Squat. Hinge. Press. Everyday.
When we’re looking at movement for humans, there are some basic movement patterns that we want to train in order to keep our bodies functioning at a high level. As you can tell from the title of this blog, those patterns are the squat, the hinge, and the press.
And yes, we believe you should do some form of that everyday, even if you aren’t doing a full fledged workout.
When you come to Yellow Rose, you’re going to see these patterns each day. Sometimes our workouts are going to be heavily focused on one or two of these patterns, but you will always hit all three of these in some fashion everyday.
But WHY?
Why is the squat, the hinge, and the press so important?
The Squat: I like to call this movement pattern the Fountain of Youth. If you can squat safely, effectively, and under the pressures of outside load, then you have passed a motor function and coordination test that many fail. Not only will the squat help you strengthen your lower body and midline stability, it will also help improve your hip and ankle mobility through the entire movement pattern. Yes, performing perfect squats can help alleviate your aches and pains just from the right movement patterns! Back squats, air squats, goblet squats… all the squats are going to be beneficial, and we should never shy away from them.
The Hinge: The hinge is a movement pattern that you do hundreds of times a day, whether you realize it or not. When you sit down, when you bend to pick something up, when you’re getting dressed … You’re hinging from the hips all the time, and it’s important that we train this pattern not only for strength and durability, but for injury prevention. We don’t want you to get injured doing something simple like picking up the groceries or picking up your kid. Training the hinge will help increase midline stability, spinal erector strength, and overall posterior chain strength (all the muscles on your backside!).
The Press: The shoulder joint is one of the most mobile joints in the body thanks to its ball and socket design, and because of that, we need to train our shoulders often. There are 8 muscles in the shoulder joint, and it’s vital that we keep them both strong and mobile. A variety of presses (and pulls) are important to keep optimal shoulder health, but presses help maintain the most shoulder activation and mobility throughout the range of motion. Push ups, bench press, overhead strict and push press to a fully locked out position… these will all help you maintain shoulder stability and health.
There are a ton of specifics we could dive into with each one of these, but we want to keep this a bit broad. These are the big patterns that will give you the most bang for your buck when it comes to health. They are staples in our programming at Yellow Rose, and they should be staples in your daily movement as well!
Even on the days you can’t get into Yellow Rose for a workout, here’s a simple and effective way to get a movement check in with those patterns.
2-3 rounds:
15 paused air squats
15 toe touches
10 push ups to down dog
10 High Plank to T (5R/5L)
Train the squat, hinge, and press, and it will help you reach your optimal levels of health!
-Coach Clark
