Amsterdam squat camp follow up #3

[JayvH]

Your squats don't look beautiful, but I have seen worse. Make your descent smoother. Don't let the weight shift into your toes on the ascent.

Still on the struggle, nothing special in videos to show at the moment. But I'm working with two cues for me:

• Throw the knees forward at the start
• Distribute the weight over the feet

Well the first is absolutely essential. If I don't get this in the knees have to go in positon when I'm at the bottom. The second one doesn't seem to help very much. Even when it feels ok, on video I've slided and came forward.


When I look at the post of heuro

The bar seems to have such a path: /

He is totally right. My bar is always traveling forward. On one hand I should point my chest to the floor to keep the knees back on the other hand the bar has to come forward then. How do I get a vertical bar path? It seems to be impossible to keep the weight off the toes and not correct the bar path in any way. But staying more upright would mean knees even more forward. This is contradictonary, isn't it?

[Tom Campitelli]

Let's try this. Put 40 kg on the bar. Squat down slowly, so you have some time to think about how it feels. Get to the bottom and pause. Where is the weight in your feet? Are you on your toes? Your heels? Get in balance. Then, stand up slowly, thinking about where your balance is. Do a few sets of five like this. Slow down. Pause. Slow up. See if you can find a way to stay in balance. It will be light enough for you to make corrections, but heavy enough that it is no longer just an air squat. I feel like this is something we could probably get solved in one to three sessions if I were there coaching you, but, as of right now, the Internet is all I can do.

[JayvH]

So my last two sessions I implented 5x5 40 kg slow sets.
Here is a video of the last set. I'm not sure if that is what you want to see, but I felt no disbalance in the sole of my feet. On the other hand I also didn't feel a big disbalance in the set before, but it looked pretty crappy. Probably because I didn't thought of "knees forward" and was sure that this would sort itself out, when the feet would feel balanced.

[Tom Campitelli]

Those squats looked pretty good to me. Make that happen at a heavier weight.

[JayvH]

Wow, I thought putting on weight wouldn't be that tought it would be as soon as I know how it should look and feel like. Putting on 80 kg made it worse than before. I've done seven sets with 65 kg today. Maybe you can have a look and tell if I'm still on the right track here.
Set 7 with 65 kg

[Tom Campitelli]

These squats look pretty good. More weight.