Squat Assistance

Bigger Stronger Leaner
1

It’s been a while since I posted here and asked for advice. I haven’t recorded myself doing squats for quite some time, foolishly assuming that I was achieving depth and doing them properly. Today I took some videos of myself and although I felt like I was going down as far as I could (especially with the second video), upon inspection I don’t even think I’m hitting parallel. I need some advice on how to get a deeper squat.

This is my max effort squat:

At .44 seconds I can tell that my hips are higher than my knee. I’m not too upset with this - it’s max effort, so I’m obviously not ready for this weight.

Here’s a decent weight for me squat:

Not only is my depth questionable, it looks like I might have tight calves or something because it looks like my heals are coming up a little.

Right now I’m thinking that I should lower the weight and just work on stretching and trying to get a deeper depth - maybe pause at the bottom?

Advice?

2

I’m not sure why the second video isn’t coming up - here’s another attempt:

Here’s what I think I have to work on:

  1. Calf stretching
  2. Some sort of deep stretching so I can go deeper
  3. My walk out - I’m sure that I should be only taking two or possibly three steps
  4. Shooting my hips back
  5. Probably back tightness, but I don’t think that can be judged in these videos, just a guess.
3

Your knees go very far over your feet, that isn’t really a problem except that you are going low bar which makes it VERY HARD to hit depth. Try to do much more hip dominate work, (deadlift, romanion deadlift, goodmornings, stiff legged deadlifts, glute ham raises, and other stuff like that) and when you are squatting lead with your hips back instead of leading with your knees. Check out these videos. articles.elitefts.com/training-articles/powerlifting-articles/so-you-think-you-can-squat-part-1-and-2/

Also consider rolling out or hips/hamstrings more if they are tight it could be part of the issue.