 First question is from Caitlin T. Armstrong. What is a proper full range of motion for a squat? Is it bad to lock out your knees? Oh, yeah, okay So the answer I'm gonna give is actually that the answer for proper range of motion for any exercise So the proper range of motion is the fullest range of motion that you have complete control Strength instability to support. Okay, so if that means that the most you can do is a half squat Because anything outside of a half squat You lose stability you lose strength You lose balance then that means that you have to train in that half squat and then your goal is to Improve that functional range of motion improve your ability to go deeper while maintaining Stability and control. This is true for all exercises. Now the second part about locking out your knees There's nothing wrong with straightening your legs up at the top of a squat Now here's the problem if you lock your knees and relax your muscles so that the joints are supporting the weight That's the problem So it's like if I lock my elbows out on the end of a push-up And then I relax my body and allow my joint being locked out to support me Well, that's the issue But if I straighten my arms out or straighten my legs out and then stay tight with my muscles Nothing wrong with that whatsoever now the only yeah any of the joints that you're gonna lock out and not support Your muscles gonna be an issue I mean this is why like if you're standing up in a wedding and they tell you not to lock your knees You might pass out like there's all kinds of issues You're gonna run into that but if you can support yourself with muscles You know in the lockout Obviously, that's something to aspire to achieve now The only thing I don't like about that answer even though it's the right one is that somebody will hear Strength stability and control and think that because they can do it even if their form breaks down That they still are okay. In other words So I you'll see someone they'll do a squat and they can get ass to grass But they also round their shoulders their forward the forward head their chest falls way over their knees The bar path now travels right in front of the in front of the knees The heels might raise up a little bit and but they technically can do it they can get down there And so I think that you you have to elaborate a little bit on what? Strength and stability and control really means it means you should be able to perform that movement with Proper form all the way through without any breakdown because even though you may be able to get deeper in the squat If there's any breakdown in your form in during that You know time you've got to stop at that point And so I think that's where people kind of mess up is they think they see somebody go ass to grass they go I can get down there But they also heels are raising and like I said forward shoulder and head and the bar path is now traveling in front of the knees and so That's where I think this gets a little nuanced is you may think that you're you're able to go that deep But for some people they can't do that with with proper no you can have You can have a full range of motion without good control and stability, and that's when the problem here's the deal there are no dangerous exercises per se There's only dangerous Technique form lack of control lack of stability So it could be a barbell curl one of the most basic exercises that exists If you lack the control and stability for some reason in your elbow Then a barbell curl now becomes dangerous then we can pick an exercise that's extremely Technical and overhead squat right so this where you have like a second doing a snatch You have a barbell up above your head arms locked out, and you do a full squat very technical requires excellent control stability and Mobility if you have all those prerequisites if you have perfect form perfect control very safe exercise now Some exercise require more Pre-requisites than others right some of them are much more technical a squat is a pretty technical Exercise, but if you can do a full range of motion squat, and you're doing it perfect, and you've got the control Everything's tight you own essentially you own every part of the movement then it's Perfectly safe, and it's better to train with the full range of motion There's just more benefits that you derive do you think it's become a really technical Exercise because it's it's actually a fundamental movement that most of us have lost Oh, yeah, the guys at squat University did a really good post like a couple weeks ago and I remember reading it and going like I totally agree with this and That way and they were talking about just Getting back to a place where that is a normal movement instead Stop looking at it like this great strength building exercise that people should do to get big massive legs and stuff And it's just we should all have this ability to be able to sit down in that squatted position And the truth is we've just we've lost that ability and because we've lost that ability It now makes that exercise such a technical difficult movement because there's so many problems that people have with getting down in that Oh, totally. I mean okay look at another movement pattern that humans literally evolved to do There's very few things that humans do physically better than other animals One of them is run. Okay. We actually in the animal kingdom are some of the best distance travelers that you'll find anywhere You can actually outtrack Most animals for distance and this is because of the way we evolve. We got these big knees these huge glutes We read use very little energy when we run The problem is we forget how to run so we lose the skill So then we decide I'm gonna lace up my shoes and go running and people It's the number one thing that injures people is is running But if you ran since you were could walk and you did so barefoot and you always ran you never stopped It would be a very safe, you know great movement for us. We evolved to do it But you just stop so far squatting is concerned think about it this way When do you squat ever anywhere? I mean you might squat down on the toilet But even that doesn't look like a squat people tend to plop down. We don't ever squat So we just totally lose that that movement. Well, this is a bit of an aside, but I was thinking about this and I know Strong by science or science by strong Max schmarzo, I forget his handle, but he was talking about how we get back into these wreck league sports and after you know years of Not training specifically in an athletic direction And then jump into and meanwhile, let's say you are working out Let's say you are in the gym constantly and lifting weights, but you're sticking in the hypertrophy style training And now you have to Explosively move you have to add all this rotation and and they wonder why all of a sudden You know these these injuries occur and and these you know joint pain and aches and all that But it's it's really like what you maintain and and what you train your body for In terms of you know what what you're gonna be able to keep up and have a high performance with yeah