None, of course. It wasn’t meant as an insult, just pointing out that the fact that if someone on a forum doesn’t like a particular exercise that is used by many of the top lifters and coaches it doesn’t mean a whole lot.
Not completely true, while there may be some lifters who are chosen and trained from a young age he also coaches people online and has several people getting very good results. One of his online lifters won Quebec provincials, another is #1 in Holland and competes at an international level. Both are in the IPF/affiliated feds so they are passing drug tests too. I was advised to use Sheiko’s 4 day sample program a few years back, I didn’t because the volume and intensity was lower than what I was already doing so I figured it wouldn’t work out for me. Keep in mind that the sample programs are just that, samples, they are not customized. His app has programs for different skill levels and different amounts of volume. In my case, I’m too advanced for any of those programs according to the information on his forum and I can’t afford to hire him as a coach so I do my own thing.
RPE is definitely not for beginners, Mike never advised beginners to use it anyway. I might take RPE into account in my training but I don’t base my working weights off of RPE. I have used his methods and programs before with decent results, the problem is that you don’t increase the weights until it feels easier and in reality it seems like sometimes you just have to push harder and forget about difficulty.
Same criticism applies to Louie, sure. I didn’t mention Louie because I was simply responding to chris.
The rest of your post is pretty much spot on. BTW, even though I am training conjugate, I only use box squat variations for ME work (Manta ray high, High bar Hi, Low bar suspended, etc.). All my off season dynamic work is comp squat with bands.
If you don’t have super tight gear, relying on the box 100% of the time will fuck your raw squat up. I have found a position where I bottom out at the exact depth I need. In my case, the stretch reflex combined with the torque in the hole gives me 4" of rebound out of the hole. Early on I used pause squats, but once I developed a feel for the bottom, I didn’t need them any more.
Bottom line - If you use them and your squat is increasing then carry on.
I believe his squat is closest to what Hatfield called the athlete’s squat, where the goal is to use as much muscle as possible, but frankly Rip’s squat method sucks balls. There, I said it.
That’s not true at all, anyone can hire him for online coaching if you can afford it and he is able to take more clients. He also has videos on his facebook page where he is training little kids to do Olympic lifts and such.
And it’s not so much that opinions don’t matter unless you train record holders but rather that if your opinion is in complete contrast with many who do so then most likely that is only your personal experience and does not apply to the majority of people. I know a guy who made good progress with the Bulgarian method, his deadlift went up even more than his squat even though he was only doing one work set a week while maxing out on squat and bench. Does that mean that everyone should do it? Of course not. In my case, there have been times that I found that I wasn’t getting anything out of pause squats, in retrospect I would have been better off doing more submaximal volume to fix my technique (as in the whole lift and not just the bottom) instead. I also don’t like doing pause squats as the main lift of the day, as Mike T likes to program. It seems like they make my hips tight and the next time I squat I catch the stretch reflex higher and can’t hit depth, even if I do mobility work. But it works for some people so I won’t advocate against it.
I read one of Hatfield’s articles where he said that there is no reason to perform a low bar squat if you are not a powerlifter and if you are neither a powerlifter or weightlifter then you would be better off squatting with a safety squat bar. I don’t really understand Rippetoe’s logic, and I’m not about to waste my time trying to figure it out. I came across some of his stuff years ago, way before I ever got into PL, he said that beginners should do the GOMAD (gallon of milk a day) diet and gain 40lbs., he had a bunch of fat slobs with mediocre lifts as his shining examples. I never looked into Rip or SS again.
I SAID I HEARD WHAT SHEIKO SAID IN A TAPED SEMINAR!!!
I SAID IT WAS MY OPINION AND THAT IT WAS BASED UPON PERSONAL EXPERIENCE!! No shit sherlock.
Is that a problem for you? Everything posted on these forums is an opinion based on personal experience. Understood captain obvious.
Stop trying to call people out and create argumentative threads and stick to information because your posts read like they come from rehashed material read on other sites and not from personal exerience. I’ve been reading numerous past posts of yours and that’s your pattern.
You’re rushing the setup big time. Try the following steps and if I miss something others can chime in:
Put your hands on the bar as close as possible without hurting your shoulders.
Get under the bar and dig the bar into your back.
SQUEEZE your shoulder blades together.
Deep breath into the stomach, annd push against the belt.
With your feet balanced and hip width apart lift the bar off the rack and stay still until the bar settles
Take 2-3 steps back into your stance
Squeeze your glutes and let out a little air and brace again.
When there is NO wiggle in the bar descend.
The other thing I saw is out of the hole your knees move forward. This is the first sign of a weak posterior chain. Even among lifters who have forward knee travel, their knees only move backwards on the way up.
You can get away with this stuff until weight is near limit, then shit get real. Good luck
Looking good man. I would just say get as much practice in as you can. Things I would work out:
the depth you’re hitting is pretty variable, practice on consistently hitting the same depth each rep (if you ever compete, that shit will kill you on the platform)
your knee sometimes travels forward when you’re coming out of the hole. As the weight gets heavier, this will be a problem so sort it now.
I actually cropped the setup out of the video, and am trying my best to do all the things you listed, maybe with the exception of squeezing the glutes and rebracing before squatting down.
Is the fix for this really just awareness of body position + tightness?
Looks much better. I see the knee thing, it’s not good but it’s not the end of the world either. Just keep training and record your work sets, people here are always willing to give some advice.
The knees coming forward means that you lack dorsiflexion. I went through this myself, and am actually fixing it now.
Knees coming forward means your quads are coming into play; you can tell you get butt wink when you run out of your ankle ROM and still sit down, because your shin becomes vertical like you’re deadlifting, which you don’t want while squatting.
If you watch the video of the “Butt wink myth” by JTS Strength, you’ll notice that:
1st squat with buttwink:
Shins move back and goes vertical, buttwink happens
2nd squat with flat back:
Shins stay forward, no buttwink
Ankle dorsiflexion is bringing the toes ‘up,’ right? That’s weird because I’ve looked into that and could pass all the mobility tests I could find. I might retest when I get home tonight
Most tests of dorsiflexion give you a measure of your ROM not a positive/negative or pass/fail. However basic tests like being able to touch knee to wall with your toes against the wall and without your heel lifting off is more applicable to people with ankle injuries and fractures who’ve been immobilized for some time thus losing significant range. As a healthy (as far as I can) these tests give you no useful information.
Body segments/joints/parts are connected and move together. Less range (not necessarily dysfunctional) or hypomobility of one part can be partially compensated for at other segments. Over time if this hypomobility persists then the compensating parts can become overly mobile or hypermobile operating through ranges and ways for which they were not designed leading to all kinds of problems. e.g. Limited Ankle Dorsiflexion. Compensated by Lumbar Flexion/Butt Wink. Hypermobile Lumbar moves out of safer neutral ranges putting extra stress on the low back and increasing risk of injury.
The ankle joint’s normal range is slightly different for weight bearing e.g. walking or squatting and non weight bearing holding your leg and pulling your toes back. The more relevant is the range during weight bearing, approx 30 degrees. In all likelihood if you can do the Knee to Wall with toes 10-15cm from the wall then it isn’t a big problem. However if plates under your feet, mimicking a weightlifting shoe’s raised heel, help with your problems then limited dorsiflexion range could be the issue.
The JTS vid shouldn’t be taken out of context. The observations that Unk0wn made may have been valid but in that case were secondary to changes in lumbopelvic, positoning and depth control. The model is wearing olympic lifting shoes effective disguising dorsiflexion limitation if she had any.
