I’ve been struggling for a long time with squat form and thought i’d post a vid. The weight im squatting is 165 @ 170lb bw. I know its absolutely pathetic considering my DL is 375x1 but I refuse to give up. Right now I have just started Bill Stars 5x5.
From what I see myself I think I’m going a little to low as I begin to butt wink near the bottom of the lift. If you guys can critique and give some feedback it would be much appreciated!
Looks good but you need to sit back into the squat more, and begin by breaking at the hips instead of going straight down. Your butt wink is not bad and could probably be eliminated altogether by doing some hamstring stretch exercises like the stiff leg deadlift, and just regular hamy stretching IMO.
Your form was good all in all, just make sure you keep that bar centered with your feet, if you look, you are slightly forward of center when in the hole, this will eventually lead to doing a good-morning type squat when the weight gets heavy. Pretty good though.
Squat looks good. Some trainers advise keeping your toes pointing straight forward, and emphasising pushing your knees out (you should really aim to push the knees beyond the outside of the ankles, but this is not normally possible, it’s just a aim to have to really push the knees out hard). A good example is Rob Adell from average Broz gym:
I have been squatting this way for some time now and my squat has improved a lot. I find I can hold a much more solid bottom position in this stance. It does take some time to learn to push the knees out though (it’s much harder to keep the knees pushed out with in the feet forward stance).
And I agree that stretching hamstrings is a waste of time. There is a much better stretch you can do which will help with the above mentioned method:
I added hip squats after my back squats for a short period of time, and that helped. This guy is advising putting the belt above your knees, but I think above the hips works fine. This does help. You can squat and focus solely on your bottom half position, really emphasising the knee push, and furthermore go for high reps (the back/shoulders don’t fatigue leaving more energy to work the legs/hips).
I was doing 3 x 10 with about 25% of my max. It will burn the legs, but as the guy in the video said, strengthening the often neglected smaller muscles in the legs/hips will help with keeping decent form with heavy loads.
sounds good, thanks for that video by the way i tried the stretch a couple of minutes ago and it really loosened up my glutes and knees really well. I’ll post a new video tonight with my knees out.
The stretch is good for the glutes/hips/knees, but also remember to focus on the position at the ankle joint. This is limiting factor for me in the knee push: poor ankle mobility. It takes decent hip and ankle mobility to get down in a tight, solid position.
This is why the old ‘stretch your hamstrings’ advise is not so useful. You could have the longest most elastic hamstrings in the world, but the hamstrings are only part of the equation, and the biggest problems are normally found in the hips/ankles. In my case anyway. Hamstring stretches NEVER helped my squats.
Yeah I have been told by another person that I do have very poor ankle mobility, are there any other stretches that can help to solve this issue?
And I have attempted to do what you guys have said in regards to pushing my knees out while squatting. Here’s video from last night. I am still going down a little to low to the point of butt wink still but other than that am I on the right track for improving of keeping my knees out?
One point for your set up. Don’t walk so far back. You take 15seconds to get set, walking around and you’ll loose the tightness you build up before grabbing the bar.
Agree with sexyxe’s above post. It does look like your not on your heels enough. I switched over to Vibrams Five Finger shoes a few years ago. They helped my squat and deads a lot. If you can’t afford them at least buy cheapo Chuck Taylor’s, they are better than cross trainers or running sneakers by far.
