Elite Physique The New Science of Building a Better Body

Strong and Lean for Life
279
Frequency
Different bodies recover at different rates, and different muscles within each body
also recover at different rates. Thus, there’s no single standard of ideal workout
frequency for all lifters in their 40s or 50s or beyond. They will most certainly tell
you that the older you get, the longer it takes for your body and your muscles to
recover. They won’t care if research can’t confirm it (Deschenes et al. 2019; Fell
and Williams 2008).
Even if your schedule allows you to do long, challenging workouts five or
six days a week, as you did with great success in your 20s or 30s, that’s almost
certainly too much for you in middle age. Forget the idea that if you train chest
Hip Impingement and Squat Depth
Your hip is a ball-and-socket joint. The
ball is the head of your femur, and
the socket is the acetabulum in your
pelvis. The acetabulum is a concave,
dome-like structure that can be either
relatively flat to create a shallow hip
socket or relatively deep to create—
you guessed it—a deep hip socket
(see figure 12.1).
If you aspire to achieve the squat
depth necessary to excel at Olympic
lifting, you will need shallow hip sockets
and sufficient elasticity of the hip
joint capsule. If you weren’t born that
way, surgery is the only way to change it, and no reputable surgeon would recommend
such an invasive procedure to improve your squat.
Aging and excessive exercise can also limit your squat depth. One common hip
problem is femoroacetabular impingement, or FAI. Basically speaking, FAI is due to
excessive bone growth from aging or too much loading stress on the hip. Let’s briefly
cover each type of impingement:
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•
•
Acetabular
depth
Pubis symphysis
FIGURE E8315/Waterbury/Fig.12.01/670384/JB/R1
12.1 Hip joint.
Cam impingement: Growth on the head or neck of the femur causes a bony
protrusion that pushes into cartilage within the joint space.
Pincher impingement: Either the hip socket is too deep or there’s excessive
bone growth on the acetabulum that limits range of motion.
Combined impingement: Both of the problems previously mentioned are present;
this is the most common type of impingement.
In any of the aforementioned cases, a deep squat will cause a pinching pain in the
hip socket. Over time, that pinching causes microtears and degeneration of the hip’s
cartilage, which can lead to osteoarthritis. When this happens, a common course
of intervention is hip arthroscopy, a minimally invasive procedure that removes any
excess bone growth as well as damage to the cartilage. The best course of action,
either to prevent FAI or minimize further damage, is to have a reputable physical
therapist help you determine your optimal squat depth based on the structure of
your hips.