I simply cannot keep my torso more than 45 degrees from the ground, it always goes lower. I am tall, so I don’t know if height will cause this.Is this a problem?
(If I do box squats, however, I get my back more upright, but I don’t like those).
Also, my lower back rounds when doing very deep squats. It stays arched a little below parallel, straightens out then starts to round.(I did a search and found some similar stuff about this with other tall lifters).
Is it okay to stop when my back straightens? Or what can I do to stop the rounding?
What you need to do is have someone show you how to squat. If you workout at a gym have someone that works there show you or someone else that knows what the hell they’re doing show you. You’re not going to stay perfectly perpendicular to the ground when you’re doing back squats.
Start out with the bar and work on your form for a week or two if you need to. Also check around here for some video of squatting.
At first i was skeptical of Mike Boyle’s idea of using only front squats, but after trying it i see why. His lack of injured athlete’s backs speaks for itself.
Your knees don’t go forward enough. Therefore your centre of gravity falls behind your feet and you compensate by leaning forward. This will round your back eventually.
Front squats or goblet squats, and in the mean time, work on your ankle flexibility.
It depends on how you are doing the exercise. Are you doing it as a knee or hip dominant exercise (AKA as heavy as possible). The poster above me is right, if you are trying to do this exercise as mostly hip extension and still trying to keep your back very upright, you could hurt yourself just straining to do this, as it is very unatural. The hip dominant an exercise, the more your torse leans forward. These two go hand in hand for the most part. If you let your knees come forward, (and you will have to take the weight down quite a bit) you will be able to keep your torso more upright.
[quote]Wreckless wrote:
Lack of anckle flexibility.
Your knees don’t go forward enough. Therefore your centre of gravity falls behind your feet and you compensate by leaning forward. This will round your back eventually.
Front squats or goblet squats, and in the mean time, work on your ankle flexibility.[/quote]
Yup! Ankle flexibility helps a lot.
I had (on a whim) a few clients do 20 bodyweight DEEP squats while holding the squat rack. They were told to keep thier backs almost vertical while doing so. Then I had them do lunge walks, deep, knee to floor, forward knee over toes while leaning “back” for 20 steps. Then get back in the rack and squat. Almost jaw-dropping improvements in a minute’s time. I think the hip flexor stretch from the lunge walk and the more specific stretches from the bodyweight squats were the reasons.
You can also pick a light weight and carefully sink into the deep squat slowly over 20 seconds. Two or three of these with say 95-135 lbs works for me. Allow the barbell to push you into the correct position. This way the muscles guilty of making you get out of position will be stretched exactly the way you need them to be.
Sounds to me like you need to build your posterior chain. Bring up the hamstrings, glutes, and spinal erectors with deadlifts (and variations), hyper-extensions, and glute-ham-raises (if you have a GHR bench). I find that if my squat progress stalls, I need more deadlifting and visa-versa.
I think I have the same problem as the OP, but when I hit bottom in an ATG my hip flexors and spinal erectors feel tight and my back loses its arch. Any good stretches to improve back flexibility?