I should clarify. What I would advocate for someone wanting to squat more weight is to do a low bar, wide stance (knees out) squat if they have the mobility to do so.
A low bar squat should have more forward lean than a high bar squat. That keeps the bar balanced so one is not on their toes or heels.
The wide stance / knees out reduces the amount of forward lean needed to keep balance. By having your knees out and reducing the amount of knee flexion, you reduce the amount the hips have to travel back.
I was more just trying to say that I’ve seen many lifters (including myself) try to be back farther (more upright) than the balance point while descending, then when they hit the hole, their body shifts to a balanced position. They are being thrown forward to the balanced position, but they could have just descended in that position, and ascended in that position.
I have tried explaining this trigonometrically, where your thigh is the hypotenuse. With a narrow stance the hypotenuse and the adjacent side are about the same length. As you widen your stance the adjacent side shortens. The length of the adjacent side determines how much you need to lean to place the bar in the center of gravity.
What I have determined is that almost no one understood what I was trying to show them. We have a trigonometry clueless public. As the universal language of the world, I was speaking all Greek.
Here the answer is simply, start the squat where you finish the squat. Never finish a rep and then stand upright, if you are planning on doing another rep.
And some isolation work, lat pull downs and seated rows. Mostly focused on just compound lifts right now and not going to tear a rotator cuff on a damn peck deck while I try to bench 3x a week. As the weight adds I know it will become taxing.
Bent over row is going to be my first lift to stall I already know this. Because my gym is old school iron plates only, a 45 lb plate is the size of a 45 pound plate and that’s it. If I were staring with 35s on the bar to ramp up I would be pulling each rep from significantly closer to the ground.
I realized I could do that or I could set the bars in the squat rack to the proper height and do it like that. F*ck it. When I stall I will deload and rally.
I would not recommend placing the bar on the ground between reps.
(BTW, here is where an extremely wide stance will increase your rowing weight significantly. You just must know how to “lock” your hips.)
I don’t do the underhand row much.
My bread and butter row is an overhand, bench press grip width row, much closer to parallel than 45 degrees. I do them with a slight rock (a slight cheat). Working 8 rep sets.
With an extreme wide foot width my knees are out of the bar path.
My second exercise is similar to a Pendlay row, but done on a plate loaded T-bar machine that you lie your chest on (various grips are possible, but I did the wider grip. Still narrower than my barbell row). Very little cheating is possible.
When I see it In 3rd person it looks awkward. It does feel ok though and my back is obviously straight.
I honestly feel ok about it. Certainly Willing to listen to feedback.
EDIT: Range of motion is massive when you watch the hinge in the hip. Can’t find any sort of standard online regarding measuring femur length. I imagine mine are long.
Not sure it’s physically possible to totally eliminate the forward lean.
Good looking squat to me. Bar is nicely over center of your foot. You might try a lower bar position in the future to see how you like it. This will shift you toward a more forward lean (to keep bar over mid foot) as others mentioned and engage more glutes/hamstrings vs mostly quads.
Might also try squatting to a low box so you can exaggerate the wide stance and leaning back with the hips down to pause on the box. Trying different things carefully is a good way to find what works best for you.
IMO, and this is only my opinion, I am not saying that I am correct. I see that some liked your form. If I were using your form I would probably lose 10 to 15% of my max.
I do like that you aren’t fighting the “good morning” part that many tall squatters fall into.
I would correct a few things.
I would lower the bar to what is called a low bar squat. There is a groove on top of your rear delts that the bar fits nicely on. By doing so you will be shortening the moment arm of the weight. Lowering the bar will force you to lean forward slightly.
Your knees are going too far over your toes. Widening your stance will help that some (trigonometrically).
You are squatting “down” too much. That is you are dropping your hips straight down. You need to squat back more. Then your hips will be moving in a more efficient path to maximize the weight you can lift. This too will help your knees not going too far over your knees.
I had thought someone might make this observation.
People have long mentioned this knee/ toe thing to me and Ive always I understood it as a sort of a cardinal rule. I however have never understood the real harm in this, and I reserve that in order to me to actually achieve zero over the toe motion I would be positioned in a cartoonish and gravity defying way.
I believe you though, and a wider stance would probably help. I’m certainly not saying what I’m doing is entirely correct, I have seen videos of particularly tall powerlifers squatting very heavy weight with notable “over toe”.
Good day today, but abit boring due to the light weight. Feel confident it’s part of the process, but it’s still not as fun. Anyways, The weight will add up quickly at 5 lb per workout…
Bench - 5x5 140 lb
Row - 5x5 140 lb
I always throw in some higher rep seated rows and lay pulls because I can’t resist a full back pump. And the recovery time In extremely quick I find. Still not doing any extra chest work given all the benching I’m doing in a week.
