Squat Check (Help)

Training Powerlifting
61

Hey man, great video, everything looked great.

I really liked your back squat form, your staying nice and upright and coming up strong, I see 315 in the very near future. Don’t change a thing

Your deadlifts are great, I wouldn’t change a thing, although you seemed to arch your low back better in the last video, have you been doing the warm up? Did I ever give it to you? But great work, you’re breaking it off the floor, your hips aren’t rising, really great stuff.

Your bench looked great too, I wasn’t expecting it to look so good, you use your lats very well and keep your wrists nice and straight. I wouldn’t change much, maybe a bit more leg drive.

Good on your for wanting to eat more, I could see you looking pretty awesome with another 20lbs on you.

Great news about the shoes, those are going to help you so much.

Overall great work, great video, and keep following the plan and following up with me, you’re doing great

62

[quote]BreathIn wrote:
Hey mate, Thanks for the pointers. Just one point I dont really understand how to put into practice, you suggest not touching the bar so low on my bench. How do I go about doing this? It feels like if I was to touch higher it would put me in an awkward position? Maybe Im missing something though.

Thanks again for the help.[/quote]

Just keep doing what you’re doing, what the dude doesn’t realize is that you have very long arms and that’s the natural place for you to touch, any higher and your elbows will go below the bench as well as open you up for a pec strain or tear. You’ve got a good bench.

63

[quote]@JC_Tree_Trunks wrote:
Let your knees travel forward more on the decent. I know that is often said to be bad, but you are bending at the hips too much, and with a high bar deep squat that leaves you hunched over.

If you are going to squat like this, just place the bar lower on your back, and you’ll be good to go.

It is a very easy fix, great depth and good luck[/quote]

Hey man, I really like your advice about the back squat, it’s the advice I often give out and I strongly believe in it.

However, one thing you seem to be missing, is his bar position is neutral, and his knees are going as far forward as possible, the only problem he has is having very long legs, every long legged squatter gets bent over, I think he’s doing a great job staying upright right now.

I do agree with you though, and he has weightlifting shoes on the way which will help him get his knees even further forward.

He’s going to front squat 275 in a few more weeks, then smash a 315 squat not long after that, then we’ll get him to 405 within 6 months. At least that’s my plan anyways.

64

[quote]Larry10 wrote:

[quote]@JC_Tree_Trunks wrote:
Let your knees travel forward more on the decent. I know that is often said to be bad, but you are bending at the hips too much, and with a high bar deep squat that leaves you hunched over.

If you are going to squat like this, just place the bar lower on your back, and you’ll be good to go.

It is a very easy fix, great depth and good luck[/quote]

Hey man, I really like your advice about the back squat, it’s the advice I often give out and I strongly believe in it.

However, one thing you seem to be missing, is his bar position is neutral, and his knees are going as far forward as possible, the only problem he has is having very long legs, every long legged squatter gets bent over, I think he’s doing a great job staying upright right now.

I do agree with you though, and he has weightlifting shoes on the way which will help him get his knees even further forward.

He’s going to front squat 275 in a few more weeks, then smash a 315 squat not long after that, then we’ll get him to 405 within 6 months. At least that’s my plan anyways.[/quote]

As someone with proportionally long femurs and legs, ankle mobility drills are a must. Even more important than that for me is wearing a shoe without a heel lift for daily wear. If I want to squat down instead of back using a shoulder width or narrower stance, I still have to wear a shoe with a heel lift. But just that heel lift allowed me to do atg oly style squats with a hip width stance with the hip mobility I developed. Which leads me to getting your hips really mobile.

But for me that wasn’t enough. Even after being able to do a well below parallel squat with a sumo stance, I was still having trouble doing a shoulder width squat without a ton of sitting back. But just the heel lift fixed that.

65

Thanks all for the continued advice, and Larry for clearing up a few confusing details.

I assume you are talking about the dynamic lower body warm up (dude in a squash court?) Ive been doing that every training day although I could possibly stop being lazy and start doing it on off days too if it would help.

Regarding weight I was up about 25 pounds from when I started lifting but stalled at around 190 when my work load increased dramatically. But I think Ive got this back on track now.

Thanks again everyone, hope you all are having great holidays.

66

[quote]Larry10 wrote:

[quote]BreathIn wrote:
Hey mate, Thanks for the pointers. Just one point I dont really understand how to put into practice, you suggest not touching the bar so low on my bench. How do I go about doing this? It feels like if I was to touch higher it would put me in an awkward position? Maybe Im missing something though.

Thanks again for the help.[/quote]

Just keep doing what you’re doing, what the dude doesn’t realize is that you have very long arms and that’s the natural place for you to touch, any higher and your elbows will go below the bench as well as open you up for a pec strain or tear. You’ve got a good bench.[/quote]

Okay. Look at my avatar. I have a ridiculous reach. His elbows are not right under the bar when he benches. The bench looks great but i was just trying to point out what ever I could to help him out and its not perfect. I’m not the best bencher but my coach is. Hes benched over 900 pounds in a full meet. I’m currently using a close stance high bar style squat because I made the switch from multi ply to raw due to some hip injuries from the super wide squatting. Your using a lot of back in your squat which is fine but if you want to use your legs more for the squat then its a matter of opening your hips and forcing your knees outward. You want to use your hips more no matter what and if your knees travel to far forward then a lot of the stress will be put on your quads and knees. It’s up to you if you want to be more of a leg squatter or a back squatter but I would say your knees are already coming to far forward and it looks like they cave in as well which can result in some pretty bad MCL sprains. Hope this helps.

67

[quote]Fletch1986 wrote:

[quote]Larry10 wrote:

[quote]@JC_Tree_Trunks wrote:
Let your knees travel forward more on the decent. I know that is often said to be bad, but you are bending at the hips too much, and with a high bar deep squat that leaves you hunched over.

If you are going to squat like this, just place the bar lower on your back, and you’ll be good to go.

It is a very easy fix, great depth and good luck[/quote]

Hey man, I really like your advice about the back squat, it’s the advice I often give out and I strongly believe in it.

However, one thing you seem to be missing, is his bar position is neutral, and his knees are going as far forward as possible, the only problem he has is having very long legs, every long legged squatter gets bent over, I think he’s doing a great job staying upright right now.

I do agree with you though, and he has weightlifting shoes on the way which will help him get his knees even further forward.

He’s going to front squat 275 in a few more weeks, then smash a 315 squat not long after that, then we’ll get him to 405 within 6 months. At least that’s my plan anyways.[/quote]

As someone with proportionally long femurs and legs, ankle mobility drills are a must. Even more important than that for me is wearing a shoe without a heel lift for daily wear. If I want to squat down instead of back using a shoulder width or narrower stance, I still have to wear a shoe with a heel lift. But just that heel lift allowed me to do atg oly style squats with a hip width stance with the hip mobility I developed. Which leads me to getting your hips really mobile.

But for me that wasn’t enough. Even after being able to do a well below parallel squat with a sumo stance, I was still having trouble doing a shoulder width squat without a ton of sitting back. But just the heel lift fixed that. [/quote]

great advice

68

[quote]Fletch1986 wrote:

As someone with proportionally long femurs and legs, ankle mobility drills are a must. Even more important than that for me is wearing a shoe without a heel lift for daily wear. If I want to squat down instead of back using a shoulder width or narrower stance, I still have to wear a shoe with a heel lift. But just that heel lift allowed me to do atg oly style squats with a hip width stance with the hip mobility I developed. Which leads me to getting your hips really mobile.

But for me that wasn’t enough. Even after being able to do a well below parallel squat with a sumo stance, I was still having trouble doing a shoulder width squat without a ton of sitting back. But just the heel lift fixed that. [/quote]

Hey man, was wondering if you could help me out with which ankle drills you found that worked to solve this issue?

Thanks alot for the advice.

69

So heres the video for this fridays squat session, 185x5x5.

My shoes seem to have lost all grip on them (carpet doesnt help either) so I threw a yoga mat under me which actually made a big difference. Hopefully my shoes will have arrived by next week. Knees seem to be doing a lot of messy stuff at the bottom of the squat.

Cheers guys, heres the clip.

70

I’m not that alarmed by your knees to be honest, but I have been watching them for a while wondering if something is going on.

Could u take the next video from straight on? that will give me all I need to figure out what’s going on.

Good job on the front squats by the way, I see some big numbers coming soon.

71

Alright mate, Ill film mondays squats from the front.

They dont paticularly hurt, slight aches and pains but nothing that Ive been worried about.

On a side note do you have any suggestions to deal with elbow pain, not 100% on what caused it but it seems to come and go every 2 - 3 weeks. Pain seems to be coming from the middle to outer of the elbow and sometimes up to the lower part of my biceps.

Cheers.

Ps Larry hope the holiday period was kind to you.

72

My first thought would be from the back squatting, that’s what usually gets me as well as others, then it’s aggravated from the benching and rows.

I’d try a simple triceps stretch to get rid of the elbow pain as it could be caused from tight triceps, and a thumbs down pec stretch to target the bicep pai. You just put the back of your hand to the wall, thumb down, and stretch and you should feel it in the bicep.

Foam rolling your tricep and bicep would also be a big help, a PVC pipe with a towel wrapped around it and duct taped on is a good cheap option and what I have at my own place.

I wouldn’t worry about the knee pain too much, when you’re working your quads like you are, they get tight and pull on the patellar tendon. It’s not an indication of a potential injury, a fully loaded squat has about 1800N of force on the knees, and it takes 4400 to blow out a patellar, so you should be fine.

Keep updated though, and let me know how the stretches go.

73

Call me stupid, but for the life of me I cannot figure out how that stretch is meant to work. I’ll start rolling them also as I did buy a foam roller a couple of weeks back.

I had thought it was back squats, but then also thought it may have been pressure on them from increased front squats.

Cheers mate.

74

just do a pec stretch, but instead of putting your palm on the wall, put the back of your hand on the wall thumb down, just play around with it.

And it’s hard to know for sure what’s causing the pain, but I’d start rolling around and when you find a really bad spot just focus on it.

75

Ah cool I get it now (was trying to put back of hand on the wall behind me, couldnt figure out how back of hand was meant to be on wall with thumb down).

Cool mate, I’ll work on the stretch and rolling.

Would adding curls help in any way? I find them boring as hell so Ive never done more than a set here and there every few weeks.

76

[quote]BreathIn wrote:
Ah cool I get it now (was trying to put back of hand on the wall behind me, couldnt figure out how back of hand was meant to be on wall with thumb down).

Cool mate, I’ll work on the stretch and rolling.

Would adding curls help in any way? I find them boring as hell so Ive never done more than a set here and there every few weeks.[/quote]

Your biceps run underneath your deltoids so keeping them healthy can help keep your shoulder healthy. It will also help prevent biceps tears during pulls. They can help elbow health too. So just get a light cheap set of db’s for home and crank out some curls every now and then. Hammer curls, concentration curls, supinated grip curls, pronated grip, whatever. Just do some.

They require very little of your recovery reserves. However, I would avoid doing a lot of work before deadlifting.

77

Ok so Ive got the front angle squat video for you to check out.

Shoes arrived yesterday so this was the first time using them. For whatever reason the 3rd and 4th sets felt a lot better than the first 2. Possibly should have added sets to my warm up to really get used to squatting in the shoes. Dunno.

Cheers guys.

78

Hey man, so sorry I haven’t been able to be on here lately, new job and my own lifting commitments and it pisses my gf off when I’m on the laptop and we don’t have much time together.

Overall squats are looking great, I’m not worried about your knees at all.

There do seem to be some minor imbalances, and you’re twisting ever so slightly, but overall looking great, just keep up with the hip warm up and it should go away.

79

All good mate, congratulations on the new job hope its treating you well. Got to keep the miss’ happy!

Doing the max rep set of 220 tomorrow so Ill film that, then onto testing my 1rm next week. Need to figure out what to do programming wise after that. Should I look at figuring out what my maxes are for lifts? I have an idea of where they are at but I havnt pulled singles in deadlifts or back squatted singles ever.

Been doing the warm ups religiously have also added a few hip/groin moves as that is an area that gives me alot of pain. Found a great video on mobility wod using a lacrosse ball tied to a barbell in the armpit, really been freeing up my entire shoulder/upper back area fantastically.