Feet Position and Angle in the Squat

[Joshua Naterman]

First off, I don't know how you got the idea that I'm saying go to failure each day. You go as long as you can, until you reach 1 minute. That happens pretty quick, and while it will always burn a little it is relatively easy after a month or two, and that's the whole point. You have to get your body used to using the right muscles for walking.

As for ACTUAL squatting for the purpose of athletic training, the rule on foot angle is that the gap between your big toe and the one next to it should be in line with your heel, which in turn should be in line with your knee, which should also be in line with your hip joint. If someone took a picture of you in your squat while standing in front of one of your feet, you should be able to draw a perfectly straight line with a ruler through your big toe gap, your heel, the center of your knee cap, and where the ball of the femur connects to the pelvis. If you can't draw that line, your stance is wrong. You can use a mirror to figure that out yourself pretty quickly. You will find that the angle changes some as you widen or shorten your foot width.

The wall squat that I recommend for helping your body re-learn proper motor patterns is not a squat for the purpose of athletic training, and it is not free-balancing, so it does not follow those rules. Also, for best results you will need to actively practice walking properly for a few minutes at least once a day.

[Nick Van Bockxmeer]

would you say there are any benefits in performing wall sits

1) below parallel

2) with the hips wide appart

3) on one leg

assuming the other performance parametres are met

[terpol]

I've been reading a lot trying to find out more about this (t-nation has lots of good articles about posture etc) and i think for me that i don't have external rotation at the hip and that its basically just my foot that is rotated out. If i stand normally and look down my left foot is straight and the right about 20degrees out. When i bend my knees they both go straight forward. If I try to straighten my right foot and bend at the knees the right femur rotates inward and theres a little pain at the knee, same during the wall squats. When I walk my knees look straight too, just the foot that is out.

I think my foot is stuck like this but aside from being a little harder to balance on my right leg it doesn't cause me any problems and both legs are equally strong in things like SLS. When i was younger i played tons of soccer on sloped concrete surface and probably sprained my ankle at some point so that most likely caused it.

[Joshua Naterman]

Terpol: That's not good for your long-term knee and back health, I'd look into the book I talked about, Pain Free by Pete Egoscue. Take your time and start rehabbing while you continue your workouts.

Nick- not really. Extended statics like that go a long way towards training the nervous system, and it's not good to train it to support the body with the wrong muscles. Now, doing those free-standing is a totally different story, and can be very good.

I suppose the wide wall sits, as long as you kept your joints liked up like I had outlined, could be used to build hip stability in wide squats, but that's still better accomplished freestanding. Every tool has its use, there's no need to fall victim to the screwdriver syndrome!

[Cole Dano]

Chiming in late here, but the wall squats really do work, i can confirm it for myself and a number of my students with various hip and sacral/lumbar issues that have found rapid improvement. Its all about the reprograming and being very scrupulous in how well you are doing them.

[Joshua Naterman]

I'm glad everyone is feeling better! It is very important to spread this knowledge as far and wide as possible, obviously only when appropriate. We can all help each other if we reach out.

[terpol]

slizzardman,

during the wall squats when i'm perfectly aligned i feel that my right quad and lower glute are sort of twisting, is this right?. I can see how the wall squats work but i don't want to create a problem by doing these and messing up something that wasn't broken in the first place.

thank you

[Joshua Naterman]

Your quad and glute feel that way because they have learned to pull your leg out to the side. Because that is their 'learned' normal position, it's going to feel like a twisting stretch, but that's where they are supposed to be. That feeling will lessen with time. Just do once per day for a while, maybe a week or two, for 30s-1 minute. Do that until you feel that twisting sensation noticably reduce, and then start doing it twice a day. It may take several weeks for that to happen, I don't know. In the meantime, take a minute or two each day and practice walking with as perfect of a stride as you can. Little by little your body wlll correct itself.

Many people run into debilitating conditions later in life because they feel ok now, so they don't change anything. That'd be like running your car without changing the oil at 3000 miles. You can go way past that, you know. That engine oil will last for at least 10,000 miles before you start noticing any changes in how your car drives, but if you let it go like that the engine will break down. By not changing the oil, the metal fragments build up and it becomes like sandpaper, rubbing away at the piston walls and seals with every stroke of every piston. It takes a while, but eventually the engine is totally ruined and has to be replaced.

The exact same thing is happening to your body right now. You're not feeling anything, so you keep going. Your joints are slowly being eaten away by the un-natural forces going through them, and years down the line you'll have no choice but to get knee replacements or some sort of fusion. In my opinion, that's not worth it, but you have to make your own decisions about what is important. It is possible that as you start correcting your body there will be some temporary discomfort, and you have to decide whether you want possible temporary setbacks now or permanent setbacks later. There is no right answer, there is only the answer that is right for you. For me, I take temporary setbacks now. I can't handle the thought of intentionally allowing myself to break down in my 40's or 50's.

[terpol]

thanks again slizzardman, i really appreciate it. I just wanted to be sure that this exercise is right for my problem and that i'm not doing something i shouldn't.

[Joshua Naterman]

For you especially, I highly recommend you spend the 14 dollars and buy "Pain Free" by Pete Egoscue. It's in major bookstores and online, and has entire protocols for correcting dysfunctions.