I’m squatting without a belt or knee wraps Olympic style, high bar, ATG, and with toes pointed out about 30 degrees right now.
I’ve used a lot of different styles, bar placements, and have used 10mm belts and knee wraps, etc over the years but one thing has not changed my low back/core always fails before my legs.
I was thinking about it after I ground out my last 2 reps on my last set of squats today and my despite my quads having 3-4 more reps in them my hips rose faster than my shoulders on my last two reps because my core was fatigued. I was curious to see if anyone here actually has their legs fail before their back does. What does your training look like?
Also my deadlift greatly outpaces my pull. I’m assuming I can make a lot of easy gains focusing on ab work right now.
I had some of the exact same issues. My DL was 120 pounds higher than my wrapped squat and I had trouble staying upright, had knee pain etc. and when I switched to low bar and wider stance, it helped a ton. I don’t get bent over near as bad. And when you do its a easier position for a good morning. Give it a shot for a few weeks. Also I found ab wheels and stiff legged deads extremely helpful
I thought about posting a topic similar to this asking people how they create a ‘shelf’ when they set up for the squat, but I was going to hold off for a few months to see if I have finally figured it out for myself. I have experienced the same thing as you constantly making tweaks trying to figure out why my back/core would always fail and it was extremely frustrating always running into the same problem. After so many years I finally figured out that I was using a cue that doesn’t work for me.
I learned to set up for the squat by pinching my shoulder blades together but it put me in a position where I couldn’t fully utilize my lats. I knew my problem wasn’t solely from having weak abs because I did a lot of core bracing movements which improved strength a bit but I would still find my chest caving in when going really heavy.
My hint was that I learned how to utilize my lats correctly for both the deadlift and bench over the past year and that has allowed me to maintain form up to maximal weights. Because of that I knew I somehow needed to create better tension in my lats while squatting.
Since my torso remains rigid during the deadlift, I tried to replicate that torso position for the squat - the only way for me to do it is by having my shoulder blades in a neutral position while externally rotating my shoulders to pull my elbows down. I basically pretended I was doing a deadlift (having tightness in my chest, lats, abs, erectors and packing my neck) but the only difference was moving my hands up to reach the bar without losing tightness anywhere. This position also relieved loading in my arms and placed it all on my upper back. By doing this, I’m able to create a ton of tension in my lats which create the ‘shelf’.
I don’t know for sure if I have solved the problem but I feel like I’m getting closer. Like you I would like to get to the point where my torso doesn’t fail, and lack of leg strength is the only reason for a missed attempt. Hope this helps.
common misconsception in my opinion
I have heard loads of people saying the exact same thing as you do.
Your legs are weak why your body transfers the load to your stronger posterior chain.
Your hips rises faster in order lock out your legs in an easier manner.
Same thing with deadlifts.
People don’t flex their lower backs because they’re weak in their post.chain/core/whatever but because their erectors are their strong point.
addition:
I will bet that you will NOT have this problem if you try squatting a similar weight with knee wraps on thereby enforcing your knee extension
[quote]Donk wrote:
common misconsception in my opinion
I have heard loads of people saying the exact same thing as you do.
Your legs are weak why your body transfers the load to your stronger posterior chain.
Your hips rises faster in order lock out your legs in an easier manner.
Same thing with deadlifts.
People don’t flex their lower backs because they’re weak in their post.chain/core/whatever but because their erectors are their strong point.
Hope this makes sense to you
[/quote]
Yup, this is exactly what I was going to say. Your body will naturally shift the load to stronger muscles. If you can’t stay upright more often than not your legs are weak. So you’re naturally tilting forward to take load off your legs and put it on you posterior chain. Your legs probably aren’t getting tired, because they aren’t taking the load. Personally, I’d go to a load where you can still force yourself to stay good and upright and on your heels and train there.
I had/have the same problem and came to this conclusion, because my back would collapse forward on weights I’d stay upright with when I wrapped my knees. Stronger leg extension and my back wouldn’t fail.
You just can’t stay on your heels and upright with weak legs because you’ll simply fail the squat.
I’m like you I always did olympic style ATG and had really stalled around the 350/400lbs mark depending on my weight and conditioning etc I also did convential DL and assistance work was limited to good mornings, leg raises, leg curls, extensions and that was probably about it
I got a coach and straight away he added box squats, sumo DL with and without rack pulls, ab wheeling and some seated GMs and my DL and my 3RM squat and DL went up 20lbs in 4 weeks. Now we’re adding in front squats to aid in uprightness and things are steadily progressing.
Personally if I were you I’d start adding in some ab work just for peace of mind but sumos and box squats for sure to start to really strengthen your hips which help transfer leg/core strength and your posterior chain as that’s where most of the power should be coming from anyway.
Good luck! You can always get a coach for reasonable pricing ( mine was $100/mth on Fitocracy ) too which helps more if they’re seeing real lifts and you can bounced ideas off them.
[quote]Donk wrote:
common misconsception in my opinion
I have heard loads of people saying the exact same thing as you do.
Your legs are weak why your body transfers the load to your stronger posterior chain.
Your hips rises faster in order lock out your legs in an easier manner.
Same thing with deadlifts.
People don’t flex their lower backs because they’re weak in their post.chain/core/whatever but because their erectors are their strong point.
Hope this makes sense to you
[/quote]
Yup, this is exactly what I was going to say. Your body will naturally shift the load to stronger muscles. If you can’t stay upright more often than not your legs are weak. So you’re naturally tilting forward to take load off your legs and put it on you posterior chain. Your legs probably aren’t getting tired, because they aren’t taking the load. Personally, I’d go to a load where you can still force yourself to stay good and upright and on your heels and train there.
I had/have the same problem and came to this conclusion, because my back would collapse forward on weights I’d stay upright with when I wrapped my knees. Stronger leg extension and my back wouldn’t fail.
You just can’t stay on your heels and upright with weak legs because you’ll simply fail the squat.[/quote]
I agree. if your deadlift is much stronger then you don’t have a weak back. try to get stronger legs and you will probably be surprised how strong your back/core really is.
Out of curiosity, how do other people set up for the squat? Do you pinch the shoulder blades to its tightest position or keep them in a more neutral position? Should lat tightness be more important than shoulder blade positioning?
The reason why I ask is because it could be a mobility issue for me. When doing high bar I can pinch my shoulder blades to its tightest position and still pull my elbows to its lowest position underneath the bar. When doing low bar, if I pinch my shoulder blades I can’t bring my elbows down as much and I don’t feel as much lat engagement, but if I prioritize a lower elbow position first and let my shoulder blades remain neutral then my lats feel locked in. If my lats are locked in then my shoulders are too.
[quote]badwolf42 wrote:
I agree. if your deadlift is much stronger then you don’t have a weak back. try to get stronger legs and you will probably be surprised how strong your back/core really is.[/quote]
That’s exactly what my line of reasoning was in the past so I’m just offering another perspective. My back was strong in the deadlift because the first thing I learned about powerlifting or just lifting heavy in general was learning to use the posterior chain. It took awhile to learn to properly use the anterior chain (ab bracing) but once I did my deadlift felt so much better and stronger.
The posterior chain is as strong as its weakest link, as well as the anterior chain. Sure I fired all the muscles properly during the deadlift but it doesn’t automatically mean I did for squat. By not fully firing my lats, that forced all of the load onto my abs which couldn’t handle the high load so my chest would shift forward (the lats were finally loaded after being stretched into the good morning position). This shift puts the low back/glutes/hams in a position to handle more load and thus it is perceived that the quads are weak. If the bar never shifted in the first place, the quads could have easily handled the load. At this point, the back is fried and the quads didn’t get much work.
That is why it’s important to look through the entire posterior and anterior chain to see where the weak link is. The weak link doesn’t necessarily have to be a weak muscle, it can be an underutilized muscle.
Edit: It could be the case that the quads are weak and by placing all of the load on the posterior chain, the back is overloaded and thus fails. But I was thinking the OP had a similar case to mine since he felt he still had strength in his quads.
I learned to set up for the squat by pinching my shoulder blades together but it put me in a position where I couldn’t fully utilize my lats. I knew my problem wasn’t solely from having weak abs because I did a lot of core bracing movements which improved strength a bit but I would still find my chest caving in when going really heavy.
My hint was that I learned how to utilize my lats correctly for both the deadlift and bench over the past year and that has allowed me to maintain form up to maximal weights. Because of that I knew I somehow needed to create better tension in my lats while squatting.
Since my torso remains rigid during the deadlift, I tried to replicate that torso position for the squat - the only way for me to do it is by having my shoulder blades in a neutral position while externally rotating my shoulders to pull my elbows down. I basically pretended I was doing a deadlift (having tightness in my chest, lats, abs, erectors and packing my neck) but the only difference was moving my hands up to reach the bar without losing tightness anywhere. This position also relieved loading in my arms and placed it all on my upper back. By doing this, I’m able to create a ton of tension in my lats which create the ‘shelf’.
.[/quote]
I can’t really mentally picture this with a high bar squat. But I’ll try it next session.
[quote]Donk wrote:
common misconsception in my opinion
I have heard loads of people saying the exact same thing as you do.
Your legs are weak why your body transfers the load to your stronger posterior chain.
Your hips rises faster in order lock out your legs in an easier manner.
Same thing with deadlifts.
People don’t flex their lower backs because they’re weak in their post.chain/core/whatever but because their erectors are their strong point.
Hope this makes sense to you
[/quote]
Yup, this is exactly what I was going to say. Your body will naturally shift the load to stronger muscles. If you can’t stay upright more often than not your legs are weak. So you’re naturally tilting forward to take load off your legs and put it on you posterior chain. Your legs probably aren’t getting tired, because they aren’t taking the load. Personally, I’d go to a load where you can still force yourself to stay good and upright and on your heels and train there.
I had/have the same problem and came to this conclusion, because my back would collapse forward on weights I’d stay upright with when I wrapped my knees. Stronger leg extension and my back wouldn’t fail.
You just can’t stay on your heels and upright with weak legs because you’ll simply fail the squat.[/quote]
This is interesting and I’ll be changing my assistance excercises because of it.
[quote]ozzyaaron wrote:
What assistance work are you doing?
I’m like you I always did olympic style ATG and had really stalled around the 350/400lbs mark depending on my weight and conditioning etc I also did convential DL and assistance work was limited to good mornings, leg raises, leg curls, extensions and that was probably about it
I got a coach and straight away he added box squats, sumo DL with and without rack pulls, ab wheeling and some seated GMs and my DL and my 3RM squat and DL went up 20lbs in 4 weeks. Now we’re adding in front squats to aid in uprightness and things are steadily progressing.
Personally if I were you I’d start adding in some ab work just for peace of mind but sumos and box squats for sure to start to really strengthen your hips which help transfer leg/core strength and your posterior chain as that’s where most of the power should be coming from anyway.
Good luck! You can always get a coach for reasonable pricing ( mine was $100/mth on Fitocracy ) too which helps more if they’re seeing real lifts and you can bounced ideas off them. [/quote]
Leg day:
Leg curls
I make 3 30# jumps of sets of 20 reps. When my last and heaviest set hits 20 reps I add 15 pounds (one stack) to the machine for each set.
Olympic squat:
I work up to 3 work sets. When my work sets get to 30 total reps in the three sets I move up ~20 pounds and start over
Split squat
3x12-15
Hip thrust
3x20-30
DB RDL
3x 10-15
A few months ago one of my knees started acting up which is when I dropped leg extentions and leg pressing in favor of single leg work.
The leg press at my current gym doesnt really feel as comfortable as ones in the past but I’ll use it if I have to. Perhaps I should do front squats as an assistance or as a main lift for a few months.
I can’t really mentally picture this with a high bar squat. But I’ll try it next session.
[/quote]
Instead of shrugging my shoulder blades together and pinching them, I’ve been pulling them down along with my elbows like I’m setting up for the deadlift to feel the same lat tightness as for the deadlift.
I can’t really mentally picture this with a high bar squat. But I’ll try it next session.
[/quote]
Instead of shrugging my shoulder blades together and pinching them, I’ve been pulling them down along with my elbows like I’m setting up for the deadlift to feel the same lat tightness as for the deadlift.[/quote]
I try to “bend” over my shoulders by pulling down on it when squatting. I think we are getting at the same thing, and yes it is helpful. I havent been doing that because one of my elbows has been pretty inflamed the last 2-3 weeks. I’ll have to pick up an elbow sleeve.
I can’t really mentally picture this with a high bar squat. But I’ll try it next session.
[/quote]
Instead of shrugging my shoulder blades together and pinching them, I’ve been pulling them down along with my elbows like I’m setting up for the deadlift to feel the same lat tightness as for the deadlift.[/quote]
I think the key is to do both of those things. I feel strongest when my shoulder blades are anchored in and pinched together.
I personally am not sure how or why you would shrug up into the bar. I understand getting the back tight and compacted but I have never tried to shrug my traps up into the bar. I want to the bar to be as low as possible how ever I do not high bar at all. I want my hands in as close as possible to my shoulders and elbows pulled down and under flexing and tightening my lats and back as much as possible. Then pushing my head back into the bar to force position and there it is.
I can’t really mentally picture this with a high bar squat. But I’ll try it next session.
[/quote]
Instead of shrugging my shoulder blades together and pinching them, I’ve been pulling them down along with my elbows like I’m setting up for the deadlift to feel the same lat tightness as for the deadlift.[/quote]
I think the key is to do both of those things. I feel strongest when my shoulder blades are anchored in and pinched together.[/quote]
I’m able to do both with high bar, pinch the shoulders and pull them down, and I can get really tight. With low bar it feels like I can’t pull my shoulders down as hard and for now I’ll continue to prioritize pulling them down before pulling them together. I feel locked in using this method so I’ll give it another couple of months for a true evaluation.
[quote]Reed wrote:
I personally am not sure how or why you would shrug up into the bar. I understand getting the back tight and compacted but I have never tried to shrug my traps up into the bar. I want to the bar to be as low as possible how ever I do not high bar at all. I want my hands in as close as possible to my shoulders and elbows pulled down and under flexing and tightening my lats and back as much as possible. Then pushing my head back into the bar to force position and there it is.[/quote]
I don’t actually shrug up into the bar. I’ve tried pinching my shoulder blades as close as possible, like setting up for the bench. Maybe this actually does shrug my shoulders up a little bit when doing low bar. That’s the advise that I’ve seen thrown around and what I’ve been doing for the past seven year. I never knew what getting tight really meant for low bar, definitely was no where near the same level of tightness as for my deadlift. I’m finally doing what you describe.
I try to “bend” over my shoulders by pulling down on it when squatting. I think we are getting at the same thing, and yes it is helpful. I havent been doing that because one of my elbows has been pretty inflamed the last 2-3 weeks. I’ll have to pick up an elbow sleeve.[/quote]
I got some shoulder discomfort when switching to this new setup so I’ve been doing shoulder mobility/strengthening work since I think that’s the problem. My left shoulder is weaker than my right side and I have felt it in my left elbow.
You can always get a coach for reasonable pricing ( mine was $100/mth on Fitocracy ) too which helps more if they’re seeing real lifts and you can bounced ideas off them.