I wish I had the right professional help when I was an aspiring football player. My friend and Kirkland chiropractor Dr. Wen just wrote a great article(link) about how to improve your squat that I volunteered to be his model because it’s something I want my clients to be good at. If you check it out you’ll see that my squat is far from perfect and I’m working to correct years of poor movement form. I know the problem is because of the way I trained when I was young. I would hit the weight room day in day out. I didn’t have someone to show me how to move well. It was all about lifting heavy and trying to be the strongest. But in reality, that’s only part of the picture for being a good athlete. After I was injured and my football career ended, I found my way into strength and conditioning. In my reflection and search for answers on how to prevent career ending injuries I learned that strength must be balanced by good movement.
That’s why when people first come in I put them through an evaluation. One of the many things we do is make sure that they can squat properly. We know the squat is useful in producing strong and explosive athletes. That’s why it’s part of many training programs. Doing the squat well is an indicator that things are working properly with the body to allow athletes to be more athletic. If they can’t do it well there are some issues that we need to work on before we utilize it as a training tool or move on to higher level training.
Check out this athlete above. This is as low as he can squat. In the squat we want to see if the athlete can get to parallel or lower. If they can’t we start checking things that might be the cause of why they are not able to do so. First, we would check ankle mobility and calf tightness. If you lose range of motion in that part of your leg, your squat will not be ideal. So once that issue is assessed and fixed and they still can’t do a proper squat we look into motor control. This means that the core, hips, and/or spine need to be functioning optimally in order to hold the body up in the proper positing to execute the squat. If this is the issue, we put our athletes through exercises to fix the problem. Once they can move in and out of the squat position pretty easily then we move on to improving agility, power, and speed.
If you do squat well, here’s a nice squat progression I like to put people through:
1. Ankle mobility exercises
2. Active straight 3 x 10
3. Squat progression 3 x 15
As you can see his hips are now lower than his knees and his back is in a straight line. This allows athletes the ability to run faster, jump higher and lift more weights. I personally have never seen results like we produce in terms of improving range of motion, increase of speed, agility power and explosiveness in a short period of time any where else!
In everything we do we have options. Whether it is the type of food we eat, what colors we like and even the people we chose to work with. We all make these decisions on a daily basis. When people come in to work with us and stay here it is because we take the time to make sure we stay up on the latest research out there in our field and stay connected to relevant professionals to give our athletes the best results possible.
The number one complaint from college strength and conditioning coaches are that athletes are entering colleges with tighter hips than ever due to lifestyles of the youth these days. When the hips are opened up and function properly, athletes will move easier and be more athletic. For example; we started working with an athlete preparing for a tryout with a Canadian football team. He was extremely tight in his hips and we worked on opening that up before we did anything else. His personal best in the 40 yard dash was a 4.88 and a 4.31 in the pro agility shuttle. After just one session of opening up his hips he ran a 4.59 in the 40 yard dash and 3.93 in the pro agility shuttle. There is just no other method that can gain that kind of result so quickly. This athlete just improved his chances of signing a contract with a Canadian team significantly.
So why not get these results for yourself or the people in your life you depends on athletics to get a college scholarship or wants to play professionally. Contact us immediately!
Sincerely,
Donny Mateaki
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