Hey guys just wondering if you could do me a favor and check my squat form and give me any feedback. Ive been doing stronglifts 5x5 for about 4 months after taking a year off from lifting for the most part to try out boxing. I am planning to switch to 5/3/1 this coming week.
this video is with 290lbs
It wouldn’t let me view the video said it was private. But cool you have a squat rack in your living room
sorry that was my first attempt at putting a video on the internet so still figuring it out should be fixed now.
After the first rep you lean forward a lot and on a couple of the reps depth looked questionable
The weight looks too heavy for you for five reps (a single is fine though). I’d do a video with lower weight if I wanted someone to check my form.
bdock- thanks, I feel like I do that when the weights get heavier, Is there a specific fix for that other than merely practice at not leaning too far forward? and yeah I live in a one bedroom apartment, not alot of extra room for lifting equipment.
smallmike- I’ll try to get a vid up of less weight in the next few days.
I disagree. It wasn’t too heavy for you for five reps, you did it for five lol. Form checks are normally better with heavier weight so we can see where form breaks down.
A few things:
you do lean pretty far forward. No quick fix for that, just focus on keeping your chest up, get your core and upper back strong, and maybe play around with a slightly higher bar position, which often helps people keep a more vertical torso.
there aren’t any glaring issues with your form… you just look kind of awkward. You don;t look comfortable with the movement at all. At the bottom, you aren’t really getting a stretch reflex at all, you are just kind of creaking into the bottom and then creaking out haha. Plus, you look like you could be a lot more explosive through the middle/top. You kind of slow down as you are locking the squat out and don’t look like you are squeezing your butt at all. You should definitely work repetitions on squat with lighter weight, in order to simply get more comfortable with the movement and ingrain the movement pattern into your muscle memory. Work on being smooth throughout the movement, getting a nice rebound out of the bottom with as vertical of a torso as you can, and exploding to the top of the movement.
But again, these are things that will come with time. Overall, nice work. Keep at it.
Thanks NK i’m starting 5/3/1 with the BBB template so I should get in some good lighter weight practice over the next few months
If you compare your first rep with your other reps, you can see that you definitely didn’t get as deep in the later reps. Since you were able to get below parallel with the first rep, the problem isn’t your movement pattern, it is lack of strength. Your first rep was fine.
smallmike, again I have to respectfully disagree. From that camera angle, I would say all of the reps are deep enough - only the 4th is questionable in my opinion, and it’s very close. But aside from that, movement pattern isn’t just about depth. It is about the smoothness and consistency of execution. I think you are right that the reps are not consistent - some are deeper, some have more forward lean, etc - but I don;t think that is indicative that the OP isn’t strong enough to lift the weight. He just needs more practice to make squatting second nature.
OP, 5/3/1 is a great program, and boring but big is definitely great to get practice on the big lifts. My one word of advice would be to err on the side of “too light” when you are programming the weight. Be honest with your 5/3/1 percentages, and start light with the 5 x 10 weight. That way, you have plenty of room to grow, and the focus is really on technique for a couple cycles before the weight gets heavy
I don’t kno if you other guys looked at the feet, but the heels raise a little bit sometimes. It’s nothing extremely serious at this point, but he would definetely get deeper with less forward lean and not having his heels raising if he wore some shoes with a heel. aka. olympic lifting shoes or so.