This forum seems to have some knowledgable lifters so I wanted to see if I could get some critique on my back squats.
I’m around 5’10, nearly 100kg but I have a very difficult time squatting even with weights around 120-130kg due to flexibility issues; they namely exist near my right piriformis. I’ve already looked at mobility wod and have seen a chiro and both have been helpful but wondering if anyone could find anything specific I could be doing to better approximate an actual olympic back squat.
Here’s my squat from a few days ago:
The odd thing is I did 130kg today and I had absolutely no bounce out of the hole and it seemed my glutes were just turned off so very frustrating. Any help is appreciated, thanks.
Your descent is too slow. You should be fast until you get to parallel, and then explode upward. The momentum of the weight will carry you down into the hole and then you’ll bounce back up. An Oly squat should be FAST!
You are also turning the motion into a good-morning by letting your hips rise first. As you get near your max, this is going to happen to some extent, but try your best to keep that vertical torso angle and focus the tension on your quads.
You MUST stop squatting past the reps where you lose form. Its only going to hurt you real bad if you persist. Keep going like this and you have a disk hernia in your future.
I think you’d be well advised to do any of:
Drop the weight by minimum 1/3 and do bottom-up squats. Focus on getting the back right, stiffen the belly muscles and then come up.
If you don’t like bottom up squats then do a box squat instead.
Forget back squats and do a front squat with max 50% of your current weight. You say the Olympic word and so front squats would be a better training option. FWIW do 3 rep sets on front squats, only go above 3 reps for warm ups.
Hope thats of some use, feel free to disregard anything I say.
BTW. Put some safety rails in that squat rack regardless. You may find them a life saver when that back gives out.
[quote]Sorter wrote:
Not sure if you’re a fan of Tony Gentilcore’s stuff, but you should definitely check out some of his articles on squatting. He’s got some sick tips.
Some good stuff in there, especially the hip mobilization drills.
Don’t know what’s up with that Anderson Front Squat thing though. The torso angle looks all wrong, and the bar starts way out in front of the toes. Should look more like this:
Of course, you’d need to close the stance for full-depth.
Marty Monster is right with his second(I think) point and what to do about it.
The hip hinging is coming from lack of strength in the lower back and abdominals or possibly you’ve been concentrating on driving through the legs and not “staying tight” in the abs as you come up. Also, you’re possibly coming onto the toes more when you drive up as you fatigue making the movement more quad dominant.This may anteriorly tilt the hips and so bring the lumbar spine in.
You addressed the bar well, you have good thoracic strength, your knees looked good and you’re not the guy at the start doing barbell curl/shrug/extensions so you should blast through this.
Do front squats(core), lighter bottom up squats(technique) and then go back to the regular squat.
I’ve never heard of gentilecore, I’ve mostly been doing some of the hip drills from mobility wod and cal strength but some of those drills look promising.
To address latsspread I’m not sure my lower back is weak but I do think my abs are, I do 3 sets of ab wheel every session but it doesn’t seem to be helping any so I’ll either drop it or add some other exercise on top of it. I do think the weight comes forward on heavier weight and on the last reps and I do feel the glute tightness lost at the bottom, it’s like the hips tighten up the more reps I do.
I’ve heard front squats are a better exercise for people with my body proportions but I wanted to get around 3x5@150kg before I dump dump back squats for fronts and get a base at least.
I’ve never really gotten a satisfactory answer to this but should I break with my knees 1st and hips second if I want to squat upright? Koing has said to just sit down but he never addresses when the hips should move.
Speaking of Koing he asked to get a video of me with lighter weights so I’ll be lowering the weights down to around 100 or so kg and see if I can’t keep the back tighter and keep my back position.
[quote]GoJu wrote:
I do think the weight comes forward on heavier weight and on the last reps and I do feel the glute tightness lost at the bottom, it’s like the hips tighten up the more reps I do. [/quote]
It’s simpler than that, really. Your posterior chain is stronger than your quads. When you put enough weight on the bar, you’ll lean forward to get the stress off your quads and onto stronger muscles.
I got up to a 425 squat, but when I switched to fronts, I still sucked. I’m just now finally up to 255x3 on FS.
I go with both at the same time. So, literally, like he said, just sit straight down.
425 BS and 255x3 FS? That’s weird, I’ve front squatted 265 a couple years ago and my back squat wasn’t that much bigger; this makes me think it isn’t exactly posterior chain dominance that is the issue but I guess I could’ve gotten stronger but just kept the old weaknesses.
[quote]GoJu wrote:
425 BS and 255x3 FS? That’s weird, I’ve front squatted 265 a couple years ago and my back squat wasn’t that much bigger; this makes me think it isn’t exactly posterior chain dominance that is the issue but I guess I could’ve gotten stronger but just kept the old weaknesses.
Both at same time makes sense though.
[/quote]
What was your DL at the time? Mine was 495, so 425 Squat was proportional. I had shit development in the lower quads, though.
My back squat is most likely a good bit lower now, haven’t maxed in a while and I don’t do them that way anymore anyway.
What was your DL at the time? Mine was 495, so 425 Squat was proportional. I had shit development in the lower quads, though.
My back squat is most likely a good bit lower now, haven’t maxed in a while and I don’t do them that way anymore anyway.[/quote]
My best deadlift ever was 405, I imagine when I did that front squat I could pull middle-upper 300’s; quads are the biggest part of my legs but I do practice martial arts on top of lifting where most of the exercises are quad intensive, duck hops and burpees and the like.
What was your DL at the time? Mine was 495, so 425 Squat was proportional. I had shit development in the lower quads, though.
My back squat is most likely a good bit lower now, haven’t maxed in a while and I don’t do them that way anymore anyway.[/quote]
My best deadlift ever was 405, I imagine when I did that front squat I could pull middle-upper 300’s; quads are the biggest part of my legs but I do practice martial arts on top of lifting where most of the exercises are quad intensive, duck hops and burpees and the like. [/quote]
So you probably never had the problem of forward lean when you squatted, because your quads were strong enough to handle whatever your posterior chain could support.
It’s a balancing act. I’m doing pretty well right now using heavy Front Squats, Good Mornings, single-leg Ham Curls, and 20-rep Oly Squats. I do DL’s on back day, when I’m not doing high-frequency squats.
My old routine usually included PL-style back squats, heavy good mornings, and reverse lunges. That’s what led to my big ass and skinny quads. Just too PC dominant.
Here’s those light squats I did yesterday for koing, did up to around 100kg for 3x5 focusing on keeping upright and you were right most of the stress was on the quads:
Hard to tell if you’re exploding before or after you bounce out of the hole. Just make sure it’s before. You want to bounce with muscles, not ligaments. Makes heavier weights feel easier, anyway.
Hard to tell if you’re exploding before or after you bounce out of the hole. Just make sure it’s before. You want to bounce with muscles, not ligaments. Makes heavier weights feel easier, anyway.[/quote]
Thank but I’m not sure what you mean about exploding before/after the bounce?
I see a lot of lifters bounce out of the hole, and then push. Bad idea. Think about the leverages involved, with the contact between the hams and calves acting as a fulcrum, the weight at the hips and the floor at the ankles. It’s literally trying to pull your knee apart.
You want to try to explode upward as you pass through parallel on the descent. This does two things for you:
1: The quad tension holds your knee together from the front.
2: Your quads act like springs and propel you out of the hole.
Once you get it right, you’ll never want to squat any other way.
Dude, ignore the talk about bouncing. To be blunt, it’s complete w@nk…
Go down and come back up. The more you bounce the more your knees will hate you later on in life. Your knees getting enough abuse from heavy OLifts. Squats are a strength exercise. The more you bounce the more you knees WILL blow up later on. IF you stop lifting then you will be safer but over the long run bouncing is NOT GOOD.
Ask any lifter with 30-40yrs of experience…the old time lifters will know bouncing has RUINED their knees. Don’t do their mistakes.
It’s not IF BUT WHEn your knees blow up if you bounce on them in the squats on purpose.
[quote]Koing wrote:
Dude, ignore the talk about bouncing. To be blunt, it’s complete w@nk…
Go down and come back up. The more you bounce the more your knees will hate you later on in life. Your knees getting enough abuse from heavy OLifts. Squats are a strength exercise. The more you bounce the more you knees WILL blow up later on. IF you stop lifting then you will be safer but over the long run bouncing is NOT GOOD.
Ask any lifter with 30-40yrs of experience…the old time lifters will know bouncing has RUINED their knees. Don’t do their mistakes.
It’s not IF BUT WHEn your knees blow up if you bounce on them in the squats on purpose.
Koing[/quote]
We’re saying basically the same thing, I’m just offering a method to avoid it. Pushing before you get to the bottom of the hole technically eliminates the bounce and replaces it with muscular stretch-reflex, without slowing down and pausing in the hole.
My left knee, which was crushed between a motorcycle and a car, approves of my method. Your method probably isn’t any different, if you think about it.
