Proper Squat Form

In this squat form evaluation, Sophia utilizes EuMotus BodyWatch human movement analysis technology to dive deep into squat biomechanics – range of motion, movement stability, movement symmetry and muscle imbalance analysis. EuMotus physical therapy software generates and enables powerful human movement analysis in less than two minutes. Proper squat form is no longer guesswork.

1. Intro

2. Exercise Setup

3. Results Overview

4. Graph & Video Analysis

5. Muscle Imbalance Analysis

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EuMotus BodyWatch Squat Demo and Evaluation Video Transcript

Hi! Today we are going to look at how EuMotus BodyWatch lets us evaluate and analyze a squat. To start, we select the squat exercise from the drop-down menu and choose three repetitions. The markerless system automatically picks up the client in the screen.

When we press start, we see there is a seven (7) second relaxation period, followed by four (4) seconds of the standing still phase, where the calibrations occur. Then, we start doing the exercises and have about five (5) seconds to complete each rep.

[0:32] Immediately after the exercises finish, the results pop up on the screen and bring us to the results overview page. If we had done other exercises, we could see a combination of all of the results here. The overall score is made up of the range of motion, stability and symmetry scores. We measure stability by looking at the excess movement performed during the exercise compared to the desired position.

The overview also shows, in this page, a few suggested muscle imbalances based off of the patterns. We will come back to that later.

[1:06] To further evaluate the squat, let’s head to the exercise result page, where you can choose the specific exercise from the drop down menu. And we’ll see that those same range of motion, stability and symmetry scores are presented but a further breakdown of the stability and symmetry faults are listed as well.

The stability faults are made of a maximum value, which is the highest degree of instability recorded during that exercise, as well as the percentage of fault, which is the amount of time spent above threshold position. Here you can see that I have a pelvic rotation of 10 degrees forward to the right, but it’s only for two (2)% of the time. While if we look at the shoulder forward roll, you’ll see that that instability occurs 94% of the time. The pelvic rotation might be an instance of instability at the bottom of the squat, where the shoulder roll could be a postural issue. And we’ll investigate this further when we graph each metric.

[2:11] At the bottom are the symmetry faults listed. Let’s check out the shoulder hike, which is 11 degrees greater on the left side than the right side. To evaluate even further, we are able to graph all of the metrics that EuMotus BodyWatch measures. Let’s start by graphing knee flexion. We can see that the three squats are represented by three peaks. The top of the peak represents the greatest amount of knee flexion, and therefore the lowest part of the squat. The second squat is the deepest, measuring at 139 degrees of [knee] flexion. We can add on top of this femur rotation and see how that interacts. A positive value in femur rotation represents external rotation. So you can see I’ve got collapsing into knee valgus throughout my squat. Though on my third squat you can see I do have a bit of movement in my left femur as it rotates back inwards towards neutral. It doesn’t fully internally rotate but there is some movement during that part of the squat.

[3:12] Now let’s look at that pelvic rotation that we saw in the exercise results page. You can see there is pelvic rotation in all three squats, but the maximum value comes at nine (9) degrees in the third squat. The positive value indicates that the direction is to the right. You can see that it occurs, just as I start to stand back up out of the deepest part of the squat. When we add torso rotation on top of the graph you see that it’s not a whole body rotation. It really seems to be specifically the pelvis moving. There’s so many metrics, we can sit here all day, but let’s move on to the final page.

[3:48] The final page is where we show all the different muscle imbalances projected from movement patterns seen during the exercises. These are broken down into each section of the body. The scale is measured from 100 to -100. Looking at the left shoulder, we can see that I have some overactive trapezius, as well as pectoral muscles. While my subscapularis muscles are a bit underactive. When we click the box next to muscle, it shows us a breakdown from where those metrics were captured from. Here you can see that I have some shoulder hike during my standard squat, which is how we were able to project that those subscapularis muscles may be underactive.

[4:35] Well, thank you so much for tuning in today, and as you can see there’s a lot more to investigate, so check back in as we continue to further break down what EuMotus is able to analyze during squats and other exercises. Thanks so much, bye bye!