I’ve begun squatting… (and benching, too. Hope for a 200 lb bench by end of April)
But, I can’t seem to break parallel because my knees refuse to go past my toes when squatting.
Not because my ankle isn’t flexible (my knees can [b]go/b ~3" past my toes, easily), but because I just can’t seem to be able to have my weight shifted more to the front; I stay on my heels, with knees behind my toes, no matter how much I try.
What can I do?
Come to think of it: if I try to squat near a wall, I notice I can’t squat deep due to feeling the tibialis contracting strongly as my knees go forward, and stopping the movement of the tibia. Something like when your bis are so pumped you are no longer able to flex more than 90 or so degrees…only that my tibialises are not that big, nor pumped when I’m squatting. Also, I tend to fall backward.
Yah, don’t squat with your knees out over your toes? Generally it’s a great way to tear up your knees for most people (obviously there is exceptions to this). For the most part though, most everyone would recommend keeping your knees behind your toes, or at the very least in line with it. Go watch the “So you think you can squat” series at Elitefts.
you should be aiming to keep your shins as vertical as possible, and in fact should be trying not to let your knees shoot forward. Watch the “so you think you can squat series” bye whenning from EFS on youtube, then watch coach Ripptoe teach the squat.
your knees SHOULD however, track your toes, which means that as the bend they point in the same direction as your toes, but does not mean that they need to be over or past your toes at all.
Your weight SHOULD stay on your heels as you sit back; you should be pushing your knees out, not forward. Can you squat like that to a high box? To a parallel box?
Weren’t “olympic” squats good for your knees, and also much easier to recover from, than PL squats?
The torque on the hips increases manyfold if you don’t let your knees shoot past the toes. The extra % torque on the hips when knees don’t go past toes is something like 1000%, compared to knees going past toes, while the torque on the knees is less than 50% greater when knees shoot past compared to them not shooting past.
(ugh, it feels like I’m sitting on a soap box. Sorry. This is not what I’m doing, just saying WHY I want to squat oly style)
Also, I’m trying to add some quad mass, and PL squats would probably be just slightly better than sumo DLs. Of which I do plenty.
Keeping your weight on your heels applies to any style of squat except sissy squats. Same goes for pushing your knees out. Watch whatever “olympic” squatting you were using as a touchstone and you’ll see the knees go out and the hips open up to allow the lifter to get down into the hole. The knees coming forward thing is a side effect of the more upright torso that goes with the high bar position. By itself, “knees forward” is not a good cue for the squat or something to shoot for.
Having trained with Ed Coan for the past month, I’ve come to learn a couple of things.
Butt wink is inevitable when you’re a raw squatter.
Your knees will go forward.
Sit back as much as possible while maintaining form.
Keep the weight on your heels.
So, what can you gather from this? Your knees will go forward no matter what if you’re a raw squatter, especially if you take a narrow stance.
Another word regarding your squat - if you haven’t already, bring your stance in. The wider you go, the sooner your hips will lock up, causing you to cut your squats high.
Not sounding like a jerk here. But this is the PL forum. So most of us here are going to squat in a PL style. While that may not be super wide, most of us (and there are exceptions) will not be squatting Oly style. You probably should have started out by saying that is how you are trying to squat. Even though most of your questions have been answered well. Here is one more thing, then maybe you should go ask some of the Oly guys in that forum what’s up. If you are wanting a high bar, narrow stance, (oly squat), then yes your toes are going to go further beyond your toes then in a power style squat, but weight will never been on your toes. But here is the thing missed… most of the guys doing that are wearing shoes that help facilitate this, with a .5 to .75in elevated heel. Last thing from me; there are plenty of ways to squat that are safe for your knees and hips that still fall into the power style of squatting. Go chat with some oly guys or take the sound advice of the guys here. Good luck.
Well, as said, take the advice that was given here, the weight definitely shouldn’t be on your toes regardless of whether or not you’re doing oly style or powerlifting style squats.
My bad, by “shift weight forward”, I didn’t mean “shift it on my toes”, but somehow get the knees to go forward while keeping my weight on my heels, since my knees insist on not going past my toes when squatting.
This not being about me lacking the flexibility, but somehow not managing to squat with knees going forward enough.
Thanks anyway.
As for the “you think you can squat”: I’m NOT interested in PL type squats. Again, sorry for posting in the wrong forum.
Even if you’re not interested in PL type squats there’s a ton you can take away from “So you think you can squat series”. I squat more mid-narrow stance (about shoulder width) and a bit more high bar since it doesn’t make a herniated disc of mine flare up as bad and I definitely learned a good bit from those videos.
Again, not sure why you think your knees should go forward a ton unless you’re trying to destroy your knees. Oly lifters/PL lifters alike try to avoid their knees going out far over their toes. Oly lifters will have a bit more due in part to the shoes they wear (as was mentioned earlier).
Thank you very much, LM. I’m not necessarily interested in my knees going forward a lot; I am in being able to squat deep and not putting too much stress on my spine (a la PL squat), since I also DL with a high frequency.
Also, I want to train with a high frequency, a la Broz, and I read (on Bret Contreras’ blog, IIRC), that you can only do this with oly squats, since PL squats are much more taxing on the posterior chain, and use a lower ROM and heavier weights.
Solution to doing broz training via powerlifting would be to box squat more which is less taxing on the CNS than oly squats. The CNS limitation is more the issue than the stress on the posterior chain. This is why John Broz doesn’t have his athletes deadlift all that often. That being said you’re likely to recover from oly squatting easier due to less of an eccentric and lighter loads being used.
When you go to the oly forum to discuss you may want to think about what it is you’re trying to accomplish and how to explain it to people. There’s a lot of poor communication that makes it hard to really give you much advice. Just my 2 cents.
If you’ve just started squatting, I don’t understand how you’ve reached the conclusion you need to squat olympic style (at high frequency, no less). Why not find the variation that works best for right now, in terms of being able to do it correctly, and use that as a stepping stone to trying whatever style you think is optimal?
[quote]Sterneneisen wrote:
My bad, by “shift weight forward”, I didn’t mean “shift it on my toes”, but somehow get the knees to go forward while keeping my weight on my heels, since my knees insist on not going past my toes when squatting.
This not being about me lacking the flexibility, but somehow not managing to squat with knees going forward enough.
Thanks anyway.
As for the “you think you can squat”: I’m NOT interested in PL type squats. Again, sorry for posting in the wrong forum.[/quote]
I generally agree with Oly squatting, and have shifted towards doing this almost exclusively myself now. However I still maintain a very healthy respect for PL style squatting and will do that if I compete in a meet in the future here.
However, it seems you may in fact have mobility problems when trying to squat…there is more to flexibility and mobility than just the ankle joint. You might be trying to squat “on top of” your knees rather than “between” your knees. You need hip mobility too, and adductor/abductor flexibility to squat Oly style with weight on your heels and the knees slightly in front of your toes.
It is hard to understand exactly what you are describing without a video, so I may be wrong.
I subscribe to the “Ed Coan” style power squat that CSeagle described. Feet slightly outside shoulders, knees out, butt back. I see no real point in doing olympic squats unless it’s for assistance work to hit the squats a little harder or you actually plan on training the olympic lifts.
No matter what type of squat you’re doing, stern, you are using the wrong queues. Think knees out, butt back, or knees out, sit down. On the subject of which type of squatting is safer, probably neither. If you power squat you will probably hurt your back or hips sooner or later, if you oly squat you will fuck your knees up at some point. Don’t expect to lift heavy weights without hurting yourself sooner or later, no matter what you do. If you are training hard enough your joints will ache and hurt and your muscles will be tight.
As far as frequency goes, you can train both types of squat with high frequency if you want. Don’t believe that shit about power squats being “too taxing on the CNS.” As Mark Bell says, there is no such thing as overtraining, only being undertrained for the task you’re about to perform.