You may have heard sitting being referred to as the new smoking. How damn depressing is that. What if you don’t have a choice?! For some of you, who’s HR departments haven’t agreed to standing desks yet, its simply an unavoidable sitting scenario. Well lucky for us sitting doesn’t need to be the new smoking, or the devils work.
What to do? Squat that’s what!
In this 6 week programme you will relearn how to connect with the ground and rewild prerequisite ground rest positions, postures that nourish the ankles, knees, hips necessary for the needed for your squat posture. You will rewild your feet to recreate a solid foundation to build your super structure from. And I have thrown in a bonus reel of squat routines that you can play with when you’re feeling a little squat funky and want to upload a little more into your mobility and movement routine.
I view the squat as the prerequisite to the natural form of standing and think of it as natures cure. I highly recommend adopting the squat as frequently as possible; specially for resetting those hips and shaking up those glutes. The squat is a real postural reset which when performed well will unravel all those negative affects of adapting to our typing, swiping, couching and slouching environment.
Many squat challenges recommend squatting for long periods of time, but I often find that most people don’t have adequate range of motion or strength to hold the form required for squatting and so squatting for time becomes counter productive. I have found that it makes more sense to pay attention to those areas that are mostly compromised and preventing you from reaching what should feel like a “restful” squat position.
First we will take a check up from the ground up to recreate a solid foundation to rebuild your superstructure from. You wouldn’t want to go performing resting squats every 20-30 minutes with poor alignment – as this will only lead to stronger poor alignment. And as the squat is the prerequisite of standing, standing is the prerequisite of walking and walking is the prerequisite of running - it’s pretty important that our posture isn’t broken at its core.
You can follow this programming daily, adding each weeks practice to your regular workout or morning ritual. I recommend checking in with your regular movement practice to feel how the squat tutorial is benefitting your regular workout routine. I find it really does help to check in with your squat progress with each additional weeks mobility and movement upload.
For maximum gains I have designed the program specifically to be an accumulative process. So please work on all of the mobility and movement exercises recommended, and add each week on to the last. In doing so you will build a solid squat practice. I have found that this is a much more efficient way to improve your squat.
Studies show that we learn far more with a playful state of mind; so I recommend playing with the squat mobility and movement practice and not to be too serious with the “reps and sets” mindset – this is a movement practice, not a bodybuilding practice. You don’t have to do it all in one session. Lets say you are on week 3; you can mash it up by starting with week one in the morning, then in the afternoon have a play as often as you can with the ground game from week 2. When you return home in the evening work on the H.A.K (Hips Ankles Knees) from week 3 - to unravel all of the couching and slouching, typing and swiping. If it becomes too painful to hold a particular pose, play with the edges, hold a little longer and then move on, returning back to the same pose when the mind has settled some more.
The squat is like anything else that you want to get better at; it takes commitment, conviction and consistency. And so I ask you to trust the process, respect the process and above all be patient whilst in the process.
We can’t all live in nature, but that doesn’t mean we can’t live naturally.