Stretches and Mobility Drills to Prepare for the Snatch and Overhead Squat: Video Demonstrations

How many of your athletes can overhead squat correctly without substitution?  My guess is not too many, especially some of the more hypertrophied ones.  While most of us in physical therapy look at movement quality of the overhead squat without weight (think FMS), there are many athletes that overhead squat for improvements in performance.  So if we see these patients or athletes with improper movement patterns in the overhead squat, what can we do to try and correct these poor movement patterns?  
Well, this could be an all day topic but one of those ways is to begin implementing some corrective exercises for specific joints and muscle groups that are lacking mobility.  Each individual will present a little different and we always must take that into account when considering corrective exercises.  In this post, Dan Pope provides video demonstration to some mobility exercises for the hip flexors, hip external rotators, t-spine, ankles, and shoulder joint to help begin correcting deficits commonly seen in the overhead squat.  While we cannot agree with all of his points, it is clear he has some valuable exercises for us to add to our toolboxes for future clients.  We encourage you to try out some of these exercises and decide for yourself some of the value they can bring to your clients.  

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