High Bar Squat ankle mobility

Hello,

I have been following the FS and MS series for a couple of months and seen great progress! However, my main goal rather than to achieve a front split is to be able to perform an olympic style squat with the best technique possible. I understand the series should be done once a week, but will I benefit better by doing only the ankle section of it more frequently? If not, is there anything extra I could be doing to improve ankle dorsiflexion, or will the series done once a week suffice?

Many thanks

HI Daniel , it depends if the major problem it is the ankle limitation. Generally speaking, I would consider doing the Achilles stretch daily.

Daniel,

(to compliment Alessandro's achilles focused suggestion) With high bar back squats/front squats and the full variations of the olympic lifts, ankle mobility is the most common limiting factor to squatting. The FS, MS, stretch series will absolutely help you to improve your ankle and most other mobility related to improve your high bar back squat.

In particular through coaching literally thousands of hours of squatting, I have found a daily loaded kneeling Achilles stretch at 120 sec per ankle (where you shoot your knees over your toes like you would in your high bar back squat - to emphasize proper alignment to carry-over into the squat), and you put a kettlebell onto your knee, shoot your knee as far forward as you can past your toes - to be the simplest and most commonly beneficial stretch hands down. This will also surprisingly release your posterior chain before you squat.

13 minutes ago, Luke Searra said:

Daniel,

(to compliment Alessandro's achilles focused suggestion) With high bar back squats/front squats and the full variations of the olympic lifts, ankle mobility is the most common limiting factor to squatting. The FS, MS, stretch series will absolutely help you to improve your ankle and most other mobility related to improve your high bar back squat.

In particular through coaching literally thousands of hours of squatting, I have found a daily loaded kneeling Achilles stretch at 120 sec per ankle (where you shoot your knees over your toes like you would in your high bar back squat - to emphasize proper alignment to carry-over into the squat), and you put a kettlebell onto your knee, shoot your knee as far forward as you can past your toes - to be the simplest and most commonly beneficial stretch hands down. This will also surprisingly release your posterior chain before you squat.

@Luke Searra thanks for the tip. About how much weight should one consider using for the daily loaded stretch?

Use a weight that is comfortable yet heavy and slowly raise it week by week Daniel. You are in no rush here, so just like all things GB and GST, be methodical.

22 hours ago, Alessandro Mainente said:

HI Daniel , it depends if the major problem it is the ankle limitation. Generally speaking, I would consider doing the Achilles stretch daily.

Thanks Alessandro, appreciate the quick response. Yes it is definitely the limiting factor ! By achilles stretch do you mean only doing that exercise for 2 min a day or the whole FS ankle session daily?

20 hours ago, Luke Searra said:

Use a weight that is comfortable yet heavy and slowly raise it week by week Daniel. You are in no rush here, so just like all things GB and GST, be methodical.

Thank you Luke! will definitely start implementing those. No rush indeed !

Only the kneeling achilles.