Any Comments on These Squats?

Hello. First post! Does anyone have any comments on these squats…things I am doing right, things wrong, areas of improvement, etc. Thanks!!

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Head up. Chest out/slightly push your ass out. It looks like you’re putting more pressure on your back then necessary.

The two issues that I see are that you are looking down, which in itself is a bad idea but it is also looks like your upper back is a bit rounded and not tight like it should be. Nobody except Mark Rippetoe and his cult members advocate for looking down while squatting, your neck should neutral or tilted slightly upwards. Where the head goes, the body typically follows, and you don’t want to go face first into the floor on a heavy squat.

Other thing is you are basically pausing at the bottom of the squat. Once you reach the bottom you want to immediately reverse the movement, unless of course you are doing pause squats.

Overall it’s not bad though, just fix those two things and you should be alright. You could work on shortening the walkout to three steps but that’s not the biggest concern at the moment.

With as much as you look down and round forward with your upper back, I’m very surprised by how straight up and down over the mid-foot your bar path is. Also, your hips don’t seem to shoot up first at all, very even concentric (raising) portion of the lift. No noticeable butt wink (lower back rounding at the bottom) so looks like you’re staying tight there. Maintain this while doing as the other guys said and I think you’ll be in great shape.

One additional thing I would suggest to work on is your walk out/setup. You spent quite a bit of time adjusting your feet. Obviously this isn’t that big of a deal with sub-max weights, but since you’re posting in the powerlifting forum I’m assuming you want feedback on steps to get you to as high of a squat as you can.

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Thanks for the comments, guys! I will give those suggestions a try.

Seconded. I did the same for quite some time after reading Starting Strength. But you’ll soon realize that with heavy weights it is much more likely that your chest collapses and then your form goes out the window and you risk a serious injury.

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