Let's look at the anatomical differences between athletes that should be taken into account when forming the squat technique, namely, how I see and do it specifically. It is important to understand that these features are genetically determined in each person and you can only adapt to them – you can't change them!
STRUCTURE OF THE FEMORAL NECK.
In many ways, my knowledge about this very important element is based from the book KAPANDJI - LOWER LIMB.
Dr. Adalbert Kapandji - honorary chief physician of the surgical clinic of the faculty of Medicine in Paris, member of the American and Italian societies of hand surgery. Today, he is considered the founder of human biomechanics, the main provisions of which are collected in his three-volume work "physiology of joints". From there, I first learned that there are different structures of the hip joints and why they should be taken into account when selecting an effective movement model for each athlete separately.
The most important thing to consider in this case is the length of the femoral neck and the direction of its placement in the acetabulum.
With a long hip neck, everything is quite simple: the longer it is, the wider the athlete can and should spread his legs in a squat. The length of the neck, of course, depends on the length and places of attachment of muscles and tendons to the bones. Accordingly, if nature gave a person a long neck of the hip, then she wanted him to squat with a wide set of legs and only so. Otherwise, a narrow leg position with a long hip neck can create an ineffective movement pattern, in which it will be more difficult for the athlete to develop maximum effort, and will also lead to a long-term accumulation of injuries and degenerative changes in the joint.
Visually, the length of the hip neck can be determined by the width of the person's pelvis. The wider it is, the longer the neck. But this is such a criterion. For a more precise definition, you can use a very simple test: the athlete puts an empty neck on his shoulders and slowly sits on the plinth of such a height that when it touches the pelvis, it will allow you to perform a "dosed". When lowering down, a third-party observer from the side needs to track at what point the athlete has a" nod " of the pelvis (rounding of the lower back). Next, we try to move the legs wider or narrower, and in the same way we track the nod. The later and closer to the touch of the pelvis with the plinth it will occur, the better this width of the leg position suits the athlete.
Next, we need to determine how wide the athlete can or cannot spread his knees in a squat. This is mainly affected by the direction of the femoral neck in the acetabulum. Specifically, we are interested in retroversion and anteversion of the femoral neck.
In the first case, the neck is directed slightly forward in the frontal plane and when the knees are separated, it moves freely in the joint without impacting the femoral trochanter with the pelvis.
In the second case, the neck is not displaced much back, and so freely in the joint it can not move. Such athletes are contraindicated breeding socks and knees in a squat.
Determine which of the" versions " of the hip neck of an athlete can be as follows: put the person on his back on a flat surface, bend one leg at the knee and press his hip to the stomach. If you move the knee to the side-outwards, the hip turns out to bend further – this is a retroversion. If the hip bends the same way in both cases, it is an anteversion.
It's a bit clumsy, but you can still use it, and I use it in determining the optimal squat technique for each athlete. In the second part, which will be a little later, we will consider the anthropometric differences and the relationship between the length of the body and legs.
Should you squat with your toes 100% straight forward or turned to the side? In this video, Dr. Aaron Horschig will show you how to screen your body and determine your best squat position based on the anatomy of your hip!
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