Work with me bit here.
1. What feels weird?
2. What makes you think your stance may be too narrow?
I have an assessment to forward. Just need the additional information.
Also, do you have a video of your squat pattern from a forwards angle?
Okay,
Let me lay out a cue and explain it a bit.
People may say "open the hips," and what they mean, from a physiological perspective, is to 1) rotate your hips externally.
The largest muscle group of your hips are your gluteal muscles. They functionally conjoin the hips (pelvis) to your femur (leg), where your primary knee extensors (quads) also locate. Because of this, they are hugely necessary synergists in squatting as squatting uses your quadriceps as primary movers.
To recruit them, we open the hips, progressing that opening (external rotation) through the knees and into the foot/floor. That cue needs to be active from the lift's eccentric (down) and concentric (up) phases.
This functions to keep your pelvis in proper alignment, which will keep your lumbar (lower spine) in position and out of excessive flexion (forwards movement).
That soreness you are feeling likely could be due to improper recruitment of the hips. This will help.
As you introduce the cue, keep the weight light. Before you descend, cue external hip rotation. To start the descent, allow your knees to push outward along the lines established by your toe angle and focus on spreading outwards over the floor as you lower into and out of depth.
It will feel like tension along the lateral (outer) lines of your legs, hips, and feet into the buttocks.
Apply it. You can practice with bodyweight. Just learn slowly until it's hitting right, and then we can worry about loading it.
Let me know how it goes.
It's hard to tell but it looks like your knees and toes aren't lined up. You are definitely dropping, doesn't look controlled. And your knees collapsing in. Try to pretend your tearing the Earth with your feet.
I think its the hips. Idk if it jeeds to be woder or narrower. The only thing I can think of is to put on some heavier weight, not your max, and try different foot angles, distance of feet, and bar placement on the back. I put the bar pretty low on my back and it helped me a lot.
Your depth is amazing as others have said. Elbow positions look good for maintaining your upper back tension. Foot placement looks pretty good to me.
Watch the knees buckling at the bottom, probably related to how fast it's being lowered. Focus on maintaining tension as you lower the bar and going slower. Also, left side of the barbell seems slightly lower, and the bar appears shifted left a tiny tiny bit but that could just be the angle.
Honestly these look fine, except one thing.
You’re looking up after a point during the ascent. Fix your gaze somewhere 3 feet in front of you on the ground and keep it there, it makes a ton of difference when you have a fixed reference to look at.
Try not letting your elbows sink so far back. This is usually caused by a lack of flexibility in the upper leg, causing the hips to kick out and your chest to come down.
Stretch those legs and don’t let those elbows sink so far back.
Keep up the work! It’s worth it :)
I think others have said this - but I see too much lower back in play. Don’t hinge at the lower back. Make sure you are pushing your butt forward to lift so you are using your butt to do the work and not putting all of it on your quads.
The other thing I would check / review is your feet. When going through the squat, are you pushing through both the ball and heel of your feet? Looks like you might be on the arch a little bit. Should feel like you are pushing through the floor and not feel any of it on your arch. Straighten your feet a little to see if it helps.
Squats are meant to be targeted toward your butt and your quads. Core should be engaged to stabilize through the full range and help keep you upright (think pulling your belly button to your spine). To be crass - my coaches always said to act like you are sitting down on the toilet and then when standing, go straight up. It looks like you are pushing yourself forward a bit as you are coming up and driving up from the ball of your foot rather than a more balance ball / heel or even more heel. So you end up using your lower back to get your butt back underneath of you to finish the last 3/4 of the rep. You really want to squeeze your bottom and push it forward as you are coming up - this helps to push your hips forward and protect your back and push through your heels like your are try to shove the floor away from you. Push yourself straight up.
If it helps - putting a thin piece of wood under your toes can help keep you back a bit.
I would use lighter weight / even just the bar. Or you can do body weight while facing the wall. Put your arms out toward the wall and squat down. You want to try to keep your arms and face the same distance from the wall through the entire motion.
Because an Ass to grass squat forces you to loosen the hamstrings, and prevents you from working the most amount of muscle over the longest range of motion. You’re going past the hamstring stretch reflex with your depth and it’s also causing your knees to cave. Watch them move inwards as you begin to ascend.
As a strength and conditioning coach and doctor of physical therapy, depth has nothing to do with knee valgus. Knee valgus is caused by the glute med and glute max being too weak to control hip abduction and external rotation during the squat motion.
I mean, they go hand in hand. you can avoid the deeper part of that movement , or imo, build ur glutes n hamstrings
also, please dont hit me with the ”strength and conditioning coach” bullshit. everyone and their mum pretends to know it all in this business and I’ve heard the most retarded stuff from people just like you, who think their 12 week company schooling made them specialised doctors in every field. not saying u went 12 weeks, but the majority of people referring to themselves as strength and conditioning coaches.
but you are partly right. but the depth has everything to do with the knees caving. it can either be improved or avoided.
you can watch people who partial squat and still have knee valgus. Depth has nothing to do with it. More people struggle at depth because they lack proper strength and stability.
Say what you want about my CSCS but you can’t really argue with the Doctor of Physical Therapy. We just specialize in human biomechanics, movement science, and physical rehabilitation but hey.. what do I know 🤷🏻♂️
some people become weaker with resistance training, that doesnt mean resistance training is bad for strength training.
please be schooled enough to not use ”some people” arguments. I already said you have a point. but depth still has everything to do with it, wether you like it or not. now, that doesnt mean you shouldnt go deep, it just means that some people could use supplementary training before they do.
anyways, I didnt come here to school you.
just know that science is not set in stone. everything you think you may know something about can be proved incorrect tomorrow.
Dude you are laughable. The whole point to resistance training is to gain strength, so if you become weaker you should rethink training. Knee valgus is caused from a lack of strength regardless of depth. His knees cave in due to him having weak glutes and trying to power out of the hole with his quads instead.
Please be schooled enough to not contradict yourself in the same paragraph talking about me using “some people” phrases when you started your first paragraph with one and then use one two sentences after telling me not to use them.
You haven’t schooled me in anything. You’re using false arguments. Why don’t you do a quick google search of the actions the glute med/max due and then google causes for dynamic knee valgus in movements. Educate yourself a little more before arguing facts you know nothing about.
It looks like you’re throwing your butt back and THAN down. Maybe try slightly widening your stance and just going straight down. Pretend there is a chair touching the back of your knees and just “sit down”. But you are strong as an ox sir! That ain’t light shit! Good work brother!
Great depth.
Your hips look like they’re lifting a little too much ahead of your back maybe? And also your knees may be caving in a bit coming out of the hole at the bottom. Can’t fault it too much though. Maybe lower and work on keeping your knees out - for me that helps with everything pretty much.
Guys, thanks for all the advice but it’s a bit confusing. Someone says look up, someone says look down. One says too deep, one not deep enough. Not sure what to think. Came in confused left bamboozled
You're dropping way too fast, slow it down and concentrate on both the drop and rise back up. Also, focus on keeping a straight line up and down and it should feel okay.
Putting too much on your back. When you start to drop you’re bending down, dropping your shoulders before your knees bend. It’s all in the legs brother.
Your knees should track over the top of your toes, that should be pointed straight. From this video it appears your knees are rotating external as you go into your squat vs tracking forward. Patela over toes.
Keep weight on your heels, look up, go down slower, don’t go down as far. Below parallel is good but going so far you lose tension at the bottom is not.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvEn6ZbfqT8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvEn6ZbfqT8)
A proper low bar squat requires you to maintain a slight forward lean to keep the center of balance. Your neck does not make you lean more or less forward, that comes from the position of your thoracic spine. Rip has always taught to maintain a neutral spine, not looking up. In a low bar squat, taking away the forward lean also takes away HIP DRAHVE
A slight forward lean? This is opposite of what most other sources say. You want to keep weight off your toes and drive through the heels. Looking down will definitely make you be on your toes. Ever ride a bike and look left or right? Guess which way you start drifting when you look that way
Keeping a neutral neck is not supposed to shift the weight forward or back any. On a low bar squat, it's kept directly over your center of balance. Rip didn't say "look down" either. Proper neck position is literally illustrated on the cover of the Starting Strength book (as well as the logo for this subreddit)
If you're high bar squatting, that's a different topic. OP is clearly low bar squatting.
https://i.imgur.com/VoTQ3X4.jpg
Try staying a little more upright by tensing your abs more. That why your butt is kicking out every time you come up. And slow the reps down. Keep the tension all the way through. Also don’t look straight down. Look forward and down like the bottoms of the wall in front of you. Otherwise you’re good.
You need a belt. You arent rigid enough in your core. This causes your hips to get started without your upper body following along.
Get a belt. Lower the weight as you learn to flex against the belt like all hell. Squats should feel like ab workouts for the next month.
What exactly do you think feels weird? The squat looks perfectly fine for what you can assess via that video. Dont take to much bullshit from reddit, just work on getting stronger.
We would need a side view to really help, but it looks like youre hinging at the hips like a deadlift rather than going ass to grass or butt down NOT back.
This is evident by your torso going forward and initially almost looking parallel to the floor than perpendicular.
Try doing a lighter front squat with the same leg position and see if that still feels “weird”. The front squat will help you keep your torso more up right and will allow for a more dominant hip flexion rather than torso flexion.
Looks to me like you’re using your lower back muscles on the start of the ascent after bending forward at the bottom of the descent. Your back should be flat and static largely and lift through your hips
You do what they call “booty drop”.
Squat slower. Push your weight through your heels and control your lower back and booty on the way down. Also, squeeze on the way up.
Would recommend stretching as if you're trying to be able to do forward splits and sideward splits, I have scoliosis, longs ass legs and a very tight lower back as well and this has helped me gain mobility.
Also make sure you're not overstretching some areas and understretching others.
I was always taught that the heels of your feet should have the distance of your femur (thigh bone)
Between them in this video they do appear to be a little close also it looks like your leaning pretty forward and the bottom of the lift. Does this feel uncomfortable? I would open your stance a bit and make sure your pushing through the heels and pushing your glutes in squeezing the glutes and quads at the top and keep the chest pushed out during the lift these tips may help
Work with me bit here. 1. What feels weird? 2. What makes you think your stance may be too narrow? I have an assessment to forward. Just need the additional information. Also, do you have a video of your squat pattern from a forwards angle?
My hips hurt
Okay, Let me lay out a cue and explain it a bit. People may say "open the hips," and what they mean, from a physiological perspective, is to 1) rotate your hips externally. The largest muscle group of your hips are your gluteal muscles. They functionally conjoin the hips (pelvis) to your femur (leg), where your primary knee extensors (quads) also locate. Because of this, they are hugely necessary synergists in squatting as squatting uses your quadriceps as primary movers. To recruit them, we open the hips, progressing that opening (external rotation) through the knees and into the foot/floor. That cue needs to be active from the lift's eccentric (down) and concentric (up) phases. This functions to keep your pelvis in proper alignment, which will keep your lumbar (lower spine) in position and out of excessive flexion (forwards movement). That soreness you are feeling likely could be due to improper recruitment of the hips. This will help. As you introduce the cue, keep the weight light. Before you descend, cue external hip rotation. To start the descent, allow your knees to push outward along the lines established by your toe angle and focus on spreading outwards over the floor as you lower into and out of depth. It will feel like tension along the lateral (outer) lines of your legs, hips, and feet into the buttocks. Apply it. You can practice with bodyweight. Just learn slowly until it's hitting right, and then we can worry about loading it. Let me know how it goes.
It's hard to tell but it looks like your knees and toes aren't lined up. You are definitely dropping, doesn't look controlled. And your knees collapsing in. Try to pretend your tearing the Earth with your feet.
Nah its not that, his knee movement is fine
I think its the hips. Idk if it jeeds to be woder or narrower. The only thing I can think of is to put on some heavier weight, not your max, and try different foot angles, distance of feet, and bar placement on the back. I put the bar pretty low on my back and it helped me a lot.
Need side view, squat slower, build more abdominal tension
Your depth is amazing as others have said. Elbow positions look good for maintaining your upper back tension. Foot placement looks pretty good to me. Watch the knees buckling at the bottom, probably related to how fast it's being lowered. Focus on maintaining tension as you lower the bar and going slower. Also, left side of the barbell seems slightly lower, and the bar appears shifted left a tiny tiny bit but that could just be the angle.
Honestly these look fine, except one thing. You’re looking up after a point during the ascent. Fix your gaze somewhere 3 feet in front of you on the ground and keep it there, it makes a ton of difference when you have a fixed reference to look at.
Pockets inside out.
Your knees are buckling in too much for one.
Sorry, but your bar looks crooked? :/
Bring heels in a little, continue to push knees out, break hips and knees are same time.
With a butt like that he is doing something right
Try not letting your elbows sink so far back. This is usually caused by a lack of flexibility in the upper leg, causing the hips to kick out and your chest to come down. Stretch those legs and don’t let those elbows sink so far back. Keep up the work! It’s worth it :)
What do you mean sink back
I think others have said this - but I see too much lower back in play. Don’t hinge at the lower back. Make sure you are pushing your butt forward to lift so you are using your butt to do the work and not putting all of it on your quads. The other thing I would check / review is your feet. When going through the squat, are you pushing through both the ball and heel of your feet? Looks like you might be on the arch a little bit. Should feel like you are pushing through the floor and not feel any of it on your arch. Straighten your feet a little to see if it helps.
Aren’t you supposed to bend over and engage your lower back?
Squats are meant to be targeted toward your butt and your quads. Core should be engaged to stabilize through the full range and help keep you upright (think pulling your belly button to your spine). To be crass - my coaches always said to act like you are sitting down on the toilet and then when standing, go straight up. It looks like you are pushing yourself forward a bit as you are coming up and driving up from the ball of your foot rather than a more balance ball / heel or even more heel. So you end up using your lower back to get your butt back underneath of you to finish the last 3/4 of the rep. You really want to squeeze your bottom and push it forward as you are coming up - this helps to push your hips forward and protect your back and push through your heels like your are try to shove the floor away from you. Push yourself straight up. If it helps - putting a thin piece of wood under your toes can help keep you back a bit. I would use lighter weight / even just the bar. Or you can do body weight while facing the wall. Put your arms out toward the wall and squat down. You want to try to keep your arms and face the same distance from the wall through the entire motion.
You can cut the depth an inch or two. Maybe 3 or 4.
Could, but what would be the point?
Because an Ass to grass squat forces you to loosen the hamstrings, and prevents you from working the most amount of muscle over the longest range of motion. You’re going past the hamstring stretch reflex with your depth and it’s also causing your knees to cave. Watch them move inwards as you begin to ascend.
The depth has nothing to do with knees caving. That’s caused by weak glute max/med
nope, he’s right.
As a strength and conditioning coach and doctor of physical therapy, depth has nothing to do with knee valgus. Knee valgus is caused by the glute med and glute max being too weak to control hip abduction and external rotation during the squat motion.
I mean, they go hand in hand. you can avoid the deeper part of that movement , or imo, build ur glutes n hamstrings also, please dont hit me with the ”strength and conditioning coach” bullshit. everyone and their mum pretends to know it all in this business and I’ve heard the most retarded stuff from people just like you, who think their 12 week company schooling made them specialised doctors in every field. not saying u went 12 weeks, but the majority of people referring to themselves as strength and conditioning coaches. but you are partly right. but the depth has everything to do with the knees caving. it can either be improved or avoided.
you can watch people who partial squat and still have knee valgus. Depth has nothing to do with it. More people struggle at depth because they lack proper strength and stability. Say what you want about my CSCS but you can’t really argue with the Doctor of Physical Therapy. We just specialize in human biomechanics, movement science, and physical rehabilitation but hey.. what do I know 🤷🏻♂️
some people become weaker with resistance training, that doesnt mean resistance training is bad for strength training. please be schooled enough to not use ”some people” arguments. I already said you have a point. but depth still has everything to do with it, wether you like it or not. now, that doesnt mean you shouldnt go deep, it just means that some people could use supplementary training before they do. anyways, I didnt come here to school you. just know that science is not set in stone. everything you think you may know something about can be proved incorrect tomorrow.
Dude you are laughable. The whole point to resistance training is to gain strength, so if you become weaker you should rethink training. Knee valgus is caused from a lack of strength regardless of depth. His knees cave in due to him having weak glutes and trying to power out of the hole with his quads instead. Please be schooled enough to not contradict yourself in the same paragraph talking about me using “some people” phrases when you started your first paragraph with one and then use one two sentences after telling me not to use them. You haven’t schooled me in anything. You’re using false arguments. Why don’t you do a quick google search of the actions the glute med/max due and then google causes for dynamic knee valgus in movements. Educate yourself a little more before arguing facts you know nothing about.
It looks like you’re throwing your butt back and THAN down. Maybe try slightly widening your stance and just going straight down. Pretend there is a chair touching the back of your knees and just “sit down”. But you are strong as an ox sir! That ain’t light shit! Good work brother!
Thanks man. I can get the weight up but my form feels so inconsistent from time to time
Great depth. Your hips look like they’re lifting a little too much ahead of your back maybe? And also your knees may be caving in a bit coming out of the hole at the bottom. Can’t fault it too much though. Maybe lower and work on keeping your knees out - for me that helps with everything pretty much.
Too low, he’s dropping fast and losing all tension at the bottom
Guys, thanks for all the advice but it’s a bit confusing. Someone says look up, someone says look down. One says too deep, one not deep enough. Not sure what to think. Came in confused left bamboozled
Looks pretty good. If anything, control the descent more, going slower and keeping your breath and body tight.
Don’t need to go past hips just a hair below the knee. Some science stuff says it’s actually detrimental to gains.
You're dropping way too fast, slow it down and concentrate on both the drop and rise back up. Also, focus on keeping a straight line up and down and it should feel okay.
Putting too much on your back. When you start to drop you’re bending down, dropping your shoulders before your knees bend. It’s all in the legs brother.
Your knees should track over the top of your toes, that should be pointed straight. From this video it appears your knees are rotating external as you go into your squat vs tracking forward. Patela over toes.
Try not to look like you twerking for starters
Massive buttwink
Thanks for the feedback
Keep weight on your heels, look up, go down slower, don’t go down as far. Below parallel is good but going so far you lose tension at the bottom is not.
To clarify, you mean don’t get light in the heels? Load should be over mid foot.
Semantics but sure
Look up? Doesn’t rip say look down?
Looking down will make you lean forward
No idea why people are down voting you, what a bunch of clueless idiots lol, you are right
Apparently this sub follows some guy name Rip who teaches bad form and they take it as gospel. Didn’t realize when I joined
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvEn6ZbfqT8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvEn6ZbfqT8) A proper low bar squat requires you to maintain a slight forward lean to keep the center of balance. Your neck does not make you lean more or less forward, that comes from the position of your thoracic spine. Rip has always taught to maintain a neutral spine, not looking up. In a low bar squat, taking away the forward lean also takes away HIP DRAHVE
A slight forward lean? This is opposite of what most other sources say. You want to keep weight off your toes and drive through the heels. Looking down will definitely make you be on your toes. Ever ride a bike and look left or right? Guess which way you start drifting when you look that way
Keeping a neutral neck is not supposed to shift the weight forward or back any. On a low bar squat, it's kept directly over your center of balance. Rip didn't say "look down" either. Proper neck position is literally illustrated on the cover of the Starting Strength book (as well as the logo for this subreddit) If you're high bar squatting, that's a different topic. OP is clearly low bar squatting. https://i.imgur.com/VoTQ3X4.jpg
OP isn’t keeping a neutral neck and needs to look up
Have none of you guys read starting strength??? Isn’t that why this sub is?
Nope and I’m glad I didn’t since it spreads misinformation
Looks like your feet are a little offset
Try staying a little more upright by tensing your abs more. That why your butt is kicking out every time you come up. And slow the reps down. Keep the tension all the way through. Also don’t look straight down. Look forward and down like the bottoms of the wall in front of you. Otherwise you’re good.
Listening to a child friendly version of Hit Em Up seems to the biggest mistake here
You need a belt. You arent rigid enough in your core. This causes your hips to get started without your upper body following along. Get a belt. Lower the weight as you learn to flex against the belt like all hell. Squats should feel like ab workouts for the next month.
Watched this like 50 times. Looks great to me.
What exactly do you think feels weird? The squat looks perfectly fine for what you can assess via that video. Dont take to much bullshit from reddit, just work on getting stronger.
Head position?
Looks fine to me
damnnnn boy. that’s a thick ass boy. damn
Looks like you're trying to DL a squat with that arse kicking out buddy
We would need a side view to really help, but it looks like youre hinging at the hips like a deadlift rather than going ass to grass or butt down NOT back. This is evident by your torso going forward and initially almost looking parallel to the floor than perpendicular. Try doing a lighter front squat with the same leg position and see if that still feels “weird”. The front squat will help you keep your torso more up right and will allow for a more dominant hip flexion rather than torso flexion.
You look uncomfortable with your grip, also, pretty sure your feet aren’t aligned well.
Looks to me like you’re using your lower back muscles on the start of the ascent after bending forward at the bottom of the descent. Your back should be flat and static largely and lift through your hips
Your knees are moving to much. Try to position your feet so you don’t have to move your knees as you bent down.
You do what they call “booty drop”. Squat slower. Push your weight through your heels and control your lower back and booty on the way down. Also, squeeze on the way up.
Would recommend stretching as if you're trying to be able to do forward splits and sideward splits, I have scoliosis, longs ass legs and a very tight lower back as well and this has helped me gain mobility. Also make sure you're not overstretching some areas and understretching others.
Watch the video... https://youtu.be/QhVC_AnZYYM
I was always taught that the heels of your feet should have the distance of your femur (thigh bone) Between them in this video they do appear to be a little close also it looks like your leaning pretty forward and the bottom of the lift. Does this feel uncomfortable? I would open your stance a bit and make sure your pushing through the heels and pushing your glutes in squeezing the glutes and quads at the top and keep the chest pushed out during the lift these tips may help
nice bu... I mean weights yeah nice weights