 Hey, guys, this is Dr. Ruscio. I'm here with my good friend, Sal, DeStefano from... You said it right. ...my puppy. I've been saying this name wrong for a while now. I'm finally getting it right. And I wanted to talk about squat, squat form, and consult someone who knows a lot about this. I was at the gym the other day, watching a trainer, coach or client, seeing a squat form that I think was well-intentioned, but is probably in need of update, which is stick your butt way out. You guys may have heard this. It's, you know, come way out here like this, and this poor girl is squatting and trying to come out of the squat like this, and her low back is not going to be liking that. So there's been some updates made to what the appropriate squat form should be, or I should probably say that's never changed, but what we thought was right and what we now think is right have shifted. So I wanted to ask a few questions. We'll start with like a summary, then we'll go into some demos. But what are the basics of good squat form? So squatting is a very functional, foundational human movement. So this is something, and I want to say this, make this point. It's something that we actually are supposed to be able to do very naturally. So getting good at squats is extremely important for overall health. Now that being said, because we never squat, we usually sit, that's about as close as we get to squatting in normal life, we've lost this function. So it's something you have to relearn. So you can't just jump into a squat. I tell people like this all the time when they try to run, you can't just go run. You have to kind of learn how to run because you never run. And what happens is you develop all these recruitment issues and those are the ones that you start to default to when you try and do a squat. So proper form, there's an individual variance here, but you definitely want your feet to be pointing slightly out. Feet can be shoulder width or slightly wider. And when you squat, the knees actually break first. You showed that demo of the girl bending way over. The knees start to break first. That's when you start to sit back. But you want to be really grounded. You want to have tall posture. Your knees don't want to come in. They don't want to come out and you don't want your heels to come off the floor. And that's kind of the basics around what a squat should look like. And then we'll develop that more with some demos in a moment. But that's one. Two, does the ideal squat form differ if it's weighted to body weight? So both of them look extremely similar. The big difference is when you have a weight on your back, bar placement, scapular retraction, that's where you place your shoulder blades, your upper body posture, your grip, that all plays a massive role. Now when you're doing a body weight squat, none of that plays a role. So it's far more advanced. Okay, and we'll come to the details there in a moment. And then are there any common injuries that make you recommend one squat form compared to another? For example, perhaps if someone has a low back injury, they would do better with the front weighted squat rather than the back weighted squat. So front weighted squats typically involve a lot more or they're a lot more difficult, believe it or not, on people and they can actually be worse. It really depends on the individual when we're talking about injuries. I would say this very rarely is an injury going to stop you from always squatting or for squatting forever. So if you have something that's preventing you from squatting, address that issue so that you can squat because the goal is to be able to squat. Sure, okay. All right, so now we're going to come back and fill those questions in with more detail and with the demo. All right, the first thing you want to consider when you're going to do a squat, like a body weight squat just to begin with, how am I going to set up my posture? How am I going to set it up? So I have optimal mechanics in this exercise. So Sal had mentioned kind of standing in a shoulder width position, also like a hip width position, so maybe a little bit wider. I'm going to start actually focusing on my feet, maybe with a little bit of external rotation. And there's going to be three different points I want to consider with my feet of where to apply pressure. So somewhere around your big toe to your pinky toe, up here towards the tongue of your shoe. I want to go ahead and now ground my feet. And I'm going to keep and maintain a nice soft knee, which is like a slight flex in the knee. And now I'm going to go ahead and squeeze my glutes and get and lock it out, draw in. So I got core activation. I'm going to bring my chest up so I'm tall. I'm going to retract my shoulders and depress them down at my side. And I want to make sure that I'm keeping my head in the proper position. So I'm not way out here with a forward head position. So once I have myself in good posture, I'm going to go ahead and kind of drop it down into position where my knees start to break a little bit more. And I'm dropping down with my hips. You can raise your arms up as you come down. You can keep them at your side. But one of the first things that I do is I want to make sure that I keep just enough tension. So I'm bracing and supporting my body. Even though I don't have any load yet, I want to really train my body to respond properly to respond and protect my joints. So I'm going to go ahead and keep a nice tight core that's bracing my spine. Make sure I can still breathe. And I'm going to squat my way down. And you're going to find right away, you're going to have sort of a point where it doesn't feel like it's comfortable anymore. Now I'm going a bit low just to kind of show you an example of how low a depth you can get into your squat. However, I know this is going to take some time and work to get into a position that feels comfortable as this feels for me. So what we want to do is we want to kind of scale that. And I have a chair here actually to use if say that I have a point in that squat where I get about here. And that's about as far as I can go before I start breaking in my posture. So I want to maintain this chest position, this at my abs, making sure they're bracing the whole time my shoulders retracted. Because what I'm doing is training myself then later on to apply load. Very important to master this first before we add weight to it. So the chair is a good way. Most of the time people at the bottom of their lift, that's where most of the issues lie as far as strength. So a lot of times we'll start in the bottom position and we'll work our way up from there if that's the issue. So I'll just start just like you're sitting in a chair. But now I want to be intentional about how I'm making my way up. So I'm saying things apply. I'm going to apply pressure here in that triangle. I'm going to try as hard as I can to get vertical out of my chair and not use momentum to come forward. So that means I have to activate and get my muscles to tense up. So now I'm recruiting, driving my feet down into the ground and then I'm going to brace and push my way up. So it seems very, very simple, but you can be very intentional about the process and that's what matters. So there's one technique. Justin, one thing I want to ask you, can you speak to and maybe help people who are confused with if they've heard, you really have to stick your butt way back? Because I see more and more people doing that at the gym where it seems like they're imbalancing in that direction of overly sticking their butt out and they're losing the aspect of kind of getting their body underneath the bar, if they had a bar, let's say, and they're overly sticking out. So if someone has been taught that way, can you explain to them how you would amend that? Well, now we're in a compromised position with our lower back when we start to hinge our hips even further back. So as you can see, as I'm dropping forward with my upper body where a lot of the force and the stress is going to kind of catch up here in my lower back. So this could be due to poor ankle mobility. This could be due to poor hip mobility, people teaching it with the wrong mechanics. But yeah, the ideal way to do it is to make sure you incorporate dropping down so the hips really can stretch and get to the position that you want so you can recruit your glutes and your quads. And so this is a simultaneous thing. You want to be able to apply the biggest muscles that are in your legs into the lift. So this really limits a lot of force production that you can apply, which you'll see people also do good mornings, which is a hip hinging movement. So what you're talking about primarily is a different exercise. Right. So they're not doing it right. I wouldn't even call that a squat. Right. That answers your question. Yeah. And so would you just demo that in appropriate form compared to the more appropriate form, just so people, if they're going to watch it and look at themselves in the mirror, they'll know what to do and what not to do. Sure. So for instance, what he's talking about, I'm going to go ahead and try to break at the hips here to hinge. But now I'm not dropping vertically of my hips. I'm kind of pushing them back. And a lot of times they're loaded back here and I'm trying to come down and push my butt out as far as I can and then come back up. So that's what we don't want to do. We're in a compromised position that way and that's not what we're teaching. So instead, we want to break at the hips, but we also want to start with the knees in a flexed position, hips drop, and they break, but I'm in line. And it's okay if my knees travel forward a bit, which is another thing that a lot of people are afraid of. That's the key. A lot of people are taught, don't let your knee ever come in front of your toe line. And I think that's a mistake because it forces your butt backwards, thus putting a torusion on your low back. Again, range of motion is definitely an individual thing. So you're going to figure out where your range of motion ends and your threshold is. And we want to really try to connect to that. So you want to find where that end range is. So if my threshold is here with my knees, I mean, that's where I'm going to start, but I really want to connect to that process so I can advance and I could get a little bit more mobility. And there's a lot of other exercises that will help with that process. But just to be sort of on the safe side, you're going to find the threshold, just really try and connect to that. And so if that means just staying there and then squeezing and connecting to your muscles, you're going to get more response at least and be supported. And when you say the threshold, they'll hit a point where they feel like if they go any more, they really start slumping over or bending forward or losing their balance. Compensation is going to happen in some form. And so yeah, your body is going to want to do anything it can to help you out. Sure. And then the other thing, are there any modifications you make to the squad that are helpful if people have a knee injury, a low back injury? Are there any common and helpful recommendations there? So we're just going to start with really connecting. Like so if there's any kind of issue that's going to place you in bad mechanics, I'm going to start with addressing that very specifically. So if you're not bracing properly, like the whole setup that we talked about in the very beginning, if you have a hard time with any of that as far as I don't know what drawing in feels like, I don't know how to breathe while my abs are tight. I don't know how to retract my shoulders. I don't know how to press them down and maintain that. There's a lot of work in that specific area we need to stay. Okay. And do you guys, do you have a, I'm sorry, I don't know this, but do you have a video series on squat? I'm assuming you do, right? We do, yes. That's on our Mind Pump TV channel. Okay. So we'll put a link in the notes. Anything else that you want to add? Definitely something like if there is an injury there, like let's not avoid it and let's not do exercises in replacement of the squad. The squad is such a foundational move. The goal should be to get back to the squad. So however we have to do that, just be diligent about the process. And if you need more information, we definitely are a resource for you. And there's other information out there on how to improve every single portion of that as far as like being in good posture and improving your squat.