 So what's the biggest way to make the biggest gains in your squat in the off season? Well, there's a couple of things that we always like to do and that we've done for a lot of years. And one, you're gonna wanna focus on building your technique. Now, you have full range of motion squats and I like that because if you can't get your hips below the knees, this is also gonna give you kind of some indicators of potential limitations which could be at the ankle, at the knee or at the hip. So one of the big things that you're gonna wanna do in the off season is if you wanna increase your squat strength, you need to understand the importance of focusing on accessory lifts and mobility throughout your lower body. Now, remember when you have good ankle mobility, knee mobility and hip mobility, you're gonna be able to go through the full range of motion on the squat. Now remember, there's a whole bunch of myths out there for years they talked about like squats are bad for the knees or deep squats are bad for the knees and what they've actually shown through multiple studies is that squats through the full range of motion are actually less stressful on the knee joint because you're moving through the entire range. And one of the things that we've always done for a lot of years is always incorporated full range of motion Olympic lifts and full range of motion squats. We go through a lot of front squats and a lot of back squats. So a couple of other things that you can kind of focus on besides looking at mobility and range of motion, right? If you have any limitations there, you're setting yourself up for maybe potential injury in the future. Once you start to put more load on the body and the joints don't move through the range, through their full range, right? You're gonna start absorbing stress at other points. It's gonna have to shift the stress somewhere if the joints aren't moving through the proper range. So that's why one of the big things that you can do to improve your squat strength, believe it or not, is simple things like ankle, knee and hip mobility. Now, one of the other things that's really easy for you to kind of hit and attack with trying to build your off-season strength for your squat is switching up the type of squat and adding variation. Louis Simmons of West Side Barbell always talks about. So you could take something like a regular squat in week one, go wide width squat in week two and then you could do, you know, a narrow base squat on week three. Real simple explanation of like simple variation. You could do a regular squat, you could add bands to it and you could add chains to it. So you can do different depths on box squats. So these are all different things you wanna do. One of the biggest problems I see with athletes when they're trying to train the off-season, they see these lifts, they see big things, you know, from the elite throwers. Those are really great moments, right? A guy who's one of the best throwers in the NCAA or in the world and he's putting up a really impressive squat. It's really cool. So they take a video and they catch that and it's a great Instagram moment. But what you're not gonna see is that often what stuff that's not super exciting is all the accessory work these guys do. So you're gonna be focusing a lot on building the hamstrings, the gastrocs, right? You wanna build up the calves. Again, that's gonna be kind of tied into a little bit of that ankle range of motion. So you're gonna be focusing on movements, single leg unilateral movements like lunges. We had recently posted a video about how to build single leg strength. I think we'll probably link that up. So remember, there's a number of things you can do but one of the biggest things is making sure your technique's right. Like we talked about range of motion at the knee, ankle, and the hip and then adding in your accessories and adding in variation. These are just all various ways to change up and increase your gains. Remember, the body's always trying to adapt and the body is typically pretty efficient at adapting and the more advanced an athlete gets, the more difficult it is to make gains because the body's so proficient at adaptation. So remember, when you're a younger lifter, things like just improving your squat technique will make a huge difference in gains and jumps tend to happen right away. But once you start to lift for a few years and your technique's becoming better, your strength levels and the gains can get a little slower. So simple things, adding in variation, making sure you're putting enough glute specific, hamstring specific, all these different accessory movements. Romanian deadlifts, RDLs, hip thrusts. We like to do banded hamstring curls. We can do seated hamstring curls. We can do a number of different things that are gonna add support. And again, using Louis Simmons as an example of Westside Barbell, he was one of the things he said, hey, if you've got a 600 pound squat and a 400 pound back, you're gonna get injured. So the same thing kind of applies. Remember, the quads, you know, you have your four main quad, the VMO, the vastus intermedius, the rectus femoris and the vastus lateralis, right? Those are your four quad muscles. And then you have your three big hamstring muscles, your semi-teninosis, semi-membranosis and the bicep femoris. Those are the main big hamstring muscles. So you need to make sure that these things have a balanced ratio. So a lot of times what happens is people squat and they do, you know, they're running or they're doing bounds or they're doing box jumps and it's quad heavy. And yes, you're gonna be incorporating glutes, hips, you know, calves, all these sorts of things are incorporated, but they're quad dominant movements. Everything we do in life is anterior dominant. So you really wanna be working on that posterior chain development and making sure that you're spending adequate time hitting the hamstrings and the glutes and the assistance muscles that are gonna keep you nice and healthy. Now remember, one of the other things to increase your squat strength is upper body strength. You need to have the posterior chain. The back muscles need to be strong to be able to keep the back in a nice position and keep stress off the lumbar spine. So if you're sitting on a weight and you're gonna collapse down or you rounded forward on a back squat, this is gonna cause an issue as well and you need to be able to have those erector muscles, those scap retractors, right, the rhomboids, everything nice and tight. So when you put that bar on your back, you're gonna be sitting up nice and straight and strong and that's gonna help you with that neural drive, right? Spinal alignment, all that stuff is a real simple, you know, fancy way of saying, if you're nice and aligned, you're gonna be able to generate more power. So remember, those are just a handful of things that you can do. You wanna think about your squat training differently. If you're trying to get better for whatever sport, specifically, obviously, if you're trying to improve your squat to be a better shop putter, discus thrower, this is what a lot of people fail to do. So they a lot of do a lot of tricks, but they're not doing a lot of extra assistance movements and they're getting stuck with things like we're doing squats and then we're doing, you know, leg extensions and leg curls and those we've shown are not the best movements. There's many that are much better and when you can add all that in, understand how to add the variation, understand mobility and understand even that back strength, now you've got a complete picture of how you're gonna be able to really ramp and make big jumps in your squat strength, which should translate to bigger, better throws. Okay guys, so hopefully that helps. If you have any questions, be sure to comment below and we'll see you guys on the next video.