Hip Flexibility

I’m going to Ball State University this fall and the powerlifting club intrigued me. But I have trouble getting to parallel on squats, much less below it for a full squat.

I have trouble getting lower on my squats. I’ve taught myself to stay pretty upright during the movement (but any helpfull suggestions about staying upright would be appreciated). But my hips still don’t go down that far. It actually stops my movement. And tends to hurts until the second or third set or sometimes more.

If anyone has any flexibility tips for hips or maybe even hamstrings, it would be greatly appreciated. Also any tips on conventional deadlift flexibility would be nice too.

Thanks

Check out this free video - I wish I would have seen it years ago…

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6529481301858251744

my understanding is you don’t want to stay too upright in a power squat. You bend your bum back as well, which makes you lean forwards. This is fine.

If you’re doing Olympic squats, you take a much narrower stance this allows you to get lower if you have the flexibility

Why don’t you ask ball state alumni Mike Robertson how to help? He may have an idea or two… :slight_smile:

[quote]blake2616 wrote:
I’m going to Ball State University this fall and the powerlifting club intrigued me. But I have trouble getting to parallel on squats, much less below it for a full squat.

I have trouble getting lower on my squats. I’ve taught myself to stay pretty upright during the movement (but any helpfull suggestions about staying upright would be appreciated). But my hips still don’t go down that far. It actually stops my movement. And tends to hurts until the second or third set or sometimes more.

If anyone has any flexibility tips for hips or maybe even hamstrings, it would be greatly appreciated. Also any tips on conventional deadlift flexibility would be nice too.

Thanks[/quote]

Check out these two articles by Keith Scott on the Fitcast site:

http://thefitcast.com/?p=198

http://thefitcast.com/?p=206

You could practice doing wide stance low box squats emphasizing sitting back onto the box. I do these on a 10 inch box and I’d say they do a pretty good job of increasing hip mobility.

[quote]ah_dut wrote:
my understanding is you don’t want to stay too upright in a power squat. You bend your bum back as well, which makes you lean forwards. This is fine.

If you’re doing Olympic squats, you take a much narrower stance this allows you to get lower if you have the flexibility[/quote]

Well i used to lean forward too much. And that caused some problems. Plus I want to learn proper techniques for a conventional squat before really getting into power squats.

Thanks for your help everyone.