During a few sets of squats yesterday I asked my dad to tell me how deep I was going (in relation to parallel). He moved his hands apart as if describing ‘the one that got away‘, and I knew there was going to be some work to do. In short, I was nowhere near it.
I turned to the Ian King article 5 Ways to go Deeper; an excellent piece on the basic ways to improve squat depth. The first of these – simply holding onto a stable vertical bar (or anything that won’t move), squat down as far as possible. In my case I can achieve depth easily when doing this – which points to a poor technique rather than inflexibility. Let the retraining commence.


Of course, if you find that inflexibility is indeed a factor, the above article will also help you out. Also worth reading is King’s The Lazy Man’s Guide to Stretching, which outlines some of the stretches to be done before squatting.
As for my own retraining, I began by following King’s slow bodyweight squatting recommendations; and will supplement this with some of the stretching (notably the shins) and a few light sets with the bar tomorrow. It’s going to be a long journey, but I’ve no doubt that the benefits will be enormous.