Also another question, judging by my picture should I lean forward some more? Because I think my thighs are longer than my torso (which is very short already), and I’ve been skimming your squat videos to get a better picture of how I should look, and I’ve noticed you’re more upright than I am (I damn near have to form an acute angle to get to parallel.) Because the more I try to be upright the more I overarch my back and it’s kind of painful. If I try not to arch I just end up rounding my shoulders and my upper back. And I’ve been reading that’s healthier to keep a neutral spine?
Not sure I understand. When you set up and unrack? Probably not, they should be right under the bar. When you’re squatting? Definitely not.
Basically, you want the bar over your midfoot the whole time. Where you sit the bar determines how much you lean forward to achieve this.
Foam rolling? Lacrosse ball? I’d start doing Agile 8 every day for a while. It’ll suck at first but it works. Takes maybe 10 minutes.
Drop the weight and focus on using your back. Maybe when you’re pulling focus on pulling your elbows back instead of your hands? Pinning your shoulderblades back and down can help too I think.
Not really. Like you said, they’re a push, not a pull. The equivalent pull would be pull-ups or inverted rows. Both are great.
No, not at all. When squatting your feet are where they are. They don’t move. Your knees and hips do. So, sitting back means pushing your butt back. Not that you should do this, just sit down.
When I refer to leaning I mean your trunk from the hips. In other words, how much your upper body leans forward (BTW you keep your chest up ALWAYS no matter how far forward you lean).
Have to, no. Most touch at the lower point of the sternum like guys usually do. No advantage at all, because women are generally much weaker on bench compared to guys of the same size and experience.
No, your torso angle looked fine because you sit the bar quite high. The higher the bar, the more upright your torso and vice versa. It’s all about keeping the bar over your mid foot.
With the thigh to torso ratio, I wouldn’t worry massively. I have the opposite, short legs and long torso so I do better more upright. Because your torso is short, you may find it much easier to sit the bar lower and lean forward more.
It actually sounds like this may be the go for you. If staying upright hurts, don’t do it, and apart from arching the bar out of the rack just keep your back straight and, even more importantly, keeping your abs rock solid. That way if your back flexes a bit it’ll still be supported.
Don’t round your shoulders and upper back though. Driving your head hard back into the bar and pulling your elbows into your sides should keep your upper back tight and stop any rounding.
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Okay cool. I think I’ve got all my questions out. My apologies for asking so many lol. So now I’m just gonna have to play around with some things and wait (which I struggle to do lol).
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I’m glad to see you taking your squat medicine! Not everyone has the stones to admit that they are squatting high and then go about fixing it.
There’s no shame in it at all. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Carry on!
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x2.
In the short term, it is a huge ego bruise to go from squatting 300 pounds to half that.
In the long term, the payoff will be well worth it. Kudos to MarkKO for helping you out here. And I suspect that once you’ve spent a solid month nailing sets of five in the 135 range, and you start adding weight, you’ll find that the gains come quickly.
You can keep deadlifting heavy to get your jollies of feeling some heavy weight while you fix up that squat.
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No apologies necessary, ask away whenever you want.
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Well I try not to take myself too seriously most of the time. I’m only 21 years old, what’s three months of my time to fix something so that I’m doing it correctly and can get stronger too? I’d be kind of ashamed of myself if I reached 40 and was still squatting incorrectly, or was too prideful to fix it when people helped me.
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Well I think the true power lies in humbling yourself before you even step foot up to the bar. And through my eyes, I always tell myself that I’m more than just the number of 45s I can sling around and put back down. It’s good to be strong and powerful and I can also see why powerlifting can be a positive, outlet for many folks like myself, but at the same time it’s important to remember that we are still ourselves whether we squat, 100, 200, 300, 500, 700, or 1,000. And I’m not saying that because personally have to start over (I don’t mind having to do that), but because so many times I’m talking to people’s egos, and not them.
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@planetcybertron this popped up in my facebook feed and I immediately thought of you.
She’s about your weight, so this gives you a great idea of what the absolute top of top end looks like.
Notice how much lower her bench is though? If you can get to a 250 lbs bench, you’re going to be up there.
For what it’s worth I don’t see any reason you wouldn’t get to 400/200/400 within a few years and then get for 450/250/500 in the longer term. You could even go beyond that. Those numbers would put you right up there.
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Is that order squat/bench/dead? And she reminds me of me too lol. She’s very talented and very strong. Thank you for showing me this. And guess what? Tonight’s training was great because we hit the nail on the head the other couple of days in figuring out what’s my best squat stance. Everything is spot on but I was placing the bar too high. I need to have it lower down on my back, right where my traps start to taper off. I was so comfy squatting today, got down into the hole perfectly and shot back up. I’m so happy I’ve finally figured out what works for me. And thanks for all the help Mark.
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LOG # 22
Squat: 150 lbs 5x5
Deads: 200lbs 4x3
Bench: 145lbs 5x4
Standing chest press: 50lbs 4x 8
Ab work: hanging leg raises- 20 reps, back extensions w/ 25 pounds- 5x5, ab machine w/ 90 lbs, 10 reps.
DB bend over rows w/ 30’s: 5x5 (lightened it up to target my lats and traps better)
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Yes, every time for a three lift meet.
This is awesome.
My pleasure
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LOG # 23
I was extremely pressed on time but went in anyways and used my time constraint to my advantage. I went heavy enough to challenge myself, but heavy like I usually do for fear of losing form.
Bench: Tested myself to get an idea of where my 1RM was and I can’t bench one rep over 170lbs, but I can bench two good reps w/ 165, so ill put it at 165lbs. Backed down to 135 for 3 sets of 4.
Squat: 135lbs : 5x5, 150 lbs 5x5, 200lbs 5x5. Took everything off and just squatted the barbell afterwards to get my movements smoother, and work on my breathing, and I played around a bit and focused on connecting to each muscle that plays a roll in the squat. Started with calves and really focused on squeezing them while unracking and coming back up. Then hamstrings, quads/glutes, etc…
Ab work: hanging leg raises 40 reps
I was slightly upset that this was all I could squeeze in before the gym closed, but at the same time I was impressed because my rest times were damn near cut in half of what I usually take as a rest so intensity was top notch this training session.
HOWEVER…last night I had came from my moms house, and was walking up my apartment steps and felt a shooting pain up my butt and where the top of the back of my thighs tapers to the bottom of my butt. I’m not sure what has caused this flare up of sciatica once again, but its a lot more agitated than it has ever been. Hurts to even walk. I do want to train today, but I don’t want to hurt myself. So ill see how I feel with light weights, and if I cant get anything done ill just do some HIIT exercises in the pool. I’m a bit let down by this, but ill get over it.
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Check out @BOTSLAYER and his log, I think he’s had similar issues with sciatica
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Ah yes, my favorite fake injury LOL it serves no purpose but to cripple us and it comes in so many different forms and flavors.
In your case this sounds rather serious and I would recommend rest and possibly a doctor.
Moving forward stretching and mobility work daily to keep every thing moving fluidly.
Also figuring out what leads to this will help too. For mine it is caused almost exclusively with butt wink or uneven deadlifting grip.
Nice bench by the way!!
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LOG # 24
Sciatica was KILLING ME this afternoon. I mean limping type of pain. Noticed that It would hurt severely once the weight came completely off. Squats are not what was causing it. Deads neither. Under the weight it completely disappeared, and went I stretched. Walked to the locker room, and almost had to hop all the way there. So botslayer I will definitely schedule a doctors appointment probably tomorrow or Thursday to figure out what’s wrong. Probably could’ve skipped training today, but I was being hard headed.
Squats: nothing but barbell: 10 straight reps. 135, 5x5. 180 5x5. 200 5x5. 270 for 3 good formed reps(the hole is seriously nothing to play with lol)
Deads: 215lbs 5x5, 135lbs 7 straight reps
Bench: just the barbell for 10 straight reps (could probably be categorized as a warm-up…idk.) 135 3x4, 165lbs 3x3
Ab work: machine ab crunch 10x4 , handling leg raises for 30 straight reps (kept farting for some unknown reason)
mobility work/ stretching: Downward dog: 30 seconds, warrior 2 and 3: 30 seconds, 1 min plank, full back stretch(flowed through the motion to the starting point for 30 seconds), groin stretch: 30 seconds (this hurt…a lot.), two foot staff pose: 30 seconds, squat palm press: pulsed for 30 seconds.
Then I proceeded to lie on the floor in a snowflake fashion for maybe a minute just to relax.
This training session lasted quite a while. Wasn’t really tired, but I was trying to get my squat form perfected from start to finish which I did, but was frustrated the entire time because of my damn hip.
Safe to say I’m probably going to have to sit this out until Friday I think. Which is bothering me, but at the same time I wish to stop limping everywhere I go.
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Yea I went ahead and combined some dynamic stretching, and simple yoga poses I had memorized a while ago
Yea don’t worry about that part I’m definitely going to see my family doctor soon
Aww thanks man! 
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I’m starting to think the Doc might say its probably just something that happens to me, OR, its my job. Because I work at a place where I have to stand for 6-7 straight hours at a time, and while its only a weekend job, 14-20 hours worth of standing can add up weekly. Not to mention I always shift my weight onto my right leg for whatever reason.
Get it checked anyway, if you can get some imaging.
Nice bench, nice squat BTW. You’ll be edging 400 lbs before you know it
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I always go left!!! I think this is probably more of a problem than the actual standing. Try to stand evenly as often as possible.