Daily Maestroism

DM #74

Friday, August 5th, 2016

DM #74: I know, I know, another squat post ? but this came up in today's course, and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to do a little teaching.

One of the attendees at today's rock tape course asked me to help her figure out why she could only snatch and squat with her feet turned out significantly. She stated that she could go lower with her feet turned out, but that she felt a lot of tightness in her hips at the bottom of her squat when she did this. She also told me that she had been mobilizing her hips a lot, but that it hadn't really been helping.

The assessment literally took two minutes to figure out that it was her ankles and not her hips causing her dysfunction. In supine, with gravity eliminated, both active and passive range of motion testing of her hips revealed full hip mobility in all directions. That immediately ruled out her hips as the cause of her squatting dysfunction. That also immediately ruled out her hips as being “tight.” I also tested her in quadruped which ruled IN a midline stability motor control dysfunction, but did not rule OUT the ankles
A quick closed chain dorsiflexion test revealed significant ankle dorsiflexion restriction. So why the hip “tightness”? As explained in DM #23, turning the foot out decreases the amount of ankle dorsiflexion required for squatting, as we steal from the frontal and transverse planes. As we rotate the foot, the leg goes with it and subsequently we change how the ball of our hip is sitting in the socket. This altered positioning can and will lead to alterations in hip mechanics and bony approximation a.k.a. running out of room when attempting the squat. Additionally, a lack of midline stability will cause the muscles surrounding the hips to contract in an effort to provide stability to the system.

So what's my point? Where you think it is, it ain't. Assess before you address. While her efforts to help herself should be commended, she's pretty much been hammering away at those hips for nothing. It's all connected, you just gotta know how to look at it. The Maestro can help you out.
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