head up, Bob, can you do that line on the back?
- Sure
- And we're gonna talk about maintaining a healthy back
cause obviously when you're lifting weights, you're doing it
for the health, the strength and to impress the girls
for those younger guys.
- Right.
- So we're gonna go down and maintain that
- And look how he is keeping contact
on all these positions here.
Like lift one wrong spread.
Like if you're like bent forward too far forward, you know
now I'm only contacting here in the center.
I don't, I'm not, or I'm contacting here.
You know, you need to get the line.
You wanna picture the straight line all the way
along the back of the neck.
- You bet. Okay.
- Do we wanna show on the knee to Brad, right away?
- Sure, you bet.
Looking at it from this point of view, here
we can actually use this it'll show up better.
Actually. I'll just pretend I got that thing, the bar.
If the knee starts to go way forward
in this position compared to this vertical plum line
we're getting too far forward, right.
We're really putting a lot of stress on the knee
particularly the patella on the patella femoral joint.
And we wanna maintain good, healthy knees.
So you don't need a knee replacement by the time you're 60.
And so we're going in that versus
- Going beyond this.
- Right. So those are the, the real
- And the other thing would be Brad
that you don't want the knee to collapse this way
or this way.
- Yeah, right. Go ahead. Do that.
Demonstrate that one
- Myself. Well I'm going down.
Yeah. You know
and that's usually the way they tend to fault.
- Right and some people will both want going together.
- Yeah. Oh yeah, exactly.
Right. Something like this
that's terrible stress on the knee.
- Right, exactly again, it's all the mechanics.
Get your basic mechanics down first.
- A lot of times it'd be helpful is
if you did have someone watching you and
and looking at you as you're doing these things.
- Oh, absolutely.
Because what you think it's like when you're golfing
you think you got a good stroke
and then someone watches that knows what they're doing.
They go, oh my God.
- Or a videotape
- Sure.
- It is very helpful.
- You bet.
- Everybody's got a video tape on their phone now
so you can go ahead and, and you know, take a shot of it.
- Now, Bob, I want to go into the butt wink part.
- All right.
- Okay. So you've actually got that tape on your
- No, I took it off.
- Oh, you took that off.
Okay. Yeah.
All right.
So we're looking at the pelvis and as we squat down and
once you get to a certain point usually about when
your femurs are getting to level with the floor and you get
past that your pelvis will posteriorly tilt
which changes the mechanics, particularly on the low back
and low back is one of the biggest problems
Low back pain is one of the biggest problems in our society
- Gonna show on this spine.
- Sure, exactly.
- So let's go up.
- Yeah.
- Let's get up close
Right about there Lonnie.
So what he's talking about is here
this pelvis is actually turned this way.
When you get down
in the lower squat, and when that turns this way
that's putting the flexor strain on the back.
- Yeah. Right in here.
And we're gonna look at the disc in particular.
- Right
- Everyone's heard about herniated discs, putting pressure
on the disc and the butt wink.
When you go down and you poster your tilt
- Poster will tilt like that,
- And then you add a couple hundred pounds
on your shoulders.
We're gonna show you what that can do to that disc.
- Yep, yes we are.
- All right Bob.
- Lets get our tools together.
- (chair scraping)
There you go sir
So the disc is between the vertebra
A lot of you'll probably be aware of this
but we wanna avoid damaging the disc.
It's something that's gonna really take the
the spring outta your weight lifting
if once you get a disc problem.
All right.
So this would be L five L four, the lowest two
- L five L four, those two.
- All right.
Now, when you get to that posterior tilt part of the list
this is what's going on.
Your, your low back will start to bend forward like this.
And if you got a good, healthy back, a good healthy disc
if that's okay, but let's say you do this butt wink
for years on end three, four years, and you continue to
do it.
And as you do it, your back starts to hurt a little bit.
And what may be happening is the tissues on your disc.
It's called anulus.
- Pulposus yeah
- Yeah. I, I gotta get that speech therapist, Bob
but it can start to weaken over time.
And over time with excess stress, it may weaken even a
little bit faster and that's where you can get
this to happen.
And it may happen when that one lift
or it may happen when you bend over to pick up a Kleenex.
So it's been weakened so much over time that it
- A butt Wink is putting your back
into the position where this can happen
- Right
- Yeah.
- It, it just increases the risk.
There are people who's gonna lift with a butt
wink their whole life and not have a problem, but more
than likely if you do it over time
I'm talking over 10, 20 years,
I have a feeling you're gonna have some back problems.
- It literally becomes the straw
that breaks the camel's back.
- Right
- And you know, it's interesting.
I remember one time Brad, it was a Viking
one of the Viking football players, you know about them.
- They, they have a football team.
- Yeah. Anyway, he was, he was a big strong guy
and he was scraping the ice off his car
and his back went out.
- Sure.
- And, and now I can guarantee you
that's what happened to him.
He was doing something that weakened the disc
and then it put himself in a position and then
you're bending and twisting when you're scraping your car.
- Right.
- And then it went out.
- It wasn't the car activity.
- It wasn't the car activity that did it.
It was the years of probably squatting, maybe
maybe squatting or lifting incorrectly.
- Right.
- It certainly did not help.
- Exactly.
- So, let's talk about again
let's review what they should avoid.
So they do not get the butt wink.
And I know there's gonna be lifters out there
that are serious lifters bodybuilders.
And they're not gonna agree with this
but we're talking from a biomechanical standpoint on
- Well, we're talking about from a injury standpoint.
- Exactly.
- It's not gonna do any good to strengthen your
muscles all the way through the range.
If you can't do anything later on, because you get injured
- We're talking about in your forties and fifties
cause we're in our fifties
and we know what we did to our bodies earlier.
- It may not take that long either.
It may, it may, you may get it a lot earlier than
that. If
- You wanna hold this along my femur.
- Sure.
- Just line that up on my femur.
And if I'm doing my squat and I'm coming down
and I'm coming down and you want to get that full range
of motion all the way down, are we past parallel yet?
- Oh yeah, yeah. Way past
- I'm butt winking right now.
And I got a back issue right now.
It does not feel good
because it's getting excess strain and yeah.
You're gonna strengthen those muscles
in that range more.
But is, is it functional?
- Yeah. You're gonna pay a price.
- Do you need to have strength in that range of motion?
- Right. Right.
There's not too many times
in life where you need to get down.
- You know, if you're an athlete and they're telling you to
do it because it's gonna make you better in the sport.
I guess that's one thing you may wanna sacrifice some health
down the road, but if you're just a recreational
weightlifter, I urge you to reconsider the butt wink and
and do it not so far down.
Save your back
- And remember Brad, what we can, we can just
we can fix just about anything.
- Oh yeah, but
- A broken heart.
- Exactly. So
- But a wink.
There we go. It's up there.
- You're killing me, Bob.
- All right. Thanks for watching.