Inside squats

Coach or other GB representative, I recently picked up foundation 1 and have gotten to the "inside squat" mobility portion of the sls progression. Coming from a strength and conditioning background, this is normally a position that we would never put an athlete in. In fact, it's a position we train our athletes to avoid at all costs. After talking with some senior strength and conditioning professionals, as well as some athletic trainers and a collegiate gymnastics coach, they have all told me that it is a compromised position and is not something they would ever prescribe because there are safer ways to strengthen or work mobility.

After that long explanation, what is the reasoning behind this movement?

Sorry for the long intro for a simple question,

Sam Santich CSCS

Obviously you don't want to be doing max lifts in this position, but this is a legitimate range of motion and I've had numerous students be  able take it all the way to the floor (as well as myself)

The knee / ankle joints have a far more interesting set of moments than simply linearly forward.

Historically, Coach Sommer implemented this as part of his knee prehab series with the simple fact in mind that in real life gymnasts don't aways land perfectly, so the intent is to prepare the knees for the inevitable missed landing.

sam santich said:

Coach or other GB representative, I recently picked up foundation 1 and have gotten to the "inside squat" mobility portion of the sls progression. Coming from a strength and conditioning background, this is normally a position that we would never put an athlete in. In fact, it's a position we train our athletes to avoid at all costs. After talking with some senior strength and conditioning professionals, as well as some athletic trainers and a collegiate gymnastics coach, they have all told me that it is a compromised position and is not something they would ever prescribe because there are safer ways to strengthen or work mobility.

After that long explanation, what is the reasoning behind this movement?

Sorry for the long intro for a simple question,

Sam Santich CSCS

It is becoming more common among some of today's fitness and healthcare professionals to train avoidance of certain positions and movements. This ultimately trains fear; not ability.

Ryan

Physical Therapist

Someone should tell the Shaolin monks to stop breaking spears with their necks, then.

Most of these people have never done exercises like the inside squat to truly know how it feels. They are also unwilling to put the time in to reap the benefits.

The knee joint moves through a very big range and with the proper training inside squats are no problem. Most adults lack internal hip rotation which stops the femur from moving at the knee joint whicjph then hurts them. They then conclude this is an unsafe exercise. Most children under 10 can do inside squats with no training and would not think it is an exercise.

To get our internal hip roattion we have to do swivel hips and the bent hurdler stretch.

This program has been going a while now with alot of stiff adults performing the exercises. If the inside squats were a problem we would see lots of posts on inside squats causing knee injuries.

I work as a physiotherapist and can understand why they are concerned, but they have no experience with this program so listen to the people who have done the work with inside squats and reaped the benefits.

Cole Dano said:

Obviously you don't want to be doing max lifts in this position, but this is a legitimate range of motion and I've had numerous students be  able take it all the way to the floor (as well as myself)

 

The knee / ankle joints have a far more interesting set of moments than simply linearly forward.

 

Historically, Coach Sommer implemented this as part of his knee prehab series with the simple fact in mind that in real life gymnasts don't aways land perfectly, so the intent is to prepare the knees for the inevitable missed landing.

When I started inside squats the maximum I could lower my hips to was probably 1ft from the ground. I thought the mastery requirement of getting the inside of the ankle to touch the ground was too much and when I "mastered" them, the inside of ankles wasn't anywhere close to grazing the floor.

I'm now close to getting the inside of my ankles to graze the floor and the max descent of hips is now at about 1/2 ft from the floor. And, so I've decided to aim for getting my hips to hit rock-bottom, so to speak. Isn't this move similar to what limbo dancers do? 

I asked my 8-year old son and 5-year old daughter to try an inside squat the other night.  They are just normal, active young kids with no experience with this kind of squat regimen.  My son took his knees and ankles all the way to the ground (his glutes were just above the ground) and popped back up with a "what's the big deal, Dad?" look on his face.  My daughter lacked the strength to come back up out of the bottom position, but she too had ZERO problem with the range of motion.

I spent about 6 months on deck squats, 10 months on cossack/twisting squats, and I'm 5 months into side-to-side/inside squats.  Being old & brittle sucks.

sam santich said:

... After talking with some senior strength and conditioning professionals, as well as some athletic trainers and a collegiate gymnastics coach, they have all told me that it is a compromised position and is not something they would ever prescribe because there are safer ways to strengthen or work mobility ... 

None of them have more seniority or real world experience working with world class athletes then myself.  

Simply an example of a limited skill set and lack of pertinent experience.  How are the meniscus, ACL and MCL supposed to be strengthened to handle going out of alignment if all training is always done in perfect alignment?  

The only thing training with only perfect alignment has achieved is creating a tremendous imbalance between the strength of the stabilizers and the primary movers.  In effect the athlete actually becomes strong enough to generate enough power to damage themselves.

I always find it interesting how those who have never followed the progressions or a specific exercise already know all about them without needing to thoroughly explore them.  Foolish.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

The inside squats were actually one of the main exercises I used to rehab my injured knee. I have also noticed that when If I don't do these for longer periods of time that uncomfort starts to return to my right knee.