Hi,
I have been training more or less seriously for a few years but only started doing squats and dead lifts a couple of months ago. Therefore, I have filmed me and my uncle Tom when we did a set of each exercise. It would be nice to receive some feedback! Links:
I’m not expert or anything, but it looks like you both need to be going down a lot more. Also, instead of sticking your knees out try to sit back. Box squats might a good idea.
Your squat is more like a good morning. The only reason the bar gets down so far is because you’re bending at the waist. Your thigh never even gets parallel to the floor. You’re basically working out your hip extensors. Start doing front squats; if you try to bend at the waist like that you’ll fall over. Tell Tom to stop doing quarter squats.
With your deadlift, try to focus on bringing your ass back instead of bending your torso forward. You want to keep the weight close to your body. Your form doesn’t look bad but I wonder how it holds up with some real weight on the bar. Tom…well, at least tell him to stop rounding his back like that. He’ll hurt himself.
On the squat your form isn’t too bad but as the other person said (and several more may comment) you aren’t doing a full squat, I would classify that somewhere between a 3/4 squat and a half squat. Make sure you keep looking straight ahead, chest up as your drop lower. You will need to lower the weight to do this successfully until you get used to it. You probably need to go about 6 inches lower or so.
Your form is worse on the deadlift. You are not rounding your back which is good but you are starting and lifting with your hips much too high. Your upper back should be at a 45 degree angle when you start, your back was almost parallel to the ground and each rep it got worse. So lower your hips, not all the way like a squat but to a 45 degree angle, push your knees forward so they are over the bar, and then pull. Lightly touch the ground on every rep. A rule of thumb is you should be able to see your chest or if there is writing on your shirt you should be able to see that the entire time you do a deadlift, if you bend over too much you won’t be able to.
[quote]onkel wrote:
Hi,
I have been training more or less seriously for a few years but only started doing squats and dead lifts a couple of months ago. Therefore, I have filmed me and my uncle Tom when we did a set of each exercise. It would be nice to receive some feedback! Links:
I did those clips with my mobile phone, so the quality isn’t the best…
regards,
Jacob[/quote]
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you have quite a few things going wrong with your squats and deads. I’ll get you started on the ones that are the worst.
during your squat, your upper body moves around a lot. you need to get a good arch, pull your shoulder blades together, push your chest out and KEEP TIGHT throughout the set. Do not allow yourself to lose the tight arch in your lower back. Someone has already mentioned starting with box squats first. do some research on box squatting. it will teach you proper depth, how to sit back instead of down, how to spread the floor and how to keep tight in the hole. go to elitefts.com and read and read.
as for the dead, the worst thing you are doing is allowing your shoulders to get in front of the bar. your shoulders should be behind or at the most in line with the bar. as with squats, you need to learn how to keep the core tight with a good arch. also, a good technique is to do a rep, put the bar down and re set up after every rep. learn your landmarks. look at the bar and line your shins and hands up at the same spots each time. there are other things that I could go into but as with the squats, go to elitefts.com and read up.
The first poster nailed it. You both need to go alot deeper and concetrate on sitting back. Your deadlift video didn’t show up. Uncle Tom’s dl looked okay, but he needs to work on keeping his shoulders behind the bar, and not raising his hips so fast.
Your shoulders and hips should rise at the same rate. Watch how early his knees lock out, almost before his shoulders even come up. This will lead to some problems when the weight gets heavier. Tell him to concentrate on pulling back while he pulls up, keeping his weight on his heels and using his glutes and hamstrings to get the bar off the floor.
You should also think about getting a better camera if you are going to post more videos. Good luck.
I think i understand why ur squating wrong. I believe you and ur uncle are only going down to where it feels tight then back up. There is a way to make this into parrallel. when you take ur stance have ur feet a little past your shoulders.
now turn ur feet out just a bit. arch the back a little and squat down. when it feels tight and if your built like i am i couldnt tell to whell in the vid. you should hit parrallel and add weight.
Your dl video is working now, you have pretty much the same problems as Uncle Tom. The good news is you have a fairly flat back and your problems are easy to fix. If you just think about pulling back when you come off the floor, I bet your form will improve almost immediately.
You may need to lower your hips slightly. One other thing, set the bar down and pause between reps. You will probably bounce it off the floor when it gets heavier if you continue the touch and go.
your uncle’s squat starts with his knees. they are the first thing to move, and they shoot forward way over his toes. i think that’s where the box squats come in handy, teaching you to squat back not down. and you do a weird “hump” thing when you get to the top of the squat, basically loosing the arch in your lower back.
and you rebound out of the bottom, using elasticity to bounce yourself back up, not on the first few reps, but certainly on the remaining reps. same with the deadlift, it’s like you’re bouncing the weight around using your muscles elasticity to rebound the weight back up.
excellent move posting yourself though, that’s a great show of dedication to getting better.
I don’t even know where to begin. Let me think about it and see if I can distill it down to two bullet points per lift…you guys have a lot of work to do.
[quote]onkel wrote:
Hi,
I have been training more or less seriously for a few years but only started doing squats and dead lifts a couple of months ago. Therefore, I have filmed me and my uncle Tom when we did a set of each exercise. It would be nice to receive some feedback! Links:
This is me squatting,
Ok. You both have poor depth on your squat and your uncle Tom needs to rotate his elbows forwards to keep his back tight and chest out.
Your deadlift is all back and no legs. You need to sit your backside down more in the start position, so you can drive better with your legs. Tom needs to quit the deadlift if he wants a back that still works in 6 months time…he doesnt keep it straight.
Given that the two of you both struggle with depth you could well have flexibilty issues preventing you from executing the movements through a full ROM and safely
thank you very much for the input. We kinda thought that our squats and DL’s weren’t top notch prior to posting our videos, it turns out we were a tiny bit wrong…
Yesterday we did squats and DL’s again and tried applying the tips we were given in this thread. I think we both have approved our form a little and it feels like the exercises hit their “target muscles” better now than before, using http://www.exrx.net as a guide line. We filmed one set of each exercise for those of you who are interested to review.
All of these videos are tilted 90 degrees. Does anybody know how to tilt them back?
Re: I'm squatting again! - YouTube - My new squat. The video quality is pretty bad, the only thing that you basically can see is my back. I think it is pretty straight.
Re: Deadlift ft. my uncle Tom - YouTube - Tom doing DL’s. The main point we tried to improve was to straighten Tom’s back. Should he bend his knees more and dip his butt more?
When you deadlift you are suppose to let the weight rest on floor for like a second thats why it’s called a DEADlift, it’s dead weight so you don’t have any momentum.
You’ve shown a few things here and I think it should be a credit to you.
1: You’ve taken the advice that was given and WAY improved your form on both lifts.
2: You listened to the critisim and learnt from it without bitching.
I can only congratulate you on both of the above.
All lifts improve with practice. Just watch each other and critique. Posting vids on here will also keep you true. Don’t sweat the weight to start with and before you know it you’ll be lifting hooge without realising it.
(BTW Squats and Deads rule! All you need to do now is EAT! (a hell of a lot)
Carry on doing them both, eat clean above maint and post your progress in 3-6 months. I challenge you not to gain some good mass if you do that.
Good improvement! Your deads look great, but you’re right, can’t really see the squat well. Kudos for squatting on the wall, I’ve long advocated that as a way to improve glute recruitment
For Tom’s deads, it looks okay, but make sure he’s arching the lower portion of his erectors hard. I can’t really tell, but it looks like he may be letting the bottom couple vertebre flex forward and allowing the discs to take the pressure. That would be bad, needless to say. If he is keeping that part of the arch tight, though, depth looks fine. Some people have better leverages and it will look like they’re starting high compared to others.
