How to GO LOW (Squat Deeper Instantly!)

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do you need to increase the depth of your squat well I’m going to show you today that what you might be doing to do that is completely opposite of what you should be [Music] doing what’s up guys Jeff Cavalier athleanx. com today I want to talk to you about the depth of the squat right we know that in order to be functionally strong we have to have some squatting movements in what we do now whether you do a back bar squat whether you’re doing dumbbell squats whether you’re doing single egg squats the depth is important because if you cut short the depth a lot of times we tend to put a lot of pressure forward into our knees so and you could also have other uh other problems linked to that too where our low back tries to take over and do too much work as well so we want the proper depth we want to be able to get down to around parallel to the ground and this is sort of what it looks like for a lot of people if we get in here and we try to go down what you’ll see is they can’t get quite down far enough until their heels start popping up off the ground now why is that mostly it’s because of calf tightness could be though because of ankle mobility issues all right so we have to address that if we’re ever going to get down to a parallel position here with the squat we have to have adequate mobility of our ankles so let me put this down and show you what most guys do who know they have that problem they come over here and they put a plate on the ground right and they put their ankles up behind itbe a 45lb plate so I have a little bit more room but it doesn’t matter here they put the plate underneath their heels because the concept is if the calves are tight well let’s bring the ground up to the tightness right so now when we come down it’s a lot easier to go down there’s not as much dors flexion that has to happen here at the ankle to accomplish that right we if I’m looking at my my uh wrist as sort of synonymous with my ankle joint there’s not as much dorsal flexion that has to happen here to keep my heel in contact with the ground in order to get down low like that so they think that they problem solve I can tell you that if you try to take that out into the field with you if you’re an athlete you’re not going to be able to carry your your plate with you okay so that’s not going to work and it’s really just a Band-Aid for a problem that actually needs to be fixed so what do we do instead of putting under the heels Kick It Forward you should be putting it under your toes now do you squat like this no you use it as a Mobility technique before you squat so you come down here you can hold on to the bar you know in front of you just a squat rack you come in there and you try to engage your tightness you try to stretch out your calves you try to get a little bit deeper keep your shoulders up you keep your head up okay work through the tightness in the calves now remember Mobility is another issue I’m going to get to that one second another thing you can do take your plate put it Forward put two heavy dumbbells on the ground okay he like 80s or 90s or hundreds okay cuz you’re going to use them to actually help you come down to the ground okay grab the dumbbells here and then basically pull up on the dumbbells while keeping your head and shoulders upright what this does is it actually pulling against the dumbbells that hopefully are heavy enough that they’re not going to move it’s actually pulling me further into my dorsal flexion so it acts as a way to get some Force downward into my ankles you’ll see it and feel it immediately as you do this and it gives me really good Mobility so again I just try to hold this for a period of you know 30 seconds or so for Mobility it’s a great stretch for the calves now this might be too intense with the plate just take that out come back down and do the same thing now immediately I can feel that I can get way more comfortably deep into this squat because of that Mobility drill final piece of this puzzle guys it doesn’t have to I’m sorry that flexibility drill it doesn’t have to always be about flexibility and calf inflexibility a lot of times it has to do with with Mobility so really important point with the mobility of the ankle I don’t care how deep you try to get if you have a mobility issue the tel curl joint in the in the ankle which is basically the Tais and the front you know the part of the foot wrapping through here gets jammed in as you go into dorsal flexion it literally hitting bone on bone with the tibian FIB above okay so as you’re trying to push it’s not going anywhere so there is a Mobility technique in physical therapy where we want to get this bone to come forward while this one goes back okay so if you could see again simulate the ankle with the wrist it’s the same joint okay on the ground as I go into dorsal flexion these bones right here go down and backward right they go down and back down and back this bone would come forward this one would go down so watch what we do come over here again Advanced Mobility set up two of the elastics bands here and put them around your ankles okay anywhere low against the squat rack now remember they’re just about I suggest wearing pants guys so it’s not rubbing against your skin here but they’re just above the the ankle joint okay so right in through there and back walk back a few steps now right there what have I created I’ve created that Force this way now when I go down into my dorsal flexion here deep it’s even easier way easier because I’ve got some of this actual self mobilization going on all right so you’re here you can find that you’re going to get way deeper don’t worry about squatting like this right now we’re talking about doing it as a Mobility drill prior squatting so now when I come out of here yeah I could increase this by putting my toes up on the plate but when I come out of here now after doing just a few of those drills and I get down I mean it’s easy for me to get down to 90° I’m not butt winking in here I’m not rounding my shoulders here my chest stays up I come down my heels are in contact with the ground and I have a accomplish exactly what I was trying to without doing the things I told you you shouldn’t so guys strength training can be a little bit more scientific if you allow it to be and I think if you’re going to spend your time trying to get results doing what you’re doing then it’s worth the extra bit it’s it’s worth applying the science to what you’re doing so that you can get a more functional result from it and in this case squatting lower squatting properly is going going to keep your knees healthy your back healthy get your legs stronger and get you the results that you were looking for in the first place if you haven’t already guys start applying the science to strength and get with the program here aex head over to aex. com pick up your 90day training program and uh start seeing what it’s like when you blend in all these Concepts together I’ll see you guys back here in a couple days meantime if you found this helpful try some of the techniques you’re going to squat lower it’s going to be easy easier stop putting the plate under your heels I’ll see you guys in a couple days [Music]