Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1377: From Couch to Deep Squat in 90 Days

Episode Date: September 10, 2020

In this episode, Sal, Adam & Justin lay out steps to dramatically improve your squat in just 90 days. Why is the squat so important? (3:48) A valuable measure of your body’s progression. (5:07) The impact squats have on your joints and muscles. (7:38) The difference between a partial and full squat. (11:24) How to get to the point where you can squat fully with good control and strength in 90 days (with caveats). (11:58) What do the FIRST 30 days look like? (19:00) What does the SECOND 30 days look like? (29:41) What do the FINAL 30 days look like? (33:38) Related Links/Products Mentioned MAPS Prime Webinar Visit Paleo Valley for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Code “Mindpump15” at checkout for 15% discount** Mind Pump TV - YouTube Correcting Upper Cross Syndrome to Improve Posture & Health-- Prone Cobra Add Windmills to Your Workout to Increase Your Deadlift Strength How To Do A Single Leg Hip Thrust (Exercise Demo) - FREE Great Butt Guide How To Start Squatting - Learn To Squat Like A PRO (FREE GUIDE) Dunphy Squat- Improve Your Squat with this Secret Exercise Mind Pump Podcast - YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Kelly Starrett (@thereadystate)  Instagram

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. In this episode of Mind Pumped the World's Number One Fitness Health and Entertainment podcast, we talk all about how to go from the couch to full, deep, comfortable, and strong squats. Now the barbell squat or squats in general, one of the most effective exercises you can do for your whole body. Regardless of your goals, whether you want to burn body fat, build muscle in your legs,

sculpt and shape your body, squatting is a fundamental human movement. And it's a skill. It's one that you lose if you don't practice it. Now, you may already have problems with squatting. You might find you can't go down below 90 degrees. You have knee pain or back pain. If you can't squat properly, you're gonna wanna listen to this episode because we tell you exactly how to go from where you're at now

to getting beautiful, amazing squats, in as little as potentially 90 days. We break it all down for you from the first 30 days, the second 30 days, to the third 30 days. Now, we do mention in this podcast an assessment that Justin takes Doug through, you can actually follow along and learn how to assess your body so you know what movements to do for your bodies, you can squat better.

It's totally free. It's a free service we provide to all of our listeners. It's called mapsprimewebinar.com. So just go to mapsprimewebinar.com and watch the self assessment. Watch the assessment, apply it to yourself, listen to this episode, and in 90 days you will greatly improve your ability to squat fully with no pain and amazing strength. Now this episode is brought to you by our sponsor, Paleo Valley. Paleo Valley makes some of the best grass-fed meat sticks you'll find anywhere, along with

other supplements. They have organ complex supplements, they have a, supplement, they have vitamin C complex. Lots of their products are amazing, but our favorites are the meat sticks. These are grass-fed jerky sticks that are not dry. They taste really, really good. High-emprotein, healthy fat. In fact, it's one of my favorite snacks, period. It blows all the other jerkeys and meat sticks products out of the water and because you listen to mine pump

You get 15% off your first order So go check them out paleo valley.com. That's P-A-L-E-O valley.com forward slash mine pump and get 15% off and by the way if you want to check out some of our workout programs We have a lot of them you can find all of them and find the one that works for you at MapsFitnessProducts.com. We recently did a quaw where we talked to someone asked a question about squads. And it actually brought up, I think, a really good conversation with the three of us. And reminded me, I don't know if it brought you guys back, to probably one of the number one things I had to overcome as a trainer, was getting a client who had some sort of back

issue or something and then they came in and their doctor told them they shouldn't squat and so they were just, they were absolutely afraid to squat or learn how to squat or to get do deep squats because they had been told they have a bad back and so I spent majority of my time trying to overcome that. And that conversation led us talking off air about, you know, just how important that is that, you know, somebody learns how to squat.

But what if you are in a place where you don't have good squat mechanics, you don't have good mobility? How would we take a client like that in the course of just a couple months and get them to a place where they could actually squat? Right. Before we even get into that, why is a squat so important? You know, why is there so much value placed on that particular movement? It is a fundamental human movement, the ability to squat down.

It highlights mobility and strength throughout most of your body, including the upper body. A lot of people don't realize that it does require good squats, especially barbell squats, require good upper body mobility as well. It's safe to say if you can do a good squat with good control, good full squat, with good control and good stability and good strength, that you're probably generally are pretty good. You're pretty well off. Then on top of that, because it's a, and this is true for all kind of fundamental human movements, once you're good at it and you work on strengthening it, the payback is tremendous. The time that is needed to spend on a squat on a good squat in order to elicit good results is less than that is needed to spend on a squat,

on a good squat in order to elicit good results is less than you would need to spend on other exercises. In other words, and I'll just make up a number here, but you may need to do five other exercises or more to equal what you would get from just the barbell squat or just from the squat. So it's a very important exercise in like all fundamental movements or the ways we move,

they are skills, a squat is a skill, and you can lose that skill, just like if you were to stop walking for a long period of time, you would lose the ability to walk, you'd have to relearn it, squatting, although it is a fundamental human movement, if you don't do full squats and you do them comfortably

with good mobility and good strength, you lose that ability. So in that case, yes, just going and squatting will hurt you. Yes, it will hurt your back. Yes, it will hurt your knees, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't squat. What it means is you should work towards the point where you can squat and figure out

why you're unable to squat. Yeah, I feel like squat is such a good measure of a snapshot in time of how your body is performing properly from every facet, every joint, getting everything to work and unison. And it's one of those things that once you think that you've mastered it, and like you said, you can lose this as a skill

just by not doing it frequently enough. So this is why we're always bringing it up. It's just something that, if you notice it in the gym, and you know somebody that has a really good squat, how long it took for them to even get to that point. And so, to be able to take somebody to the very start in the beginning and go through that process

in the most effectively possible, I think is a very valuable thing to understand. Totally. I had never, so I started working out very consistently at a young age, and it wasn't until I started barbell squatting that I saw my body really respond, and it responded very quickly. And I learned it from a group of powerl lifters at a gym that I was working out. And now up into that point, I did work out my legs.

I did things like leg presses and hack squats and leg extensions and leg curls. But they convinced me to do barbell squats and I practiced them, got decent at them and saw my body progress tremendously. I saw this with my clients as well. There's almost no exercise I can think of that produced results in my clients.

And honestly, it doesn't even matter what the goal was, whether it was fat loss, building muscle, shaping the glutes, improving mobility, athletic performance. I saw in my clients the greatest payback from any single exercise it was from the barbell squat. So it's a tremendously valuable exercise. That's why it's so important to not just learn how to do the skill, get your body to be able to do it, but also be able to maintain that skill. I wish that I was more passionate about this when I first started as a trainer. This didn't really come full circle for me until later in my career,

when I started to battle low back pain, for cytos in my hips, and realized that where I was missing was not training myself to get a deeper, fuller range of motion. I was limiting my range of motion on my squat. I was focused more on the way I looked and aesthetics. Although, I practiced this with my clients and we always talk on the show about we were

better trainers with our clients than we were ever ourself. This is a classic example of that with squatting. I did not put the energy and effort towards working on my mobility and as I got older and even though I got more buff looking, I started to deal with chronic issues. My ankles were bothering, my hips were bothering me, my low back was bothering me, and I had this chronic pain.

And I didn't realize how much of that had to do with my inability to do a full range of motion squat. And of course, now looking back, it makes total sense, right? You know, the hips are such a multifaceted joint that can move in all these different planes. And when you limit it, you know, to this 90 degrees all the time, sitting in a chair, sitting in your car,

sitting at your desk, and never challenging the hips to open all the way up into this full range of motion, what ends up happening is the body starts to compensate. Other muscles start to compensate, and this is where the problem start to arise. And then it started to make sense to me why I had so many of these clients that wanted to avoid squats because oh my low back hurt or my

hips bothered me or I have bursitis. And I probably allowed more of those clients to get away with that in my earlier career. It wasn't until later did I realize, oh my God, the answer for these people is for me to really work on their mobility in these joints and get them to a place where they can full squat. Because what I experienced now, which is amazing,

is I don't have to do a lot of the mobility work anymore. All I have to do is deep squat. As long as I have really good deep squats in my routine every week, it keeps my ankles healthy. It keeps my knees healthy. It keeps my hips healthy. It keeps my low back healthy because I put the work in to get there. And that in itself is a reason to work towards that,

even if you think that you can't do it right now, because it may take a little bit of work to get there. But once you get there, it's actually a lot easier to sustain that joint health by doing exercises that take the joints through its full range of motion. Yeah, it's funny when they do studies on the impact of singular exercises on things like hormones, for example. So those are tests, well, they'll see, because when you look at weights and you do it properly, you do see a spike in anabolic hormones, things like testosterone, and growth hormone, and they can actually, they've actually done this,

where they've done exercises and then measured their response, and the number one exercise for spikes in things like testosterone and growth hormone, especially in men, was the barbell squat. The other exercises didn't even come close. They also can test things like muscle protein synthesis. So protein synthesis, when it's positive, it's telling you that the body's building new tissue. And they can measure this in real time. They can have you work out, measure it, and see what's going on. Again, the squat is king. When they look at metabolism, calories burned after exercise.

Again, the barbell squat or the squat is king. Now, it is important. I know Adams is talking about full squats. It is important to differentiate the difference between a partial squat and a full squat, totally different exercises. We're talking about full squats here. A partial squat, although there's some value

and some maybe specific sports, it's not what I'm talking about right now. What I'm talking about is a full range of motion squat. This is where you go all the way down. You actually go down below 90 degrees, your hips go lower than your knees, and you can get in that position comfortably. And then, you know, if you're strong, you can load that weight, that position, and do

repetitions there. Totally different exercise from a partial range of motion squat. Now, here's a deal. I know for some people, squats have a bit of a reputation for, you know, causing injury and pain. If you can't squat properly, if you don't have the mobility, if you don't have the strength,

you will hurt yourself. By the way, that's true for all exercises. If you don't have the strength and stability, range of motion to do a curl, you're gonna hurt yourself. It doesn't matter what the exercise is. If your body can't do it, and you don't have the skill to do it,

then yes, you will hurt yourself. So that's, and I wanna make sure we hammer that home, that what we're talking about in this podcast today is how to get to the point to where you can squat fully with good control and good strength. So you can reap the benefits of one of the most effective exercises known to man with minimal or no risk of injury or pain. And if anything, it'll reduce your pain.

In fact, it was one of the most effective exercises for my older population clients. It was a squat. When I got them to be able to squat and then do squats, pain would go away. That's how powerful of an exercise this is now I know in this episode we're talking about 90 days to be able to get a full squat I think that's a safe number for most healthy able-bodied individual, but again One more caveat there are a lot of individual variances. So do not try to force yourself to to fit in this structure that we're talking about. In other words, if we're saying from couch to deep squat in 90 days, and you're at the

end of 90 days, and you're still like, you know what, I still need to work on mobility. I still am not feeling very stable in the bottom position. Don't force yourself. Listen to your body. But I think it's safe to say that for most people who are relatively healthy, who are able-bodied, who are void of major pain or injury, 90 days is pretty safe. I can get most people in 90 days,

if not getting to do a full squat, I can get them much better off than they were before with the right approach. Well, the reason why this is one of the most powerful or effective movements that anybody can do is also, because of how nuanced it is. So there's a lot of common breakdown when somebody squats.

And because it can be so complex, I think is why so many people avoid it or why doctors many time will tell clients that have back pain or knee pain or chronic pain somewhere in their body that oh, you should just not do squats because it's so nuanced, because it's not as simple as oh,

watch someone do it and then turn right around and perform it. If you have excessively forward head or forward shoulders, there's a good chance when you go down and do a squat, you're gonna have this forward lean. Your body's going to fold over like a lawn chair when you go in and the weights can end up being distributed over the top of your knees and you might feel stress in your low back, you might feel stress in your neck, super common, you know, or somebody doesn't know how to

break at the hips. And so a lot of the load is the stress is going into the knees or they don't have the ankle mobility and so they don't have a lot of travel for the knees to go back and forth or their hips, they get stuck at a certain point because they don't have the hip mobility because there are so many areas in the squat that you can break down and it's common that somebody has at least one, two, if not all of those areas to address, it seems so overwhelming that people avoid it. But the truth is, once you figure out what those areas that you are breaking down in, and

then you do the right things to improve it, you should see progression in this, like you said, over 90 days. Maybe you don't have a perfect, maybe you don't go from the couch to the most beautiful squat around in 90 days, but you absolutely can make huge strides in 90 days to the improvement of that squat. And this is where I actually do find a lot of value in a standardized approach in terms of something that you know, you can try to achieve whatever that you can try to achieve whatever variance that looks like. So that you might not be as exact as what you set out for in terms of what your squat looks like because of your leverers and because of these different factors. But there's a lot of conflict and information out there

that's really trying to cater towards pulling you in and making things easier for you, which this isn't the message that you're gonna get from us today. This is more of a work towards these things in order to get your body and better alignment and to get things to function your joints to go through the range of motion that your body is set up to do.

And so this is something that I'm passionate about in terms of trying to make sure that if we can establish this one specific technique in your foot position, your knees, everything kind of like stacking on top of that first, then we can venture out, we can go a little bit wider in our sense, we can mess with that. We got to establish a standard first. Yeah, I'm so glad you said that.

There's this common belief and it's largely false that because everybody's body's different, everyone's squat is gonna look different. To some extent, there's a little bit of truth to that, but with like all fundamental human movements. For example, you watch someone who's tall versus someone who's short. If they've got good mechanics, male, female, and they walk, walking kinda looks the same.

You can tell when someone has good mechanics when they walk versus when they don't. The same thing is true for a squat. Good squats look similar. Bad squats look very different from each other. Okay. So, yes, if you squat very different from your friend, maybe because you have most,

probably because you have mobility issues and some strength and stability issues. But when you look at a bunch of people, tall, short, medium, you know, male, female, doing really good squats with good mobility, good stability, good strength, they all look very, very similar. So let's move away from the whole, like,

oh, my body's different, I can't squat, or I have to do this crazy variation because my hip joints or whatever, usually that's not the case, it's usually not the case, it's usually a mobility issue. And if you address those issues, you'll find that your good squat will look very similar to somebody else's very, very... You know, that's become really pop.

I'm glad you addressed that too, Justin. You know who just Kelly star at. So shout out to him. He did a video just recently on his Instagram. I thought that was really good to kind of debunk this because that's become very popular, especially in the CrossFit community, this like open toad stance, like, oh, this is normal. It's because my hips are this way.

And then what he does is in the video, he sits everybody down in a chair, and he goes, everybody sit down in a chair right now. He goes, okay, point your toes straight. Like everybody does it. He goes, okay, your hips are not limiting you. You can squat like that. Yeah, you can squat like this.

If you could sit down in a chair and turn your toes into this position, you should be all, also, you can squat like this. If you could sit down in a chair and turn your toes in, sitting in this position, you should be all also to be able to squat. Your hips, if they were the limiting factor, if your anatomy was your limiting factor to you turning your feet in, you would not be able to do that in this chair. 100%.

So I love addressing that. So I mean, so let's talk about the first 30 days. Like what are we doing with a client when they first walk in the door and they're saying, hey, I've never really squatted before, I wanna get good at squatting. What is that first 30 days? Well, number one, you gotta do an assessment.

So we have to look at the whole body to identify where there may be some potential issues because a squat, especially a barbell squat, uses the entire body, especially when you have a barbell on your back, right, you have to hold the barbell there, you have to have good posture uses the entire body, especially when you have a barbell on your back, right, you have to hold the barbell there, you have to have good posture in the upper back. If things go wrong with the upper part of your body

that tends to affect the lower part of your body, then you have the middle of your body, core stability, the stability around your spine, you have your hips, you have your knees, you have your ankles, your feet, so you really wanna do a full self assessment. Now for those of you listening who have no idea what that looks like, we actually have a free assessment that you can go, of course you can go take.

It's totally free. It's called mapsprimewebinar.com. If that's correct, Doug, am I right? Mapsprimewebinar.com. And you'll go on there and then Justin actually takes Doug, Doug is the model in there through an assessment and we broke the body up into zone. Zone one being kind of the upper body, zone two being the middle of the body, zone three being the lower part

of the body. But when you do this assessment, here's what you're looking for. Do you have bad posture to your shoulders roll forward? That's very common. Do you have poor posture to your shoulders roll forward? That's very common. Do you have poor stability in your core to where when you do a squat, your tailbone tucks really deep and you can't maintain that tight core position? Do your ankles or your heels come up off the floor when you try a squat? Do your feet have to turn out?

Do your knees move in or move out or do they just lose stability where they kind of wobble? Pay attention to all those things and find where you see kind of the breakdown. You can look at a perfect squat online, compare yours to it and see where the differences are. So now this is a very specific thing. When I do an assessment, I'm looking at an individual, but I'm going to give you some general exercises that will help the most common, I'd say, posture issues. Let's go through those three zones and talk about the most

common issues and then the ways to fix that for it. Because there are definitely, although there's always going to be an individual variance, there's always going to be an exception to the rule, there's always going to be that client who has one limb who's two inches longer or we want to talk to them about the most common things we see. Yeah, the most common things you see, and if you go from zone one, where Sal talked about that's the upper body, right, that first zone, the most common things that I have seen is a forward

shoulder and a forward head. And that's just simply because we do everything in front of us. And that's where the shoulders round forward, and that's where they head. The head protrusion forward, right? It's like the head, the head to the shoulder, or your chin's out. It's like what most, you know, it's like what generation Z looks like cause they're always on the computers and stuff, you know? So it's that forward position and that's gonna make it really hard

for you to squeeze your shoulders back and support a barbell on your back and maintain upright posture. So you can put a lot of neck strain as well with your head all the way out that direction and also yeah, and you're looking at the potential issues with shoulder impingements and all kinds of things

once you start adding load to it. It also naturally points the chest towards the ground. One of the best cues for a squat is to keep the chest up high, right? So as you come out of the hole in a squat, a lot of good squat coaches will be get the chest high and puff the chest up as you shoot out of the hole.

And if you're rounded forward, the chest is gonna be pushing downward, you're more likely to fall forward, you're more likely to have the bar travel over the knees, which will put stress on the knees, stress on the low back. So right away, the first thing that I'm addressing is that forward head and those forward shoulders by pulling everything back.

Right. So one of my favorite exercises is called the Prone Cobra, you can find this on our YouTube channel Mind Pump TV. That's a great exercise for bringing the shoulder blades back. Now if you want to follow along on the podcast literally you can lay on your stomach on the floor, put your arms at your sides, twist your hands out. Okay, so you're rotating your hands out so that your thumbs start pointing up towards the ceiling, and then stick your chest up, lift your chest up off the floor, and try and

pinch your shoulder blades back while also bringing them down and hold and squeeze that position. Now an easier exercise for people that probably are more familiar with, it's just a good old fashioned row. You can do this with a band, you can do this with a dumbbell, where you're pinching the shoulder blades back and down as you squeeze the back as you row to strengthen those mid-back muscles and pull the shoulders back. Now, I want to make a point when you're doing exercises that are corrective exercises, lighten the load, slow down the tempo, and put the emphasis on the opposite, the antagonist thing that's happening.

So in other words, if forward shoulders is the issue, when I do that seated row or I do that prone cobra that Sal is talking about, I am going to exaggerate the squeeze and the flexing of the back, right? Because that's the opposite muscles that I'm trying to develop to work on the forward shoulders. So if I do a seated row, I'm gonna go really light that I can control it, squeeze my shoulder blades, and I might even hold that for three to five seconds

to put emphasis on those muscles that I'm trying to engage. When it's corrective, I don't wanna load it so much that my form is going to break down. And a lot of people, okay, I'm trying to work out my posture, they go, I could do heavier on the C2 row, I can go heavier, I can go heavier. And also they're doing 150 pounds on a C2 row, just because they can,

but they don't realize what they're doing is, they're allowing their shoulders to roll forward, they're pulling all of their arms, and just because they have the strength to do it, does it mean they're working on the corrective part of that exercise? Right, right. Now let's move down to the lower zone.

This is not the lower body, it's kind of the middle of the body. In our assessment, we do a windmill as part of the assessment. It's also a phenomenal movement to work on mobility and strength in this area. And you can do a windmill, you actually, in fact, for correctional purposes, it's better to do it without any weight. And it's literally you're standing with the wide stance, reaching down with one hand, touching the floor and reaching up with the other one. So as you're bending over your twisting, again, you can find this on, uh, mind pump TV. But here's a key with it. You got to maintain tension throughout

your muscles. You're not just going to, it's not just a stretch, not passive. I'm tight with everything. I'm doing everything with intention and trying to connect to that range of motion. That's what's going to give you that mobility. And that detail is in that webinar, that Justin takes them through this movement. So if you're, I mean, save you a lot of time and trying to find each one of these videos individually, that whole webinar, that whole assessment and all the zones that we're going through right now, Justin takes you through those. So follow that and pay attention when he takes you through all the exercises.

Yeah, now moving down further, 90, 90 for the hips and the combat stretch for the ankles. Honestly, those literally those movements, we just listed either Prone Cobra or a row, your windmill, 90, 90 combat stretch, that address is probably 75 to 80% of the people listening to this podcast. If you just did those movements

and worked on those movements, those are probably correct most of your issues as to why you can't squat fully. Now, a lot of people would ask, like, what's the prescription or how much of this, you know, should I do? And, you know, the way we kind of wrote up this episode or, you know, or what it looks like to reflect how we would

take a client through the first 30 days is I want to make sure that they are practicing these moves that we're talking about a minimum of three days a week. So three, two, three days a week, they are dedicated to doing all these exercises that address all these common areas that break down. And that's the main focus with body weight squats. That's it. We're not loading anything. We're not getting on any machines.

All we are literally doing is we are having them perform the squat with just their body weight, putting the work in with all this mobility, going back after they do all those mobility and squatting again and paying attention to the improvement of their range of motion and control just with their body weight. Yeah, now speaking of body weight squats, which is this is where you should start. You should start by practicing while you're doing those mobility movements, practice body weight squats.

If you need to put your arms out in front of you for balance initially, that's not a problem. But here's what you wanna do. Go slow and controlled, okay? Slow tension and control. Go down as low as you comfortably can. Pause there for a second. Don't go any lower than you comfortably can.

Then come all the way up and continue to challenge that. And you want to emulate having load on your back. So like that being said, like I want to be able to brace properly through this whole time. So I want to be able to provide that internal tension to make sure that my spine and everything is supported and straight as I'm going through this range of motion,

because that's gonna be crucial once we start kind of progressing and going forward. Right, so two to three days a week of this, you're probably looking at about 20 to 30 minutes of the mobility exercises, and a good another 20 to 30 minutes of the mobility exercises and a good another 20 to 30 minutes of just practicing body weight squats with tension. That's what you're looking at probably in the first 30 days.

And I want to add to that, right? So that's kind of like the prescription that I want my client doing at the bare minimum, right? At least we're going to. But that doesn't mean that, you know, and then here's the individual variance where you will need to make this decision for yourself. Here's all the common areas that we broke down. Here's all these common mobility drills

that we tell you that you should work on. Everybody, different ones are gonna make, are gonna make a bigger difference for each person. Okay, for example, like of all those areas, I had to work on all those myself. But the biggest game changer for me was my ankles. That was the biggest limiting factor of all the things that I had to do,

because I'm a real tall guy, long limbs, that was the biggest, that was the biggest limiter in me being able to get into a deep squat. So you have to kind of be aware of as you're going through these, wow, every time I do that 90, 90, my hips just feel really good, my low back feels good, I feel deeper in the squatter. Oh man, every time I do those shoulder, 90. My hips just feel really good. My low back feels good. I feel deeper in this quarter. Oh man, every time I do those shoulder or windmail exercises,

I just feel like I can keep good form. So pay attention to the ones that give you the most bang for your buck and then don't be afraid to practice those throughout the week. You're watching TV with your kids and you're just sitting there on the floor, get down and do the 90, 90, or the combat stretch. Or if you're in the kitchen and you're just sitting there on the floor, get down and do the 99 of the combat stretch. Or if you're in the kitchen and you're waiting for dinner to be made or you're microwave or something, get in there and do two or three windmills. Try

and practice these movements frequently throughout the day. You can't do too much of it when we're working on mobility. Right. So, okay. So, that's the first 30 days. Now you're moving into the second 30 days. So you've done 30 days of mobility, body weight squats, slow control. You've probably already noticed that your range of motion has gotten better and you've probably noticed that you feel way more stable and stronger with a body weight squat. The next phase now is to focus on unilateral strength. So now we're going to add a little load, but we're not going to squat with load yet Instead, what we're gonna do is we're gonna do things like lunges, backstep lunges, Bulgarian split stance, squats, step-ups.

Single leg toe touch. Single leg toe touches. Exercise is that kind of, that either have you in a split stance to where one leg is in front, one leg is in the back, or you're on just one leg. And now it's safe to add load to these exercises. It's safe to add dumbbells or add some weight, increase your strength. Now what this is going to do is this is going to help balance out your right to left. It's also going to build some strength in your body and it's setting you up for the last phase, which would be doing the actual barbell squat.

Yeah, I would add one more thing to that, and that's just farmer walks. Just to reinforce proper upright posture as well, and being able to stabilize with weight now that we're introducing weights at your sides. You can also do that with just one weight at your side, too, to even challenge that left to right even further. And again, if someone's looking for prescription without being as accurate as we can to a general population. I would like to see a client doing still those three days of mobility where we're focused there.

Now I'm just going to add one day of real strength training, which it would be a good 30 minute to 50 minute routine of these exercises that we're talking about right now. I'm not going heavy, heavy. I am loading though, so I might put a barbell in their back. I might have them hold dumbbells. I might do hold a trap bar for farmer carries, like Justin's talking about, but this is going to be our first like real strength training. The first bit was more mobility focused and control, intention, isometric type stuff.

Now we're moving into the second, 30 days. Now I wanna build a little bit of strength and I wanna do it all, unilateral training, so it's a lot safer and we're working on control. One of the things most people notice right here is almost all of us will have some sort of a discrepancy. So I like to tell my clients to start with the weaker side always, and then mirror that

on the other side. So Sal brought up like Bulgarian squats or split stance squats. You may find out when you do those lunges or squats that your right leg is so much stronger than the left leg. So start with the weak leg first and however many reps that is five to 12 is probably where I'd recommend you to be at in those 30 days. And while you're doing that, whatever weight you choose,

make sure you mirror that on the strong side, even if you can technically do more. And I also wanna emphasize the multi-planar, a multi-directional type, you know, lateral training. And what that means is just basically, I'm also going side to side and considering those different planes of motion because you want to familiarize your joints to being in different positions and how to use

strength to get you out of those positions before we go into the bilateral type movements which we're building ourselves up to. Right, you know, another good exercise that's you know, lateral that a lot of people don't realize is that you could do hip thrust with one leg. I love hip thrust, one leg and hip thrust for people who have trouble activating the hips. By the way, if this is you when you squat, if when you squat, you find that your body wants to bend way forward, try doing front step lunges.

That'll help work on your ankle mobility. If you find that you don't feel your hips or glutes activate very well when you try to squat, then try doing back step lunges. That tends to work the glutes and the hips a little bit. But as you're getting stronger here with the unilateral stuff, this is setting you up for the last phase, the last 30 days, which is when we're actually going to start doing some barbell squats. We're actually going to start loading. So this phase and this phase,

you're still doing everything you did the first 30 days. You're still adding, you're doing all the stuff you added the second 30 days. Now you can start to squat. I don't think it's a good idea to squat heavy just yet. All you're gonna do is squat light, but start challenging your range of motion. Start playing with the depth of the squat.

Start playing with pausing your squat. This is a technique I absolutely loved doing with clients and even with myself, where instead of, you know, let's say they start squatting and now we've got the range of motion that we want. We've got some of the mobility we want and we're squatting with just the bar and this and the client, you know, does 10 reps and I'm like, wow, I think I can add weight now. I say, not yet. Here's what we're gonna do. I want you to go to the bottom, let's pause the bottom for four seconds

and keep tension and keep your body tight. Don't sit at the bottom. But rather, stop at the bottom and support yourself, pause for about four or five seconds and then come right back up. Just to help reinforce what usually is the weakest part in somebody squat, which is at the very bottom. That tends to be where people either hurt themselves

or lose stability at the very bottom. So I like to have people pause there to get sort of. And it's especially important to go slow to be able to recognize where these deviations occur or where this loss of bracing occurs. So which is something that I've noticed too with clients where they get a little bit closer, where they're unfamiliar, and their body just naturally wants to arch the back and lose support with their core. So, that's something I like to address that with something to call the Dumpy Squad,

where we push a stick up into the cage, and it just helps to reinforce the fact that you have to, as I'm pushing up, I'm going down, but I'm really what I'm doing is creating that Natural bracing mechanism to stay tight and now back to what the prescription for this looks like for this person, right? So now we're in the final 90 days of this you should be doing at least two to three days focused on mobility one day Focus on unilateral type movements and now one day of the week you're focused on bilaterals So both feet on the ground regular squatting and if you're a trainer and you're listening to this is You this is such a great

Kind of plan to follow for a most of your clients and you can easily sprinkle in some you know Isolation exercises to you know, isolation exercises to, you know, appease the arms and shoulders and these other movements that people are going to want to address, but building the program around this, I wish I did more of this in my earlier career. This is what I started to do later on because I realized how beneficial the squat was to like what's at the point salmated the beginning of this podcast that doesn't matter if their goal was strength if it was fat loss if it was mobility if it was longevity like this getting them to squat and squat with good form had so much carryover into all those pursuits that I should have been programming most my programs like this where it's like okay number one focus is to get this person to be able to squat and move properly.

All the other bullshit will sprinkle in, you know, buy and try day, calf day, all these little things that are like such small potatoes in the grand scheme of things. I'll sprinkle those into their routine or add them into these unilateral and bilateral training days just so we kind of touch all the other muscles. But I really want to put all my energy into, can I get this person to move and squat better? And if I can and I do focus on that, I know that they will get more benefit

from that than any other way of training. I can't stress this enough. Go to mapsprimewebinar.com and watch, and follow along with the assessment. It's going to make such a huge difference for you specifically. It's individualized because you're going to follow the test that Justin takes Doug through. And as he teaches you, you'll be able to see for yourself what areas you need to focus on. It makes a tremendous, tremendous difference. And then the second thing you should do, we mentioned a bunch of movements and exercises.

We mentioned, of course, lunges and step-ups and dumpy squats and prone cobras and rows. Our YouTube channel Mind Pump TV has them all. These should be linked with this podcast as well. So you should have everything you need, not just with the information on this podcast, but with all the free links that we're going to provide to you, to be able to get your squat to look tremendously better from where you're at now to 90 days from now. And a lot of you listening right now who are healthy, otherwise no pain, and maybe you're already

kind of working out, you should be able to do full controlled good squats at the end of 90 days if you just follow the protocol that we outlined in today's podcast. Look, Mind Pump is recorded on video and audio, so if you wanna see our faces, come check us out on YouTube Mind Pump Podcast. You can also find all of us on Instagram, including Doug, the producer.

You can find Doug at Mind Pump Doug, Justin at Mind Pump, Justin, me at Mind Pump, Justin, me at Mind Pump Sal and Adam at Mind Pump Adam. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle

at Mind Pump Media.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballad, maps performance and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints in over 200 videos, The RGB Superbundle is like having Sal, Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money bag guarantee,

and you can get it now, plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is Mind Pump!