Deck Squat: SLS/PE1

I am having a really hard time with my deck squat roll.  I know that my achilles and calves are super inflexible.  The only way that I can perform the deck squat is to help myself up with my hands on the floor when I am about to pop up.   Should I do it like this and keep working on my flexibility or should I just do flexibility drills until I can do it correctly?

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Look at the technical video. Do the deck squat from a higher surface, like a mat folded several times. Go as high as you need to be able to get up. Work up to 5x15 and then do it again with reduced thickness. I went the same route, success is pretty much guaranteed as long as you are patient and consistent.

Also, if you don't have it already, consider buying the front split course and do it every week.

Zach, I'm a few weeks in to these myself and immediately had to use a stack of mats to make progress.  However, even after only c3 weeks, I've been able to drop from 6 mats to 4, and just today I started to get a better feel for the technique involved.  If it helps, while ankle dorsiflexion is clearly going to be a limiting factor initially, today I made significant improvements by focusing on my core.

The best way I can describe it is to say that, rather than trying to roll forward on to my feet, with my weight sufficiently far forward that I can then stand up - which is difficult for me to do unless I were to cheat and use excess momentum - today I was really contracting my core in the same way as during FL/PE1, during the roll forward section of the move.  In effect, I was using my abs to 'pull' the weight of my torso onto and over my feet.  I don't think I could have done this a few weeks ago, as I wasn't able to 'feel' the sensation of engaging my abs in this way.  I think that FL/PE1, MN/PE1 and to an extent SL/PE1 have improved my proprioception in this area and there has been a crossover benefit to the deck squats.

On June 10, 2016 at 6:00 PM, Zach Nielsen said:

I am having a really hard time with my deck squat roll.  I know that my achilles and calves are super inflexible.  The only way that I can perform the deck squat is to help myself up with my hands on the floor when I am about to pop up.   Should I do it like this and keep working on my flexibility or should I just do flexibility drills until I can do it correctly?

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

I am yet to see a person on this forum express similar frustration about the skiers, as they do about the deck squats, yet anybody who cannot do skiers with thighs at a 90° angle is probably not going to be able to do a deck squat properly (i.e., without forced momentum.)

So my point is do not neglect diagnosing why skiers are a sticking point (in case they happen to be a sticking point for you). The common culprit as you put it is tight ankles. The tighter the ankles, the more "vertical" the skiers will be, and the less likely the deck squats will be completed without having to use momentum. But keep at it and your hard work will pay off. It really will.

I had incredibly tight ankles (and still do, as they're a work in progress) when I started deck squats and I now wish I had taken a video of my first attempt at the skiers, as it looked like I wasn't bending at the hips at all! Ok, maybe that's a slight exaggeration. But that was before the Stretch series had been released, and it took forever for me to figure out that my ankles were indeed the problem! Later, when I spent more than a year doing Hawaiian squats, I'd started to do FSs.

Long story short, I'm now doing SE2 & SE3 and played around yesterday with negative SLS, which is pretty remarkable given how tight my ankles were at the beginning.

John, interesting observation re the skiers. Now that I think about it, as I go through the PE/iM sets, I notice the skiers becoming deeper and more fluid. This effect also feeds the latter sets of deck squats. I have been using a static, knees together squat holding onto something as a "warmup" for this element. I think it might be a good experiment to add an easy set or two of skiers to this warmup.

The concept of the progressions and using previous elements and mobility as warmups seems like it will be really effective. For newbies like me still at PE1 and developing flexibility/mobility, using the current iMs in a brief warmup is something I will try. I believe I have read elsewhere on the forum that even sometimes using mobility from future PEs/SEs can be beneficial. I think I'll leave that advanced concept on the drawing board until I get really stuck at something.