Finally. The Back Squat

I've been working for over a year, off and on, to regain the shoulder flexibility to do the back squat.  I've had great people, like Mike Robertson, help me out with ideas.

Finally, finally, tonight I was able to assume a mostly comfortable high bar position.

Scap mobility.  Internal rotator stretching, external rotator strengthening.  Pec and lat stretching.  Rhomboid and middle trap strengthening.

It came down to all of that, but the squat specific squat I devised with pvc and bands, behind the neck presses (very light) and actually squeezing under the bar on a daily basis are really what made this happen.

Now comes the rebuilding of the movement.  135# felt awkward and strange, and still a bit painful.  It's going to start to come back more quickly now with daily practice.

Comments

[Dominic Sirianni]

Damn - what was the original injury?

[Shaf]

It wasn't an injury per se, it was the increasing inflexibility in certain ranges of my shoulders (as in where the hands and shoulders go when you have the bar racked on your back in the back squat). It was able to ignore it for a long time, but I stopped regularly backsquatting because of it, and used my safety squat bar instead of addressing the issue.

Eventually I couldn't rack the bar without a lot of pain. So I backed up and worked on flexibility and mobility for a long time with little results, until I started doing it damn near every day.

[Dominic Sirianni]

Got it. Basically it hurt to pull the elbows back and get that shelf on your back. Congrats on moving forward.

[garrett]

Hi I have a couple of backsquat issues as well and have been advised to strengthen my rhomboids , I have been doing inverted rows for this , just wondering what strengthening work you have been doing for the Rhomboids

[Mike Robertson]

Very cool to hear this Steve. Best of luck with your back squats going forward!