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Hi, I'm David Weck. Today I'm going to teach you an incredible, new form of [functional] strength training centered around compression, using the BOSU Elite. Now, the BOSU Elite is not about instability, it's about resistance. The dome is exceptionally firm and this gives us a very powerful form of elastic recoil that we use to prime your body for heavier lifts and to make you move more powerfully on the ground. We can compress through the feet and we can compress through the hands. Today we'll be doing it through the feet with what we call our Basic Compression Squat.
To get started, you step up on the dome and you turn your feet out to what we call the "forty-five". That means turned out to whatever is most comfortable for you. You'll notice a design on the BOSU Elite that is the Power Zone and Power Line. You want to move back as far as you can, toward that line. If you're feet are too big or if it doesn't feel right, you just inch your way forward from the line, but to move your feet back as far as you can is the goal. We're going to be compressing to the center. We're going to be using all of the force that we can muster to crush the dome. We like to cue "pop the dome", which you'll never do. This turned out position gives us this activation that fully engages the adductors, glutes, and basically three dimensionally through the lower body. We're going to come down compressing. At the top, you'll really feel the adductors engage. As we lower the movement, very very slowly, because the emphasis is on the compression, it's going to change the ratio and the directional forces that are coursing up your body and give you that ability to engage everything to find a better position when you're lifting weights and a better engagement of everything and more powerful transmission through the ground. You only want to come as low as you can keep on crushing it and compressing it. If you come down to the bottom and you lose that compression simply don't come down as low. You're going to come up and down very slowly. You also want to match the angle of your spine with your shins as you compress downward. It's that inward pressure that is the key.
Similar to the way you can't plot the map on a globe accurately on flat ground, very special training stimulus that comes from this dome shape and the vertical displacement and the directional forces that when you get down on the ground you feel light, you feel the balance through the balls of the feet, you feel the haunches fully engaged, more athletic, and you can find a better position in your squat and better engagement to lift heavier weights, whether you're going conventional squats or WeckMethod squats (see that video for more).
So, this compression is key, the stronger you are, the less time under tension you need. Thirty to forty-five seconds of maximum effort is all you're going to need to feel this very powerful, priming effect. That means that three repetitions performed very slowly will give you all you're going to need if you're super strong. If you're not as strong and conditioned yet you can spend a little bit more time under tension because your central nervous system won't be able to compress as much as someone who is stronger. This is going to give you back whatever you can give into it. So if you can squat 200 pounds, that compression, you cannot top this out. So it truly is suitable for any strength level and it makes you stronger because of this extraordinary effect coursing through your body that comes from the compression.
It's an incredible, new training stimulus that provides this extraordinary training response that is unlike anything else. It's why it was created, the BOSU Elite, it's why that dome is so firm. So bringing it down, adductors are learning to be extensors and flexors. They function as powerful extensors and flexors, not just adductors, and this exercise is key to getting the most out of these huge muscles on the inside of the thigh that are completely misunderstood by most. You'll also feel tremendous glute and haunch engagement which is the key to power, and like I said, adductors are now contributing to hip flexion which powers that balance of the pelvis between the flexion and the extension that is key to running and athletic movement and it's key to lifting heavier weights.
So you're going to do that exercise to prime and prepare for lifts and to prime and prepare for ground-based movement. So if you've got a set of traveling lunges coming up or some form of movement on the ground, you simply prime on here to give yourself better performance on the ground and you will notice an immediate improvement. Immediate improvement in position for lifting weights and an immediate improvement of force transfer and the way that those forces course through the body. Better balance through the balls of the feet, tying into the haunches [Balance Training].
Those are our basic compression squats. We have other variations where we're using load to strategically change some of the stimulus but if you get started with that I promise you your performance will never be the same. You will fundamentally be better having done compression squats using the BOSU Elite. Stay tuned for more with this extraordinary training tool using our compression methodology.
