Ido Portal's Squat Clinic Explained. How to best prepare your body before a workout?

Much has been said on this blog about Ido Portal, the Israeli movement coach who founded Movement Culture: a group of students, practitioners, and explorers of human movement in all its aspects.

Ido Portal is the figure at the head of this movement which advocates the development of a return to the body and its physicality, no longer through training and exercises which separate the different systems and elements of the body, but rather through a true living, organic physical practice, which considers the body and all the elements which compose it as a single and indivisible unit .

To provide clarity and concrete tools to implement in your daily routine, we have already analyzed 2 of Ido Portal's recommendations for the general population: reestablish deep squatting for at least 30 minutes a day and hanging for at least 7 minutes a day.

Today we dive into one of the training routines created by Ido Portal and that I personally had the opportunity to learn and implement several years ago when I was training with his students , very useful for preparing the lower body before training sessions.

We'll explore the importance of pre-workout preparation for performance and injury prevention. How to properly prepare your body for physical activity? How to choose a relevant and appropriate warm-up? Take a look at this Squat Clinic offered by Ido Portal.

Very good reading my move.

The Importance of Pre-Workout Preparation

Often mentioned in advice on how to avoid injury and perform better during a sports session, “warming up” , as it is often called, is nevertheless the moment of physical practice on which we are the least attentive, regular, and disciplined.

We forget it, we avoid it, we tell ourselves that it's not that important, we do it quickly... We do it enough times until we accumulate tension, stiffness, (micro) injuries , pain...

Physical training consists of 3 distinct phases which are all of capital importance:

1. The front : To start the machine
2. The counterpart : The physical practice itself
3. Afterwards : The cool down, the return to rest

Every part of your workout, including warming up before and after, should be an essential part of helping you safely achieve your goals.

Your warm-up should never be a time when you think about anything other than your body, your physical sensations, when you (re)connect with your breathing, and gather your thoughts in the present moment.

It's just as important as the workout itself.

This pre-workout phase ideally consists of joint mobilization and muscle warm-up.

Joint mobility , in the form of a short routine of 5 to 15 minutes for example, allows you to unlock the body before practicing. It's like defrosting your car's windshield in winter. It's a time to reconnect the central nervous system to the body.

Then you do your muscle warm-up, in the form of a few dynamic exercises for several minutes, to gradually increase your body temperature . Once defrosted, you sit behind the wheel and turn on the heater before starting.

This is why I personally prefer the term pre-workout repair work to the word warm-up because it encapsulates these two elements well.

The 3 keys to good pre-workout preparation

As you understand, we need to activate and connect two elements together to be sure to be ready for training: the driver (nervous system), and the vehicle (the body).

Again, Google is your worst enemy. A workout plan shouldn't be too long, too complex, or include 10 different exercises chosen at random.

Good preparation is simple, effective and contextual .

A good preparation routine consists of exercises that specifically prepare your body for the work ahead.

To ensure you meet this definition and avoid wasting too much time preparing, here are my recommendations. These are simple principles to implement and will work in most scenarios.

Spend time on the areas that cause us problems

With a little introspection, we can quickly figure out which areas of our body cause us the most problems.

It could be stiffness in the neck, restricted movement in the right hip, or significant limitations in the shoulders for overhead movements… It doesn't matter.

It is essential to dedicate time to self-assessment to provide your body with useful stimuli to gain range of motion, activate the right muscles, and recruit the right motor patterns.

Address the specific needs of the upcoming training session

I say it often, but it is important to put context into your physical practice.

No, there's no one-size-fits-all prep routine that works for every situation. Whether you're doing a session with a lot of pulling movements, a session focused on plyometrics, or a session where you have to lift heavy… you're going to have to adapt your prep routine.

If you want to train effectively, greatly reduce the risk of injury, and continually improve your performance, simply add a few extra minutes to your training preparation to think about the muscles you need to recruit, the movements you are going to perform, the intentions, the intensity, etc.

It will never be wasted time. Quite the opposite!

It's an investment in your health and longevity.

Adapt your routine to how you feel at the time

Another concept that has been overused today but is the most important element in your physical practice: listen to your body!

What makes the difference between the super athlete who trains every day, all year round, who is fit, full of vitality and full of energy constantly, and the average person who trains for a few months and then gives up,

This is the awareness brought to training.

Again, nothing hippie whoo-whoo. If you think working out is just showing up at the gym and repeating the exercises on your schedule, while thinking about your emails, watching YouTube videos during your rest periods, answering your WhatsApp messages...

Don't be surprised by your lack of progress over time.

We don't wake up every morning with the same motivation, the same state of mind, the same body without any pain. Sometimes we're stiff in one area and not in another, the next day we have aches and pains here and not there, the day after that we feel bloated, then it's lack of sleep...

If every day is a little different, why shouldn't you adapt (even minimally) your preparation before training?

It's common sense.

Now that you have the 3 keys to preparing yourself properly, let's take a look at the exercises in Ido Portal's Clinical Squat Prep Routine and see how they can be useful before your lower body workouts.

Exercise No. 1: Dynamic Soleus Stretches

The soleus is the runner's muscle, located on the back of the leg, between the back of the knee and the ankle.

With this first exercise, we try to stretch this muscle by moving from a deep squat position to a position in which our legs are almost straight.

A stretch of the entire posterior chain occurs when performing this movement.

The idea is to be able to do between 10 and 30 repetitions depending on how you feel and the practice that will follow (see the 3 keys to good training preparation).

Exercise No. 2: Hip Rotations on All Fours

From a tabletop position, or crab position (on all fours, back facing the ground), we will try to rotate the hip in its capsule. One hip at a time while keeping the other hip facing the sky.

This is an example of a very useful exercise to reveal certain deficiencies, asymmetries or restrictions in terms of range of motion at the hip level.

In particular, one of the risks of injury often arises from a lack of internal rotation. This exercise is a great starting point for adding awareness to this area of ​​the body and this essential micro-movement.

This is the case, for example, for those who play sports like football or basketball , where sudden, sometimes violent changes of direction (zigzags) put a lot of stress on the knee. With specific training and care given to internal rotations of the hips, we can avoid putting too much stress on this joint and protect it.

Exercise #3: Hip Rotations from the Deep Squat

Be careful, here we absolutely need the Deep Squat position. If you don't have the mobility level in your hips, ankles, knees, and chest sufficient to put your body in this position without pain, I recommend that you simply place your hands on the floor and thus reduce the stress on your hips.

If you can, remember to keep the static foot completely flat on the floor.

If you are still not able to sit in this fundamental resting position of the human being, do not hesitate to watch and apply the training protocol that I propose to you in my training RESTORE THE DEEP SQUAT.

You will get all the keys in hand to assess your body, define the problem precisely and have a protocol to follow to regain the range of motion and strength necessary in the lower body to enter and exit the Deep Squat position.

These internal rotations are once again present in the routine and indicate that even coaches as renowned as Ido Portal, who has worked with world-class athletes such as MMA world champion Conor McGregor, emphasize the importance of being able to rotate your hips with force and control to support the demands of physical practices in general.

A point that I also constantly insist on being one of the least addressed points in the world of modern fitness .

Exercise No. 4: Static Toe Stretches

Simple and very effective: I recommend everyone to play daily with the Seiza position . This sitting position in which the knees are fully bent and the weight of the body is on the ankles or on the toes depending on whether or not the toes are bent.

One of the positions that will also strengthen the knees.

In a world where there is less and less need to compress the body and fully bend the legs, knees have become a pain point for most people.

This is why I very often recommend implementing this seated position in Seiza in my mobility routines.

You can also find this position in my free mobility routine to download with its list of 21 mobility exercises that it contains.

Exercise No. 5: Dynamic Toe Stretches

Here too, another simple way to strengthen the toes and be able to reconnect with the power of your feet.

Yet another marker of the inability of modern humans , accustomed to the comfort of shoes and sneakers, to be able to correctly use one of the body's natural functions.

We are the most complex animal, capable of walking, running, climbing, jumping... all barefoot on almost any terrain. Just look at the few indigenous tribes and the incredible feats these people are capable of navigating jungles and dense forests.

Before you can do the same, don't hesitate to start very simply by adding more time spent barefoot in your day, for example.

You can do it like in Eastern societies by taking off your shoes at home. Trying to use the floor as much as possible as a surface on which you can sit, rest, work, read... It's simple and very effective if you give yourself a little time.

You might even get a taste for it :)

Exercise No. 6: Deep Static Squat

The last two exercises in this routine require the Deep Squat.

If you haven't yet mastered the Deep Squat completely but you're not that far off, you can try, for example, Ido Portal's 30/30 Squat Challenge to train yourself to hold this position for longer and longer periods.

We've covered the details of this 30-day challenge and the benefits it has for your joint health, as well as the gains in endurance and strength.

Exercise No. 7: Dynamic Deep Squat

Beyond the Deep Squat that we've already covered in previous exercises, the important thing here is to dedicate time in your preparation to moving well when performing squatting movements.

The Squat is one of the 7 fundamental movements of the human being and yet it is still not clear to most people. Just spend a few minutes observing the average person performing squats with a barbell on their shoulders, knees forward, back arched...

To put it simply, performing a squat is:

1. Perform an external torque at the knees
2. Fold at the hip hinge first
3. Do not compromise the neutral position of your spine

Simple, right? What?! Is this all gibberish?

So, you need to watch the video of this routine at the top of the page again to see how I do it all in detail.

To go further in your practice

In conclusion, I think it is important to change your relationship with your body and your physicality.

No, the body is not independent of your mind.

No, moving your body well is not such an obvious thing.

No, you cannot delegate responsibility for your health to anyone other than yourself.

What I hope with this little article is to give you some additional tools to add awareness to every part of your physical training.

Having a body that can move, a healthy, capable body that you can rely on is a gift and I hope we can all keep it for as long as possible.

Our experience of earthly life is above all a physical experience, so let us not die without having explored what our body is really capable of doing.

For more tools like this, and if you'd like me to break down other workout prep routines, please let me know in the comments below this article.

Move well my move!

Nomad Slim
Founder of MOUVERS