This is Part 2 of 4 in the Spinal Hygiene Series.
If you’re a regular at the gym, you should already have a good handle on the proper form for box squats. Even so, this is a good refresher of the mechanics of the movement to review and make sure you’re not slipping into bad habits.
Patients in our clinic are often given this exercise after an appointment to take back to their Crossfit or other gym or in response to acute low back pain as a way to get in and out of your car and to get on and off a chair.
Patients with acute low back pain
If this is you, you probably have a lot of pain bending forward. As you go throughout your day to day, simple activities like getting in and out of a chair can be very painful. Our goal with this exercise is to make sure you have a strategy that is pain free and relieves some of the pain you may be experiencing.
We’ll be using many of the same principles we talked about in the Hip Hinge post to execute a proper box squat. If you have a disc injury, we’re trying to get you out of rounding your back and help make sure you’re using your hips to get you in and out of a chair. You’ll notice a big difference in pain levels when you do this.
Box Squat: Step by Step
- Put arms out – this helps add a counter weight, which allows us to access more mobility within the hips. Engage your core to create an “abdominal brace”.
- Reach forward with the fingers, allowing the hips to come back. Once at 45 degrees, start bending your knees to get down to the chair.
- Once you get into the chair, maintain the abdominal brace and use your hands to bring your back up into the chair. If there’s more pain, bring hands to knees and walk yourself upright maintaining the abdominal brace.
Once you’re sitting, you want to sit in an upright and stacked position. We want to be sure to sit on our butt bones and not our tail bone. Sitting on your tail bone will lead to low back rounding, which is what we are trying to avoid. You will also probably want to place a bath towel to maintain the lower back curve.
When you’re ready to get up, we’re just going to reverse everything. Slide to edge of chair, and come out of your box squat, standing back upright using your hips.
If you’re using this as an exercise, just forget about getting back into the chair. Just continue to go down, using the chair or box as a reference point and come back up to continue to train your posterior chain.