 Let's talk about squatting with a cable machine. Now you might notice I'm in my parents' great room right here and there's no cable machine, so we're gonna have to use our imaginations. What is this exercise? So basically the cable has a pulley system and it resists you. You might use them for cable rows or something. What they'll do is I'll hold onto the handles and it'll pull me forward. And so if I don't wanna fall down, which I don't wanna fall down, I'm gonna shift my weight back away from the cable. This just helps me maintain my balance. Now from there, I can do a squat pattern and then get a little bit more mobility out of the cable. I'm gonna have to move my mic because I'm gonna split it doing the squat. So generally when I'm doing a cable squat, I want to train my mobility, right? It's not the greatest way to train any sort of force development or any muscle exhaustion, I don't think. You could do like a continuous movement kind of thing and just make sure you're pushing really hard or pushing yourself really hard while you're doing it and you could get some sort of hypertrophy stimulus from it but generally when I'm using a cable squat, I'm using it to cue some mobility. So oftentimes I might have someone hold something in between their knees like a yoga block or a foam roller or something and just say, I want you to squeeze that just gently. First thing I want you to do is exhale, tuck your hips a little bit, okay? Do you feel your lower abdominals turn on? I want you to feel that. If you don't try to exhale a little bit more in that position and then tuck a little bit harder, see if you can feel them then. Generally people get them by then but if you don't just stick with it, just try to make sure your heels are down in the ground while you're doing it. So I'm holding on the cable handle, it's pulling me forward. I got this block in between my knees and I'm gently squeezing it. Hopefully I feel my adductors, hopefully I feel my hamstrings. Those are all things that you can be looking for. If you don't, it's okay to move on because this is a low risk, high reward kind of exercise here. So I got my hip tuck, I got my abs and I'm just gonna squat down as low as I can. If I feel myself do this, then I'm gonna stop there, okay? So that is not the depth that I want. That's just a spinal collapse that I'm getting there. So again, tuck abs and I squat back down. Other thing that I might notice, instead of my chest caving down, I might notice my hips start to roll back like this and I put a lot of stress on this low back right here and even sometimes you'll stick your chest up like this and it'll totally reverse your spinal position. So if I see that or if I feel that while I'm doing it, I don't want that. So I'll stop a little sooner. It's okay if I'm not squatting all the way down while I'm doing this because it does take a lot of mobility, especially while you're holding this block and especially if you find yourself squatting with your knees really wide, this variation is really good for you, right? But you won't be able to squat as deep because we're purposefully limiting your motion so that you can open up the backside of your hip. This is a good active form of like a hip capsule stretch. You might see some people doing a pigeon stretch or whatever on the ground to try to lengthen the tissues back there but this is a good way to teach you how to hang on to it while you're still opposing gravity. You'll find this sort of adaptation is harder to attain but lasts for longer because it's active. It's active learning. So last recap, we got tuck with an exhale, got our abs, blocking the knees, holding the cable and we sit down, we go pretty slow here. You can either hold here and take breaths or you can do like a slow continuous movement to try to mobilize yourself into the right position.