Keep a chair close by to assist with transfers into and out of the postures
The Dynamic Squat is the first posture out of a total of 36 postures to be found in the Stretchnfold routine that you can download FOR FREE at our website www.stretchnfold.com
And there’s a reason for this! The Dynamic Squat involves movement from a standing to a sitting position without fully completing the motion. So as one moves from one position (standing) to the next (sitting) they must engage ALL of their anti-gravity muscles to slow the descent of the hips onto the chair. When you have weakness in any of the controlling muscles for this movement, namely, the large muscles of the legs (the gluts, the quads, the hamstrings, as well as all of the stabilizing muscles of the ankles and the lumbar spine), this motion becomes difficult to control. In those cases, it seems as if the person is “falling” into the chair. That situation is dangerous and can become difficult to rise out of, depending on the landing platform. A chair with a soft seat and no arms is a difficult chair to get up from.
By performing the dynamic squat as an exercise, a person can train those large muscles in the legs and the stabilizing muscle groups above and below the lower extremities, to control the motion throughout the movement from up to down.
A simple discussion regarding the physics of this movement will teach one the need to “hinge” at the hips (lean forward) as one moves from standing to sitting. This resultant motion will the backward forces that occur as your hips and gluts move down and back toward the seat of the chair. The counterbalance of leaning forward MUST be done correctly in order to minimize adverse stress on the lower spine as the movement progresses. This can be accomplished by remembering to do a lumbar stabilizing component. Simply “suck in your gut” before you initiate the downward movement into the chair. By doing this, a natural hinge will occur BELOW the lumbar spinal segments, at your hips, minimizing the reversal of the natural lumbar lordosis (inward curve).
Now consider the number of times, EVERY DAY, that you get into and out of a chair. When performed incorrectly, this activity becomes an accumulated pattern of lumbar strain that, over time, can lead to the arthritic changes that slow us down during the aging process. When the activity is performed correctly, as described visually in our Dynamic squat video, the movement becomes a positive exercise for the entire body.
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