Deck squats

Looking at many of these foundation exercises it's very easy to miss the subtle intricacies of what seems a very basic move, partly because the athletes performing them are so physically well prepared (all credit to coach!) and make them look easy.  I skipped these by using a bit of momentum and completely misunderstood the importance and function of the skiers iM - thought they were mainly for the knees, but missed that they're actually an ankle preparation also.

I've now gone back, re-tested for mastery and failed abysmally due to poor flexibility in the ankles - I needed 8 small mats......shocking mobility!! Ego hurt....but resolved to nail this now if it kills me.  I can do the iMs up to PE3 funnily enough.  Lesson learnt not to skip and have gone back to the start on EVERYTHING to retest and prove mastery.

Hi Matthew, 

I'm just starting foundation 1 and saw your post and thought I'd share an observation I had a week or so ago about the deck squat. Also, I'd like to be clear that I'm a complete beginner to GST so my observation may well be wrong so hopefully I'll be corrected by the experienced people here if what I've found is not the correct approach. 

I was struggling to strand up and I found two things which really helped me:

1. One of the videos mentions that beginners might try to use their legs to give me some extra momentum. By straightening their legs when on their back just before starting to role forward to increase speed to help stand up. I was doing and struggling like crazy to get consistent with standing up and it wasn't working. The video also says this is bad form and should be stopped. What I found was that when I rolled forward and my feet touched the ground my legs weren't as closed enough, which mean that when I tried to stand up I couldn't because I wasn't upright enough.

• The change I made was to make sure that when I rolled forward I always pulled my legs to be as closed as possible to get my feet into the right position so I easily rolled onto my feet to stand up

2. The second was an extension of the issue above. What I realised was that when I opened my legs to try and give me more momentum to get back up it was actually counter productive. I was out cycling thinking it over the other day and realised that the issue is the the more open your legs are when you roll the slower you will go. The thought I had was about how figure skaters spin, to get faster the pull their arms right into their body, I found the same applies here but with you legs. 

• The change I made was to make sure that as soon as I rolled into the floor I pulled my legs closed as tight as I could which meant I could roll forward much more easily and my feet would be in the right position when they hit the floor to allow me to stand up much more easily. 

I don't know if this will help you at all, but it has certainly made a huge difference and I can now consistently do the deck squats without any problems.

Mark

@Mark Allen 

so are you pulling in your feet as a scale in hopes to create muscle memory?  Hoping they will tuck in on their own eventually without having to pull them in?

Tracey, 

I hadn't thought about it from that perspective until you asked the question, pulling the legs in was purely functional to get me into the right position to be able to stand up easily. I think the muscle memory must be happening slowly as I don't have to think about it nearly as much as when I first tried pulling my legs in. I still get the odd rep where if I'm not thinking about the movement I don't get into the right position for some reason and fail to standup. At the moment getting this one right seems to be more of a technique than strength or mobility thing. 

Mark 

As i've continued to work on the deck squats I've found another technique which has really helped me to be able to complete the movement and reduce the amount of effort required to roll forward and stand up again, its kind of an extension to what I said above, so I've continued the numbers from my previous post above.

3. Problem: Using quite a lot of effort, felt too much effort to me, to make the roll forward fast enough to have the required momentum to get into the crouching position before standing up.

• Solution: I found as I roll forward and my feet touch the ground I reach horizontally forward as far as I can with my arms. When I reach forward it pulls my body forward over my ankles on the ground, once in this position standing up is easy. Where I do the deck squats I have a wall not too far in from of me, its too far to be able to touch but if I focus on trying to touch it my body rolls over above my ankles much more easily. As I said before at this point my legs are as closed as possible.

Using this approach I can roll forward with much less speed/effort and still get back into the standing position more easily.

Mark

Very nice Mark. Sometimes all it takes is body awareness to understand where you are in space.