F 06 Open Squat EN

Standing with the feet about a meter apart, and this is depending on a person’s height and the length of the legs.

Be anywhere between say a meter to a little bit more or a little bit less depending on your height.

So you want to first stand with the outside edges of the feet more or less parallel to each other just to stabilize here.

And you want to just check in to the pelvis here.

You don’t want any impingement into the lower back, and you don’t want any impingement into the hips themselves. depending on different people’s level of mobility or flexibility into the hips or maybe conditions such as osteoarthritis and so on, you may have to adjust the position of the legs even a little bit closer than a meter.

So the most important thing is you should feel comfortable standing upright and straight with the legs apart and you shouldn’t feel a crook into the lower back nor should you feel compression to the hips.

Once you’ve established that, you want to bend the knees a a little bit here and start to point the feet directly away from each other.

So we’re sort of swiveling into the heels, pointing the feet directly away from each other and allow for the upper body to come a little bit forward as you do this.

It allows us to compensate for a little bit again with this weight so that you don’t fall over in the process.

And as we’re starting to move the feet away from each other, it’s also important to grip the feet away from each other.

This also stabilizes.

And you can also mildly grip the toes into the ground too.

This offers some stability as well.

The arms have been up to this point in time, more or less neutral, but we’re going to start to draw the shoulders down and we’re going to lightly place the palms of the hands on top of the knees just at the very base of the thigh close to the knee.

Or sorry, not the base of the thigh, but the part of the thigh which is closest to the knee.

So the hands stay light.

The weight is not pressing onto the tops of the thighs, it’s just lightly touching the top of the thighs.

The shoulders, however, though, are drying down. again you’re checking the back line here that it’s straight.

So from the base of the spine to the crown of the head and the neck it’s all neutral one straight line.

If you feel you can go a little bit further continue to activate the legs away from each other squat down a bit deeper and as you do that you compensate by allowing for the upper torso to come further forward.

What we don’t want to see here is really that much of a lift into the chest.

We want to keep the chest neutral and the back of the head neutral with the spine and the deeper we go into the squat the more upright we’ll feel but for the time being don’t compensate by lifting the chest here.

Just try to keep yourself completely neutral with the spine, activate the legs away from each other as you do so.

Light touch to the legs.

As you start to release here draw the shoulders down as you come up and then turn the toes in towards each other to stabilize and ideally you’re coming back up to a straight upright position with no impingement into the hips, no impingement into lower back, the chest will not be flaring out, it’s completely neutral.