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Thread: Stance Width and Back Angle in the Squat

  1. #1
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    Apr 2010
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    Default Stance Width and Back Angle in the Squat

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    For several weeks I've been having problems with my right hip at the bottom of the squat. It's recently developed into some nagging pain in whatever is crossing the hip crease that I've increasingly been unable to stop my right leg collapsing inwards. Yesterday I experimented with a narrower stance as a work around. My base of support was so narrow that I felt unstable, yet it felt surprisingly strong. It appears this narrower stance improved my back angle and resultant hip drive, something that is often my biggest challenge with my usual stance. Is there a biomechanical explanation for this?

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
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    A narrower stance would often have the result of making the apparent length of the femur greater in the coronal and sagital planes. This would cause you to lean over a little more, which could be why you feel like you are staying in your hips better. If your stance were wide-ish and your knees tended to track in a little, that might pinch things a little at the hip. By the same token, if you were trying to hold your knees back too much and they came forward at the bottom, that could also bother your hip. It would be interesting to see a video.

  3. #3
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    Thanks, Tom. I do not have good video of what I was doing before, but I suspect if I did you would see both those errors, especially when it gets heavy. As a life time high bar squatter before 2010, achieving the right back angle and keeping my hamstrings tight enough to stop my knees shooting forward are the two biggest problems I deal with. When I worked with Juli on my squat the main thing she had me change was to bring my heels in a bit and it seems that intuitively I feel more comfortable/stable slightly wider than this despite that intuitively comfortable stance producing problems. I think there is must be some form creep in there with my stance as things start getting heavier.

    I wonder if marking out the correct stance on the floor with chalk before my first set of warms up might help me stick what I intellectually know I should do rather than revert to bad habits.

  4. #4
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    Mar 2008
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    Feel free to post a squat of what you are doing now. I suspect it is less abnormal than you think it is.

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