Exercise of the Week - McGill's Assessment for Squat Stance Width

This one comes from Dr. McGill's book, "Ultimate Back Fitness and Performance" which is excellent and I would recommend it to any clinician or coach.

"The depth of the anterior labrum of the hip joint acetabulum is a major determinant of the ability to squat deeply. In order to find the optimal hip width (or amount of standing hip external rotation), have the athlete adopt a 4-point kneeling stance. From neutral, rock or drop the buttocks back to the heels. Mark the angle at which spine flexion first occurs. Then repeat with varying amounts of space between the knees. Look for the optimal knee width that allows the buttocks to get closest to the ankles without any spine motion. This is the hip angle that will produce the deepest, and ultimately the highest performance squat. It is much wider than most people think."

If you have an athlete struggling with his/her depth or just have a patient trying to get up off the john, try this! Especially if all else is looking good. I know I've overlooked it a few times as other 'issues' seemed more pressing until they finally reached a plateau with their ability to get below parallel. Gave them the correct stance for their hip structure and down they went.

I've been using this quite a bit lately with my younger athletes, 13-16, that are growing like crazy especially upwards. They don't know what feels right. Most of the time they've got one foot forward of the other, one foot is straight ahead while the other is pointing out, etc. Now I know they don't pay lots of attention to detail but I have to think some of it is just a lack of body awareness that comes with growing spurts. Giving them a good reason to be consistent, i.e. better squat numbers, now has them paying more attention.