22/02/2025
Still not just a squat
Bending over…. Bending down…. Reaching across… reaching out….
-Shoulders not in line with each other,
-Feet not square.
-No shoes to support arches
-Resistance bands at varied strength
-Sanbells not dumbbells to vary hand grip
-No knees over toes
Throughout time incidental movements have changed.
We’ve gone from a society of moving, walking, lifting, pushing, climbing, crawling…. to world of driving, sitting, hardly lifting because it’s dangerous, definitely hardly pushing or lifting over head without assistance…
These advances are not wrong… they do however have the potential to make us lose strength we need to catch ourselves in everyday life.
How often have you heard or experienced a spasm in your back or a blown disc whilst putting the ‘pink cup’ (yep it’s so traumatic even the colour is remembered vividly) into the dish washer?
Can this be because we no longer drag, drop, lift, push in any way unless we first make sure we are straight and feet lined up with our hips or have a machine to do it for us?
Incidental movement like the pink cup is where many people experience a lot of injuries these days.
We need to get better at that…..in a safe environment.
We need 4 Quadrants of movement.
If you lift only up, down, forward and back, how are you going to safely and efficiently catch yourself when you trip up or down a curb or when your child wriggles in your arms, or you drop something under the desk or when you simply turn and rotate to put that pink cup in the dishwasher.
Up and down squats help us to improve up and down movements.
Varying foot patterns/positions, direction of push or reach in a squat will help condition your ability to rotate.
We can’t have one without the other….sooner or later something will give
Food for thought