Squat check. Depth and stance.

[ludwig23]

Hi coaches,

This is the video I'd love to have you comment on. Looks good to you?



My left side seems to be better than my right, if I film my right, the end of the barbell is all over the place(which suggest the barbell is not in a vertical slot=>bad?). I don't know why that is, maybe it's because of some sort of imbalance or something else. I will look into it in the future.

I have a question about depth and stance.

The 2 following pics are the bottom of my shoulder-width stance with toes 30 degrees.
Heavy set

Warm up


And this is wider stance, toes 45 degrees-ish (the one I have been used to)


I can feel that the latter is much more easier, and I'm guessing it's because (a) cut in depth and (b) I'm used to that way. Am I correct? Heading on the right track? Should I used this style to squat?

In the book, Rip wrote:

If you have a long torso and short legs (not that uncommon a body type), you will need a bit narrower stance than our rule of thumb would predict.

I believe Simma told me I had long back relative to my legs (if my memory serves me well that is), so yeah, I'm somewhat confused. I think I missed something.

Thank you a lot for taking the time to do these form checks and answering question.

[Tom Campitelli]

You are going too deep. A wider stance helps prevent this, but even better is you preventing it by staying tight. Lean over a little more on the way down and try to squat above parallel. You won't really squat above parallel, but try to do so. Work hard to squeeze tighter as you near the bottom and turn the squat around.

[ludwig23]

Thanks coach. I thought I had it pretty good there.

About depth: I honestly can not tell if I'm going too deep. It seems that my squat is an inch higher, maybe two, which is very hard to tell when it's heavy and when I'm used to the *bounce*.

About staying tight: I too can not tell when I'm under the bar. It feels normal, good and tight. On the video, I can tell it looks like I'm collapsing esp. at the bottom, but I swear I didn't and I tried to stay real tight. Perhaps I should squat slower.

About back angle/lean over on way down: Not getting what you meant. It seems that bar path's fine (I'm not saying it good), and lean over more would have me lose the bar forward (I tried to lean over more and end up nearly losing it forward). Maybe I overdid it, I'm not sure.

Small aside though, do you look at most form check for once and could tell what's wrong? (I imagine that's how real time coaching is). That would be super cool. I'm having some friends who would like me to teach them to squat and I figure it would be extremely cool to have the experience and coaching eye to give immediate, correct feed back on even the little-est of things. Fuck, I even watch my videos at least a dozen times before asking you and still I thought it was good.

But man that takes good years of work and I'm just a spring chicken operating alone with no direct coach to learn from.

[ludwig23]

squat 2nd set 90kg 21st july 2016 - YouTube

Is it any better, coach? Feels like i'm cutting depth very aggressively now.

[Tom Campitelli]

The first rep was a bit high, the fifth one was borderline. The rest were fine. I like these much better.

If you lean over more, you will need to push your butt back a little more to keep the bar over the midfoot. Your most recent video looked fine in this regard.

In general, I can pick out major problems in the squat just watching a video once. Sometimes, I will watch them once or twice more if something unusual is going on, or if I was fixated on one thing at the expense of other issues. Getting in-person, real-time, competent coaching is very useful for everyone. It is difficult to find people who can do this. I have been to many of the Starting Strength Seminars over the past several years and even people with years of coaching experience can struggle to do it well. By the same token, there was a woman who was a sophomore in college in one of the Seattle seminars who had some experience lifting, but was hardly a veteran coach, whose presence on the platform and coaching eye outclassed people much older and more experienced than her.

[ludwig23]

Thank you a lot.

Coach, if you had the time:

a) How did you tell that I need to lean over a little more? Tried this for today, my hamstrings definitely feels more "stretched" (enough "more" to the point that I can feel it) (which I assume to be good, "loaded hamstrings" and all those stuff?).

b) Besides the fact that I didn't look very tight which I can see is a big problem, is going a few inches deeper than the book called for hurts? I mean if I get tight, correct my shit and still going deep-ish, some lbs for a few inches of ROM isn't too bad a deal, it seems?

[Tom Campitelli]

a) How did you tell that I need to lean over a little more? Tried this for today, my hamstrings definitely feels more "stretched" (enough "more" to the point that I can feel it) (which I assume to be good, "loaded hamstrings" and all those stuff?).

I know it when I see it. It is a judgment call.

b) Besides the fact that I didn't look very tight which I can see is a big problem, is going a few inches deeper than the book called for hurts? I mean if I get tight, correct my shit and still going deep-ish, some lbs for a few inches of ROM isn't too bad a deal, it seems?

This question is addressed in the book. The short answer is that you must relax musculature and potentially sacrifice positioning to go so deep in a low bar squat. You already are struggling to stay tight. When you squatted to correct depth, things looked a lot better. Excessive depth is not virtuous in the low bar squat. It is actually a form error and not just because powerlifting judges say so.

[ludwig23]

I know it when I see it. It is a judgment call.

Haha, I actually wrote "it's possibly an intuitive thing to you having coached for so long, but it would be nice to have a clue to see it for myself" but I deleted it bc I thought it might be slightly not nice.

This question is addressed in the book. The short answer is that you must relax musculature and potentially sacrifice positioning to go so deep in a low bar squat. You already are struggling to stay tight. When you squatted to correct depth, things looked a lot better. Excessive depth is not virtuous in the low bar squat. It is actually a form error and not just because powerlifting judges say so.

Sorry. Before I asked you this I checked the book on the chapter "squat depth- safety and importance" but Rip talks about not getting enough depth (I only checked that chapter since I figure that's the logical thing to do, reading a squat depth chapter before I asked specifically about squat depth). I did recall reading some where Rip or some coaches stated that deeper rounds back, deeper but looser being not good etc. hence my assumptions that "if I get tight" then etc. I guess the question should be better rephrased to "does a few inches deeper than the point of the hip crease being below the patellar mean excessive, bad depth given that nothing is loosen here? Is there a few inches range of correct depth?".

But point noted. Get tight, lean over a lil more. Thank you for your time.