After pulling my glute last Thursday, I went to the physio to get some treatment. I really enjoy the guy I see at the moment because he is one of the in-crowd in terms of lifting weights. I've had a physio tell me not to squat below parallel, and say that squatting anything above bodyweight is dicing with death.
The current physio, though, is cut from a different cloth altogether. I showed him my 112.5kgx3 squat video and he noticed a few things:
1. Around the sticking point of the lift (where you are at your mechanically weakest and the slowest part of the lift) I was moving in a way that told him I was not properly activating my glutes and was taking the pressure off them with lower back and quad involvement.
2. I have a lateral turn out with my feet (my feet are turned out to around 30 degrees instead of 10-15 as they should be). This told him that I have mobility issues throughout my lower body and back and so for me it feels natural to turn my feet out to compensate for my tightness.
Essentially he says I'm tight most in my glutes and hamstrings (hence the triggering and spasms), lateral quads (the outside of my quads including my ITB), and hip flexors (including the V area of my stomach known as the psoas). He also noted my upper and lower back are both locked up from tightness in the stabilisers either side of the spine.
So, from there he proceeded to put me through an incredible amount of cleansing pain, getting a huge amount of tightness out of my quads and hip flexors, as well as my hamstrings and lower back. My next appointment is Saturday, so I think that at that appointment he will release the trigger points in my glutes (hopefully with dry needling) and back, as well as maybe my hamstrings again.
I bought a foam roller and some epsom salts, and I used both in the days afterwards. I loosened up my lower back a bit as well as my inner thighs and hip flexors, and even got some relief from my front delts and chest in the hope of loosening up my upper back reciprocally.
It seems that from having chronic glute and hamstring tightness I have subconsciously learned to avoid activating them fully, both in everyday tasks as well as in the gym. This is bad news, because it means that even though I'm adding a lot of weight to the bar in my exercises, it isn't making me as functionally strong and athletic as I want to be.
The next question from here is: what are the logical changes I need to make?
1. I'm changing from highbar Olympic squatting (deep, with an upright torso and not much 'sitting back'. Quad dominant, with less lower back and posterior chain involvement) to normal highbar squatting (below parallel but not ATG, torso not as upright, more 'sitting back' into the hole. Quad dominant but a lot more involvement from my hamstrings, glutes and lower back). It's a widely held belief that normal highbar squatting recruits more muscles than Olympic highbar, with greater posterior chain involvement meaning better glute and hamstring activation. The greater level of muscle recruitment also logically means the ability to move heavier weights, something I'm looking forward to putting to the test.
The idea from my perspective is to do the same thing that I did when changing to Olympic highbar squatting: resetting to 40kg to learn the technique and to get rid of my out-turned feet, then going to 60kg, then 80kg, then adding 5kg a workout until it gets tough then proceed to add 2.5kg instead.
2. More mobility work. Having poor mobility is bad for me in general: tight muscles reduce my range of motion, makes me hurt and injured, and creates muscular imbalances from exercising with tight fascia and muscle. So the plan from now on is to listen to my body and when something feels tight, stretch it out and roll on the foam roller or the spiky ball. After rolling my chest on the spiky ball for around 10 minutes the other night, it hurt for days afterwards, which tells me it was REALLY tight. I feel closed in and like I'm bordering on discomfort all the time, even sitting down typing this right now. Taking a second and feeling what is tight, I can say that right now I can actively feel the tightness in my glutes, hip flexors, upper back and traps. Not a good sign. Realistically I should be doing a 15 minute session every second day on the foam roller and spiky ball, not just so I'm not in pain but so I'm flexible and supple. I aim to do this after Ash and I put Heidi to bed so as to avoid being distracted by that little smiling face.
I'm typing this up so I can logically explain it as well as holding myself to my own convictions whilst lucid. I need to follow through on the mobility work otherwise I will end up back in this horrible position of being in pain when getting out of chairs, bending over to wash my face, and in general day-to-day life. Let's make it happen
