Enter Planet Cybertron

Training Training Logs
122

OK @planetcybertron you’re not going to like any of this until about halfway. On the plus side, you’ll be able to fix all this quite easily and relatively quickly. There’s no way you can pull 275 lbs the way you do and be weak, so it’s just that you’re a bad squatter right now. With correct technique you’ll rapidly become able to display that strength.

  1. It’s not the angle. That’s a half to quarter squat. Even going a few inches deeper you’d be well high. This explains the difference between your squat and DL. At a guess, your max squat to parallel would be about 225 lbs, tops.

  2. For safety you need to walk out differently (properly): walk out backwards and rack the bar forwards.

  3. Your stance is too wide. It’s almost equipped squatter wide. That is probably why your hips are beat up. It also makes it very hard to hit depth.

Here are some fixes that should work:

  1. Grip - width is fine but focus on not letting your wrists bend or squeezing the bar. Relax your arms from the elbow down
  2. Upper back - pull your elbows into your sides, not under the bar. Push your head horizontally back into the bar
  3. Bracing and unracking - take your air and arch the bar out, don’t use your legs. Squeeze your glutes the moment you unrack. One foot back, other foot back, adjust one step each side for width if necessary. Breathe and let the bar settle before squatting.
  4. Stance - start with shoulder width or just a tad wider, toes pointing slightly out.
  5. Bracing and squatting - take your air again, squeeze your glutes hard and pull your elbows into your sides. Push your head back into the bar. Squeeze your abs. Descend by pushing your knees out and sitting down. Weight on your heels and outside of your feet. Hit depth and immediately reverse direction. Lead with your traps and focus on pulling your elbows into your sides.

For the moment, just groove the technique. Don’t go above about 132 lbs. Do lots of fives, maybe three times a week. Video every single set and rep, from the empty bar onwards. This will help you learn what parallel feels like. When you can pretty reliably squat 132 to parallel, add 10 lbs to your squat. Don’t even attempt to max out for around 12 weeks.

For assistance, I would highly recommend lots of back raises, lunges (twice weekly, try hitting 150 reps between the two every time you trying them) and some ab work (ab wheel is good, hanging leg raises too).

3 Likes
123

Dammit I figured something was wrong.

So raw lifting definitely shouldn’t be that wide ever right? And another question? I’ve done air squatting and when I’m at parallel (looking at the mirror) I look like I’m almost ATG …is that normal or okay? Or am I going to deep? And I’ve got all the other corrections down so I’ll just have to star all over from scratch again. Dammit.

1 Like
124

I’m just afraid if I go too deep I’ll get stuck at the bottom.

125

Essentially, yes. Very, very few raw lifers do well squatting ultra wide.

It’s fine. You’ve got pretty muscular legs so your calves and hamstrings will touch and that makes it look like you’re squatting super deep.

Easiest indicator: camera at knee height or just filming side on. If your hip crease is just below the knee, you’re golden.

Don’t worry. Start with the empty bar and work up every squat day. Don’t ever go above a weight you don’t know you can own until you’re confident in your ability to come up. That’ll happen sooner than you may think.

Kudos on the attitude. It’ll help you heaps. Not many people would take being told all I told you in their stride.

1 Like
126

@MarkKO just gave you EVERYTHING a quality paid coach would give you to overhaul your Squat. He absolutely nailed it.

You have everything you need to take your Squat to the next level.

Good luck!!!

4 Likes
127

This is normal. A lot of people have this fear.

If you’re afraid, set the pins in the squat rack. Just make sure you’re at least hitting parallel. It would be a shame for you to be cheating yourself accidentally.

There’s a girl/lady that reminds me exactly of you at one of my gyms. Strongest girl in the gym by far, just needs a little direction to take it to the next level.

3 Likes
128

@IronOne yea he’s the only person who actually talks to me on here rather regularly. Not gonna question it, because he’s super nice, and although I can’t physically see him, I consider him a good friend already.

2 Likes
129

@MarkKO I have no idea why I’d be upset, if anything this makes me happy because now I have something else I can perfect. Yea I’m slightly frustrated a bit, but from all the encouragement I’m getting it won’t take me too long and before I tknow it I’ll have caught up. Do people get mad if you try and help them a lot?

130

If I had a dollar for every time I dropped a squat in a commercial gym :smiley:

This is a great attitude. I am also in the same boat as you completely relearning squats. I go through this process about every 3 weeks. Hopefully in the future I can get that to every 7 or 8 weeks LOL

Also, @MarkKO in to save the day!!!

2 Likes
131

@BOTSLAYER that’s another huge nightmare I’m afraid of. The videos I took are at a 24 hour fitness that I had a pass to, and I usually go to an all ladies gym, and when I’m there I don’t care if I fart, sneeze, cough, laugh, or whatever… but at the other huge chain branches of gyms I’m always nervous because I don’t know anyone lol.

132

@MarkKO also can I add another addition to some accessory work? Could I get down pretty much ATG, and pulse, and then shoot back up? Or should I just stick to straight down and up? I see a lot of people doing that when squatting.

1 Like
133

Also is there a specific muscle I should be focusing on more? I’ve noticed since I’ve been squatting incorrectly my quads usually take over, but last night I just practiced the motions, and my butt wanted take over most of the motions that drive my hips back up, so is that okay too? I just want to make sure I’m activating the correct parts, and that way I can start to ease up my hip issues.

1 Like
134

Back at you. I consider several people on here friends.

On occasion.

I don’t think it would hurt, especially if you made sure to go to parallel each time (so down, pulse, back to parallel, up), which I think you mean to do anyway. I also don’t think it’s absolutely necessary at first, but like I said, I don’t think it’ll hurt your learning process.

Probably your glutes just in terms of squeezing them as you descend because it feels weird AF at first. As you come up thinking of pushing your knees out and driving your hips through also helps me, but as long as your main focus is getting all the cues right and feeling what depth feels like you don’t need to worry too much about anything else.

2 Likes
135

LOG # 21

Practicing squat form. The gym was extra crowded today and I was pressed for time, so the squat rack was occupied and had a line forming so I just used the smith machine for practicing my movements (gasp! how dare I use the forbidden smith machine?!?!) Most of my training was squats since that’s what ive been eager to fix for the past three days.

Squat: Something around 150lbs (not sure the exact weight when it comes to using the smith machine) 5x5 first, then I did an extra 10 reps or so because I was trying to catch a good picture to show you guys.

Deads: Was completely drained by the time I got around to deads so I lightened up everything to 180lbs. 5x5

Ab work: Hanging leg raises 15 reps, machine ab crunch (but I modified my positioning to target the lower hip area), 2 min plank.

Lat pulldowns: 125lbs, 4x4

pull-ups: can only do 2 pull-ups correctly, then after that I used an assistance machine with 5lbs worth of help for 5x5 (I’m rather dense so I struggled the entire time)

As far as weight updates go, I’m 190lbs so far, but I’m comfortable at this weight. Nothing hurts, and I can keep up with steady state cardio, and HIIT sessions reasonably. Although I prefer swimming because I feel like a kid at the pool most times. However I realized I’ve been neglecting my bench press work, and that’s the reason its been stagnant for damn near 7 whole months ( I should at least be benching nearly 180? 200? I’ve also realized I’m generally weak from my boob/chest area on up, when it comes to using my upper body to pull the rest of myself up during pull-ups. SOOOOOOO to compensate for that, I cant ignore bench days anymore like I have been.

Diet wise ive cleaned up most of the crap food I was eating, although once every 8-10 days ill have a snickers, or a carbonated drink, or salty chips (weaknesses). Upped my water intake quite a bit because I had this odd nagging feeling in my upper side (Kidneys?), because I’m sure I wasn’t drinking enough to suit my needs.

That’s this recap for today, and ill post a picture below of my form so you guys can tell me how I’m doing.

2 Likes
136

360×640 159 KB

Yes yes yes I know the smith machine sucks, but it was better than nothing. But how is this so far?

480×640 152 KB

And this is the stance I take to squat. There was a mirror in front of me so I as able to space my feet at shoulder width apart (slighty wider because that’s comfy for me and I can get down lower, and is this okay in regards to how my toes are pointed? Or are they out too wide?

1 Like
137

Also I’m beginning to become very paranoid about butt wink, and I think my mind isn’t letting me go deeper than I probably can because I’m so nervous about slowly developing that.

138

@planetcybertron stance width looks spot on.

The picture is a half squat, but your position is decent, and your wrist and elbow position is very good. The main issue with using a smith machine now is that it eliminates any real falling forward, so you don’t know if your back/abs are letting you down.

Generally speaking you won’t ever see buttwink until you’re well below parallel, so don’t worry about that.

I think you may benefit from squatting to a box (NOT box squatting) set so you hit depth every rep (I’d go hip crease an inch below the top of your quads maximum) every time. After a month, take the box away.

The difference between box squatting and swatting to a box is that you don’t sit back or sit on the box - you simply squat as you would free squat until you hit the box with your butt and come straight up. I used them to learn not to bury my squats and it worked pretty well. Plates stacked on each other work well if you don’t have a box.

You might even find it useful to do bodyweight squats to a box every training day for a week or two just to get familiar with the depth.

4 Likes
139

This is a vexed question for female lifters. A broad rule is that a bodyweight bench is very respectable, similar to one and half times bodyweight for males. So, your bench is doing OK right now, but certainly I think shooting for 200 on the way to 225 is realistic in the medium term. Post a video if you want, some technical adjustments might buy you a fair few lbs straight off the bat.

One thing that stands out to me is what you say about being weak in pulling yourself up. That suggests your upper and middle back are weak, or weaker than you want. Some high rep heavy dumbbell rows, t-bar or DB chest supported rows and inverted rows would probably go a fair way towards fixing that.

Plus, benching is very reliant on upper back strength. Get your back bigger and stronger and your bench will almost always benefit.

1 Like
140

@MarkKO hopefully the gym isn’t packed Wednesday, so I can actually work on squatting. I do have a question though, is it okay to kind of place my feet a bit back behind myself? Or no? I’m struggling here a bit because this feels very odd learning the correct technique. But then again I think today I was pushing myself so I may have to go even lighter. Also is there something to kind of loosen up my hamstrings? Because they refuse to budge or stretch out at all (they’re tight all the time)

And I’ll just use some plates for guidance next session.

And okay good, stance is correct.

Also on the mid and upper back work you suggested, is there anyway I can get my biceps and forearms to kind of chill out? They always want to take over any back work that I do. Would push ups be a good addition? With some plates on my back? Or would that target mainly chest?

141

I’m actually starting think that I’m not positioning my feet far enough forward. Is that what you mean by leaning back into the squat? As for bench I’ll just take your word and focus more on fixing my squat. Although I think my bench is pretty good, but I’ll get a video or picture up soon. Also when it comes to competition do women have to position the bar differently on the descent down since they have breasts? Or do they get a slight advantage in being a woman because of that (compared to guys when they have to touch the bar to their chests?) I’ve always wondered that.