Overhead Squat Assessment 8 - Excessive Forward Lean

The Overhead Squat Assessment 8 - Excessive Forward Lean is a assessment of a squat performed while holding a weight overhead. It is designed to check for excessive forward lean of the body, which indicates that proper trunk and hip control may be lacking. During the assessment, the athlete will be instructed to hold a weight overhead, bend at the hips and knees, and perform a full squat to the point of pain-free range of motion. The assessor will look for any abnormal forward lean

Transcript

00:00:0600:00:09
This is Brent coming at you with yet
00:00:0600:00:09
another overhead squat assessment video.
00:00:0900:00:13
In this video we're going to go over the excessive forward lean, a very very
00:00:1300:00:16
common sign which I'm sure you've all seen before. I'm gonna have my friend
00:00:1600:00:20
Leanne step out. Leanne is going to help us demonstrate an excessive forward
00:00:2000:00:24
lean. The first things you're going to notice is that Leanne actually steps so
00:00:2400:00:27
we can see sideways, right. This is one of those signs we see from a lateral view.
00:00:2700:00:31
I'm still going to set her up the same way, second toe pointing forward, two feet
00:00:3100:00:35
underneath her hips, and her arms are up over her head, and then when she
00:00:3500:00:39
does that I'm going to go ahead and have her squat. Now an excessive forward lean
00:00:3900:00:46
is based on the tibia torso angle. Her tibia and torso should line up parallel
00:00:4600:00:51
to one another. Now to help you guys visualize, I'm going
00:00:5100:00:58
to go ahead and line these dowels up. So there's her tibia anglem there's her
00:00:5800:01:03
torso angle, and as you guys can see, those two lines meet. So by definition
00:01:0300:01:11
they're not parallel, and Leanne has a excessive forward lean. So very very
00:01:1100:01:14
common impairment. I think you guys are going to see often. Thank you Leanne for
00:01:1400:01:19
demonstrating. Sometimes you guys will see something far worse than that, where
00:01:1900:01:22
people almost look like they're pancaking over, and sometimes it won't be
00:01:2200:01:26
that bad, and maybe you are going to have to break out a couple dowels or broom
00:01:2600:01:29
sticks, or whatever you guys got at your club, to kind of help you see whether
00:01:2900:01:33
that excessive forward lean is coming out. Now this isn't a terribly hard
00:01:3300:01:37
dysfunction to start correcting, it's not a terribly hard dysfunction to analyze,
00:01:3700:01:41
as soon as you know what's driving it. Now I know most of you guys are probably
00:01:4100:01:46
thinking excessive forward lean, well that's excessive hip flexion, but we
00:01:4600:01:51
actually have to take one more step back from that. What's actually driving that
00:01:5100:01:58
hip flexion is the inability of my knees to track forward. Now the inability of my
00:01:5800:02:04
knees to track forward is a lack of dorsiflexion. So the same joint action
00:02:0400:02:10
that causes my feet to come up, alright is the joint action that allows my
00:02:1000:02:17
tibias to come this way, so dorsiflexion foot on tibia, dorsiflexion tibia on foot.
00:02:1700:02:21
Since I can't track my knees forward, here's what happens. I can't track my
00:02:2100:02:26
knees forward, which means as I squat my backside gets further and further behind
00:02:2600:02:32
me, which is where my center of mass is located right. My core, once it goes past
00:02:3200:02:37
my base of support, I end up having to throw all of my upper body mass forward
00:02:3700:02:41
to maintain balance over my feet, so that's what's actually driving this
00:02:4100:02:46
dysfunction, is that lack of dorsiflexion, which then causes the excessive hip
00:02:4600:02:52
flexion. Now a lack of dorsiflexion is the same thing as excessive plantar
00:02:5200:02:59
flexion for our analysis purposes. So now we're right back to the same five steps
00:02:5900:03:04
that we've been going through on every video, Excessive forward lean equals
00:03:0400:03:08
excessive hip flexion, and excessive plantar flexion. You guys know your hip
00:03:0800:03:14
flexors, TFL, psoas and iliacus, rectus femoris, adductors. You're going to
00:03:1400:03:17
release these muscles. Save the psoas, we don't want to try self-administered
00:03:1700:03:21
release techniques on the psoas, but we'll release all of our other hip
00:03:2100:03:25
flexors. Then we'll start doing our hip flexor stretches, plantar flexors. You
00:03:2500:03:28
guys know your plantar flexors, your plantar flexors are your calves. Make
00:03:2800:03:31
sure you stretch calves in these individuals, all right you want to
00:03:3100:03:33
release and stretch. You see an excessive forward lean
00:03:3300:03:37
first thing you want to put them on is softball on those calves, as well as
00:03:3700:03:42
maybe a slant board. As far as what's under active, this gets a little tricky
00:03:4200:03:47
we're going back to some of this synergistic dominance. You guys probably
00:03:4700:03:54
have heard this phrase before this idea, before in excessive forward lean,
00:03:5400:04:01
you have hip extensors as long and under active, they're on this side of the graph,
00:04:0100:04:06
but once you get past the glutes and the semis you end up with two muscles that
00:04:0600:04:12
take on this weird relationship. They become long, but they get overactive. What
00:04:1200:04:20
that means is you can release these muscles for their over activity, but you
00:04:2000:04:22
don't want to stretch them just because they're overactive. You don't want to
00:04:2200:04:25
just go ahead and stretch and lengthen them because they're overactive. You also
00:04:2500:04:29
don't want to activate them. If you guys get somebody in an excessive forward
00:04:2900:04:31
lean big muscle to think about is actually
00:04:3100:04:36
the glute max. So you guys can kind of forget the other muscles that will
00:04:3600:04:39
extend the hip. If you're trying to correct this
00:04:3900:04:43
dysfunction and keep going after the glute macx with your isolated activation
00:04:4300:04:48
techniques, dorsiflexion of course is a huge important thing to gain back. You
00:04:4800:04:52
guys are going to want to continue to go after the tibialis anterior, and if you
00:04:5200:04:56
don't know some good tibialis anterior activation by now, I would definitely
00:04:5600:04:59
recommend you guys looking up those videos putting them in your repertoire,
00:04:5900:05:03
because you can definitely correct a lot of these lower leg dysfunction problems,
00:05:0300:05:07
by learning how to get this guy going. I hope you guys learned a lot from this
00:05:0700:05:10
video. I hope you guys understand excessive forward lean and get great