I struggle with squats.
In the gym, I watch people put heavy barbells on their backs, or holding kettlebells or dumbbells and squat low: their thighs below parallel, their butts all the way to the floor. And then they press themselves to standing like it’s no big deal.
In yoga classes, I watch as those around me squat low using just their bodyweight.
Most of the time, I cannot do this.
On a good day, I can sometimes work myself to a point where I can squat to parallel. Even then, its hesitant and timid, cautious and vigilant.
For a long time, I never realized this was an issue. I squatted as “low” as I could (not very low, objectively) and thought I was doing ok. Sometimes, I wondered why I wasn’t building leg strength, or why my butt was never sore, but mostly I didn’t think about it.
Then, several years ago, while staying in California on sabbatical, I met a physical therapist who observed that I didn’t have a full squat.
Apparently, this was a problem.
Why Are Squats So Important?
A quick diversion, in case you’re wondering why this is a problem:
The squat is one of the most basic functional movements of the human body. Every time you sit down and stand up — from a chair, from the toilet, getting in and out of a car — you do a squat.
If you don’t do them well, it impacts the way you live your life.
Squats also strengthen your legs, which provide stability and grounding. If you want to live well in your body as you age, strength and mobility in your legs is important.
Squatting low helps improve movement quality, joint health, overall strength, and bone density.
It’s important.
Restricted Squat Depth is a Habit
Do a search on “why I struggle to squat” or any variation of that, and you’ll find lots of explanations focused on biomechanics:
Tight hips, tight ankles, core strength, weak hip flexors, weak glutes, weak feet.
After putting me through some movement screens, the PT determined that some of those biomechanical issues might apply to me.
But that wasn’t — and isn’t — the whole story.
Even after five years of diligently working on my mobility and biomechanics, I still struggle with squats. Some days I can get close to parallel, but other days I can’t.
There’s more to the story here.
The Biopsychosocial Model
The Biopsychosocial (BPS) model, first conceptualized by George Engel in 1977, is a framework that suggests that a complete understanding of a health or medical condition requires a holistic approach.
Looking at movement through the lens of the BPS model helps us see that movement is not just a function of biomechanics. It’s also a function of psychological and sociological conditioning.
In this framework, we consider 3 components:
- Bio: biology or biomechanics
- Psychological: thoughts, emotions, and related behaviors
- Social: sociological, social conditioning, environmental, and cultural factors
What Restricts Movement?
Cutting away the jargon boils it down to this: habitual conditioning.
The nervous system functions to keep the body safe. When it perceives lack of safety, it stops the movement.
What might contribute to this?
Biomechanical Factors: joint restrictions or “tight” muscles.
Psychological Factors: Sometimes it’s physical sensation, interpreted as pain, combined with social conditioning that “pain means you should stop.”
Sociological Factors: Sometimes it’s the echoes of caution heard on the playground as a child, to “be careful or you’ll hurt yourself” or the vestiges of old trauma caught in the body.
In the BPS model, there’s no clear progression of which one “causes” the others. The factors influence each other. Thoughts, emotions, and fears can shut down the body, leading to joint restrictions. Those restrictions can, in turn, reinforce or create new beliefs about movement.
When the body moves with ease, it’s a result of many contributing factors. The same is true when the body gets stuck. It’s never just one cause.
Adaptation to Use: The Habit of Shutting Down
Add to this the principle of “use it or lose it:” once the body has worked within a given range of motion for enough time, it adapts to that range.
If you don’t push the joints and muscles to their end range, you lose the ability to actively move in that range.
After years — or decades — of stopping the movement before the point of pain, the body learns to automatically stop itself, even if the mobility is there.
This is the definition of habit: an unconscious, automatic response.
How to Break the Habit of Stopping and Gain Squat Depth
Understanding that lack of squat depth is a habit caused by a matrix of factors helps guide the approach to gaining squat depth.
Physical mobility and strength drills alone will never be enough without also addressing the psychological and sociological elements.
To build a deeper and stronger squat requires a multi-pronged approach that includes:
- building phsyical strength and improving mobility
- learning techniques and strategies for movement patterns that allow me to remove my subjective feelings from the process
- normalizing sensation and distinguishing “sensation” from “pain”
- learning that “sensation” doesn’t necessarily mean to stop
- continuing to move even when I feel sensation to experience that I can do so without catastrophic injury
This is not quick process. It requires support from outsiders who can provide compassionate and objective perspective when my body wants to default to its habitual shutting down.
Sometimes it requires physical, kinesthetic feedback to guide my body to a place where it doesn’t yet know it can go.
Spotting or physical adjustments in a way that provides safety to the nervous system help reeducate the neuromuscular connections that have been offline from years of disuse.
Beyond the Squat: Getting Unstuck in Life
The gym and the yoga mat are the laboratories for what happens in life.
This process is not unique to squats or other physical movement patterns. In life, too, there are places where I unconsciously stop myself from moving forward or going deeper.
Places where I start to charge forward, only to pull back.
I am willing to bet that you have places like that too.
In those places, it’s often not a lack of of skill or knowledge that keeps us stuck. Rather, it’s a combination of bio-psycho-social factors:
Conditioning, beliefs, and fears around taking risks, sharing your ideas, standing up for your beliefs, and going after what you want.
Whatever factors originally contributed to the cause, stopping yourself has now become a habit.
Just like with squat depth, this habit of stopping yourself is a habit that you can learn to break, with a compassionate and holistic approach and the right support in place.
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