Foundational Friday: Air Squat, Part 2

Reminder: CrossFit South Bay will only be hosting a 10am class for Memorial Day, May 25th. If you’re in town, start the morning off right with a Memorial Day WOD!

Our end goal as CrossFitters should be to have sustained fitness and well-being over a long period of time. Our mission is to continue be able to move functionally well into our “golden years.” The movements we perform in CrossFit will allow us to live independently along with a much improved quality of life as we age. However, those movements have to be done correctly with proper ROM in order to produce the desired results. Last week, we covered the squat’s starting position and points of performance. Now it’s time to take a look at some of the common faults and ways to correct them.

Loss of Lumbar Curve aka the dreaded Rounded Back aka the Cat-Crap Pose

• Lift your arms in front of you as you descend and rotate your pelvis forward. Imagine your pelvis is a bowl of water and you’re trying to pour a tiny bit onto your toes.

Shifting Weight Onto Toes

• Curl your big toes up towards the ceiling as you perform the squat. Wiggling them slightly can also help properly shift the weight back onto the heels.

Knees Rolling In

• Pretend that you are trying to spread the ground apart with your feet. This is an especially helpful cue to remember when you start adding more weight to your barbell squats.

Shallow Squat

• Use a medicine ball or smaller plyo box to gauge the proper depth for your body proportions. Remember – you must get below parallel at the bottom of the squat so whatever target helps you get there, use it.

The following video called Squat Therapy [wmv] provides some wonderful tips to help improve your squat as well. It has been said that it takes roughly five years to master the air squat so all of us could use a bit of polishing regardless of skill level or experience.

WOD – 5.22.09

Buy In:

• Back Squat 3×5
• Shoulder Press 3×5

7 Minutes Left, Down by 6

For time:

Thrusters at 135 lbs for 1 minute (scale weight as needed but go heavier than your Fran weight)
Rest 1 minute
Pull Ups for 1 minute
Rest 1 minute
Row for Calories 1 minute
Rest 1 minute
Burpees for 1 minute

*Keep Score by Total Number of Reps Per Round

WOD courtesy of CrossFitFootball.com

Please post loads/times to comments.