Overcoming Your Weaknesses to Boost Your Back Squat At Cross Training Gym

The back squat is one of the key CrossFit training exercises which help in increasing strength, building muscle, and burning fat at the same time. The beauty with this squat is that it targets every muscle of the body and hits it in some shape, form, or way. If you want to measure your strength, the back squat is one of the exercises that can help you do this.

Athletes who squat twice their bodyweight are considered a huge success in strength training. However, it is vital to note that such lifts do not come overnight. You need to put in a lot of practice and effort. The major stumbling blocks athletes face when trying to enhance their squat are weak hamstrings, weak glutes, and limited mobility. If you think you are one of the victims of this, below are ways you can fix them at your CrossFit gym.

Weak Glutes

Whenever you are coming out from the bottom position of a squat, you may experience some sort of an inward buckle of the knees. This condition is referred to as valgus collapse, and it indicates weak glutes. If not addressed early enough, it may result in injuries and tears such as PCL and ACL. When this occurs, your recovery will take much longer.

To fix this, you should add barbell hip thrusts into your CrossFit workout routine as this target the glutes. For the best results, perform 3 to 4 sets each of 6 to 10 reps on your lower body or leg days.

Weak Hamstrings

While it is true that the back squat hits the quads really hard, heavyweights require activation of the glutes and hamstrings. When you have weak hamstrings, you will spend most of your time struggling as you try to come out of the bottom position of a squat.
Fixing this requires the inclusion of Romanian deadlifts which strengthen the hamstrings and teach your body the right order to fire your muscles so as to improve your squat technique. Do 3 to 4 sets each having 6 to 8 reps on your lower body or leg days.

Limited Mobility

A stiff and tight body in the CrossFit gym possesses a mobility challenge when going through a range of motion. If this is not sorted out, you can ass well forget about packing on weight. To fix this, engage in foam rolling to loosen the tight areas. After a thorough foam rolling session targeting areas such as the chest, shoulder, lower back, mid back, hamstrings, and glutes, do overhead squats to open up, stretch, and mobilize the major parts of the body.

Begin with one or two sets each having ten to twelve reps. You start with a PV pipe and after that progress into a barbell as you increase the weight on each set.