Squat Technique & Pain Post Injury

Bigger Stronger Leaner
1

Hey guys I’m in need of some serious help with my front/back squat. I always wasn’t a very good squatter but since I injured my SI joint having it lock my right hip forward and up for about 5 months. Now that I have finally got it dealt with I have been getting back into the dead lift and squats again but I keep having the issues with my squat. For my back squat I never feel comfortable. I do my best to keep to the ques of ass back spreading legs and chest up but I just can’t seem to get back to at least my passable from pre injury.

The front squat feels immensely more comfortable for me but both forms leave my knees sore not painful for the day or two after even on weights as low as 135. I’ll give links below but to try and explain what I feel during the lift is me pushing my hips out as far as humanly possible but doing that it feels lime I’m hyper extending my lower and really feel the pull on the hip flexors in the front.I try to really spread the legs taking with a bit wider than shoulder width, but I can never feel the glutes or hamstrings really activating. I always feel like I’m going to fall forwards on the way up as well and have my quads do all the work. I feel the pain below the knee cap on the tendon or cartilage.

I’ve more actively been trying to fix this in the past week or two buying a foam roller and doing a lot of stretches and rolling especially elevating the rear foot and doing the quad stretch like the Bulgarian split squat. I currently am doing 5/3/1 so on the deadlift days I always do hip thrusters 250x5 and a good morning(lighter) or RDL 225x5. Squat days I’ve really been considering dropping the squats for now and maybe going to a box squat, single leg work and hip thrusters for a bit till maybe I can get better flexibility? My posture normally I would say would lean towards being more of a donald duck type which you can probably see at the set up of my back squat but would that really be the root cause of all my issues?

My footwear is a pair of Nikes Paul rodriges? I think but are flat soled. I am a flat footed person.

Any advice on what I should be doing different from already would be greatly appreciated.

I’m 6’3’’ and weigh 225
Sorry about poor quality

2

In your front squat, you are leaned too far forward and have too much knee movement. I think if you keep more upright you will feel a lot better.

3

Try doing the box squat, it will help ingrain that strong arched position in the bottom and will give you something to aim at when you’re sitting back. Because you’re dealing with the SI joint pain i’d strongly recommend you limit your depth because your tail is tucking under pretty significantly and that will do more harm than good especially after your injury.

For the deadlift (if that is a good representation of how you normally perform it) you’re not locking out and pushing your hips through at the top, could be weak glutes, tight hip flexors or both. Just keep in mind that when you are doing all your hip mobility work, the goal is to get more movement from your hips so your back doesn’t have to compensate. Good luck brother

4

Thanks for that. On the deadlift my grip kinda failed at the top so my not locking out would be more attributed to that since I hadn’t done any grip work I just wanted to see if I could lift it. I normally do conventional to and that was my first time ever trying sumo just for the sake of trying.

Are there any specific things I could try for working on the hip drive?