Squats are one of the most effective compound exercises you can perform to build strength and muscles in your lower body. For many people, limited mobility can negatively impact mechanics and strength training performance.
If your form is incorrect or mechanically limited, you won’t be able to get the proper squat depth (we love living sub-parallel) and you won’t get the most out of your lower body exercises. There is a possibility that And you may be more likely to get injured.
One mobility exercise I highly recommend to address this and increase squat mobility is the duck walk. This exercise is designed to strengthen your lower body, open your hips, and improve your posture and joint range of motion, helping you prepare for squats with or without weights.
Here’s how to do a duck walk, its benefits, and why I add mobility drills to my routine.
What is a duck walk?
To perform a duck walk, sit low in a squat position, place your hands behind your head, and walk forward while keeping your back straight, chest up, and hips low.
When adding a duck walk to my warm-up, I drew inspiration from former Olympic weightlifter, mobility king, and Olympic weightlifting specialist Sonny Webster. He said: “The key to mobility, like strength training, is consistency and progressive load. That’s why I love exercises like the duck walk.”
Progressive loading doesn’t just mean lifting weights. In addition to increasing weight over time, you can gradually increase the intensity of your exercises in so many ways.
Webster recommends making the exercise more difficult by adjusting your positioning or adding weight. “This builds muscle strength throughout the range of motion,” he says.
How a duck walks
Webster teaches the drill in three ways.
First up is the bodyweight duck walk. Interlace your fingers behind your head and move your elbows up and forward. From here, squat down with your feet shoulder-width apart, chest out, and spine straight.
Take the first step by moving your knees over your toes and lowering your heels so that your knees don’t touch the ground. Repeat on the other side and continue walking forward, making sure your knee always passes your toes before stepping out. As with the clean, your elbows should remain raised in front of you.
The second option is to hold the weight plate behind your head and gently push your head back into the plate, keeping your gaze upward and straight. The third option is for Webster to coach the flat part of his hands under the plate and press the weights overhead with his elbows locked. Sometimes you need to move more slowly and keep both hands under the plate. This is the same as having a platter of food.
For most people, the overhead squat variation is the most difficult. If you are new to this exercise, practice gradually.
As Webster coaches each option, notice the rolling motion as he runs knee first and then steps. A great way to learn how to track your knees over your toes while targeting ankle mobility. You can feel your quadriceps working hard here as well.
What is duck walking good for?
If you don’t pay much attention to mobility and stretching when warming up, learning how to utilize both methods in your exercise routine will make a world of difference to your workouts. In the past, I’d show up to a workout and, minutes before it started, immediately bundle up or bundle up like crazy to get to class.
Over time, as I became a coach and developed my own fitness journey, I realized how important mobility work is to weightlifters and anyone who participates in exercise, especially once I started taking CrossFit more seriously. I learned what it is.
Mobility refers to the dynamic movement of a joint through its range of motion with strength and control. This means that instead of stretching your hips and hamstrings before a squat, you’ll be using exercises like the duck walk to prepare your joints and muscles.
This strength training bodyweight exercise is an absolute game changer in developing lower body mobility. In addition to warming up, why not watch your strength, stability, and control change?
