Without wraps? It feels great, best squats have ever felt. Add wraps and I’m nowhere near as comfortable. It’s like my knees forget what they need to do. I also don’t like squatting out of a mono much. I set up better walking the bar out. Something about taking a couple of steps makes everything settle where it needs to.
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Maybe try bending your knees… into the wraps? It’s hard to describe, but you know that feeling you get when your knees go forward while you are doing wrapped squats in which the wraps try to resist it and you get more rebound? I’d say try fighting the wraps so that your knees come forward as much as they like to in your normal squats. What I basically mean is sitting into the wraps if that makes sense at all. Though wrapped squats are definitely not something I am super experienced with. I know @reed does a lot of wrapped work, so he’d probably be a better source on that.
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Here’s the really funny thing: my knees go further forward in wraps than sleeves. That’s one of the main things that throws me off. I feel like everything comes way more forward in wraps.
I know this sounds silly when typing it out, but maybe paused squats with wraps? People do pause squats to fix their bottom position without wraps, so maybe with wraps? You either get into position, or you get crushed, and the wraps add even more weight on the bar so you have to make even more sure that you are in position.
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I agree with Destrength on the weight distribution. Your second rep looks awfully unstable the moment you start descending.
What puzzles me is why that happened; I don’t see anything in the first rep to indicate that the weight is too difficult to move.
One thing I want to notice with your squat that I’ve noticed- You torso and shins always look very vertical. And I don’t know if it’s because of depth changes as the weight gets heavier, but you appear to be more and more vertical as the weight increases.
My guess would be that the instability from the descent + fatigue fucked with your balance as you went up.
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Could work I guess. Either that or my leverages have changed as I lost weight. Squats without wraps feel great until around 440 lbs now. Then beyond that it feels like I got really weak suddenly, although something like 350 lbs moves beautifully, feeling lighter than ever.
Which is what pissed me off. I make a real effort to only take another rep when I know I’ll get it, so for this to happen was confusing and annoying.
That’s sort of where my mind was going too. Last failure was similar in that respect as well. Possibly being lighter now my issue is that I can’t grind out squats like I used to be able to.
This I had not noticed. I know I prefer a more vertical torso, but I wasn’t aware there was any change as load increases.
You are trying to stay way to vertical and are overextending the tspine horribly along with some pretty bad head position (in my opinion) all of which lead to decreased hip use, decreased bracing power, and a decrease in stability. You can see it with the reps as you get heavy in that the last few inches into the hole your knees kinda go crazy and start wobbling all over the place. This is from being loose in the core and not rooting to the floor properly. You are trying to stay extremely vertical as you said you get even more so vertical with more forward knee movement as you get heavier. You are using heavier and heavier weights that are closing in or are over your unwrapped max weight and you are trying to compensate for poor core bracing and upper back tightness by staying extremely vertical. Which can work with light weight. How ever once you get heavy if the bar rolls forward even a small fraction of a hair it will push you over, sending the hips back, and the head down toward the ground. The sudden change in position with a weight that heavy was just to much to over come.
So, in my opinion first off fix your head position. This will help alot with the overextending almost immediately. I suggest looking just slightly down from a Nuetral head position. Find a spot where the wall and floor meet and never take your eyes off of it. Secondly, you have to believe and know your upper back and core WILL support the weight when you brace properly and pull the bar into you. This will allow you to push your hips back a little and to allow the bar to travel mid foot and allow for a much more powerful position to come out of the hole. Essentially what you saw in that last rep was your body trying to force you into a more powerful hip dominate squat like you squat when unwrapped. Problem was you tried to make the adjustment at the absolute weakest point of the movement and you tried to do it while not bracing and with a loose upper back. This obviously is a recipe for disaster. You can see what I’m talking about in these videos below. You have to sit back and down onto the wraps, you have to stay as vertical as possible WHILE still allowing the hips to come into play this means there will be some kind of forward torso lean nothing extreme but it just has to happen.
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@Reed thank you so much! I’ll re-read all that when I squat next week and make the necessary adjustments.
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Now I know what to look for I see exactly what you’re taking about. Wrapless I push my hips back just enough, wraps go on and my whole setup changes enough to throw me off.
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No problem man I hope it helps.
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It helps a ton. I should’ve known something was off when it took me so much longer to get into the groove than usual - which, to be honest, never happened, I just got into some weird kind of squat. Usually these days I feel pretty much dialled in from the first set on the empty bar. I’m going with being tired as my excuse for not picking up on this, which is a bullshit excuse.
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So, Rippetoe.
Not even. The only thing I agree with rippetoe on is your hips have to move back SOME and head should be Nuetral at best. After that he loses me especially with hand, elbow, and upper back placement.
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I’m inordinately pissed off at myself now because I made such obvious mistakes. Went over and checked and rechecked a bunch of my squat videos from the last month and a bit, and every makes sense now.
One very major positive is now, thanks to @Reed, I KNOW why wrapped squats have felt so shitty and what I need to do to fix it.
My mind sucks, because there was (and still is a little) part of it whispering that I’ve completely forgotten how to squat and whatever progress I’ve made in the last year got washed away by one tired, befuddled, day where I missed one rep. That despite misgrooving my squat today I still managed to hit all the other reps comfortably gets forgotten - which when I think about it cheers me up because it means when I get into my normal groove things should go run better. Anyone who thinks I’m rational needs their head examined.
Moral of this story: if the lift feels off/different from the first warmup set take a step back and figure out why before you go forward.
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You are an exceptional squatter, obviously. You’ll always be tweaking to get a little better though, and we all entrain some faulty movement patterns from time to time due to many different reasons. Imbalance is typically the #1 culprit, then muscles that are underused or turned off.
Reed is absolutely right though.
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I’ve found Reed usually is.
You’re very kind, and I’d say inaccurate about the exceptional part but I’ll let it slide.
Pain in the arse as it is to freak out like I do, on the flipside is means I generally don’t let bad habits creep in for too long. I’m guessing what happened today - not including the fuzzy headedness from fatigue leading me to ignore obvious issues - was the culmination of my squat slowing getting sloppier over the last month, which tellingly is a period where I’d been wondering why my squat felt ever so off above 400-440 lbs.
Now I’ll fix it good.
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Don’t beat your self up so bad man. It happens. Hell I still do it and do it often unfortunately. Just focus on what you can fix it. You know the issue now which means you know how to fix it. Your progress hasn’t been lost in any way. It will come back almost immediately once you bring it all back. Something that has helped me alot is hip circle goblet squats before moving into the bar bell. Opens my hips and let’s me feel where everything should be that day.
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Digging this thread right now. As usual.
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that was scary AF, you probably dont want to think about this (I sure dont LOL) but if that spotter had not been there I am not sure when you would be walking again.
You guys already figured it out so…I am also on team stability and wraps. You lost a lot of circumference and you looked a bit like a small tree in the wind.
I love the pause squat with wraps idea. Relearn your form and build that stability all in one go.
An option: Instead of a 51 or 31 at X weight make smaller jumps until you reach the desired RPE. Then if you want more volume drop the weight and hit 35 or 51 or what have you. I think this allows more room for variance (good and bad), applies more directly to a PL meet and still gives the heavy single volume you want.
From my own experience I can hit 90% every day on my worst day (barring injuries) but I wouldn’t know if I could hit multiple reps above 90% until getting in the 80+% range in that workout.
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