Good Morning squats, need help.

[jkolb]

I have always been a horrible squatter, but am trying my best to finally get better at it. I have come a long way but I still have trouble. Especially as the weight goes up or I get to the end of a set and am tired. Not necessarily a tall guy (5'11-6'), but wear 36 inch jeans and have no torso. I am sure my odd body type contributes to this but what else can I work on? Thanks.

[Bradley Gish]

I definitely don't think these are anything close to good mornings. I would like to see a heavy set from the rear 45 to get a better view of your knee traction. I suspect that you could probably stand to get them out a bit more. Nothing wrong with a quick descent, but stay tight. Big air, shove knees out, sit back, hold on to the tightness all the way into the bottom and then rebound off of your tightness, which should reach a peak if you have incorporated the above steps. I think most people are generally fatigued once they reach reps 4 and 5 of a heavy or near max set. Nothing to sweat, these reps are the "money reps". They are going to drive the adaptation.

[Satch12879]

There's no good morning about these.

Slow down. Controlled descent. Put on weight.

[jkolb]

Ok, I have get some better videos. I just thought this looked pretty bad, this was my last rep of my last set.



I don't have an actual front video of me squatting with weight, but I would suspect it would look something like it does with just the bar warming up. I have videoed some heavier squats from the front before and it looked similar.


(halfway up)

[Marenghi]

In addition to the wise words said: Simply dont let it happen if you dont want it to happen. Dont extend the knees without opening slightly your back angle or at least keeping it constant. If your quads are maxed out and thats the reason you shift weight to the hips - congrats, they should be. If after simply correcting the motor pattern (cue when you start to GM midway: "push upper back against bar!") your quads still limit the action (which again, is the most normal thing in a squat), then take less weight.

And, depending on what program youre on, you could train your quads additionally (front squat, single leg work, leg press). But theyll sure grow stronger by simply low bar squatting, too.

Youre doing well, dont worry.

[Adam Franklin]

Your knees shoot back on the ascent (aka "good morning" your squat) because YOU let them go too far forward on the descent. Fix your knees in the descent and you will stop doing a "good morning" squat. TUBOW is your friend!

[Marenghi]

Hm, what is your reasoning behind that?

I can see that a greater knee angle would try to decrease force demands on the quads. And if thats the reason, youre right that he wouldnt need to try to shift the weight to the hips by doing a stripper movement. But ...then the back angle would be more acute througout the movement - resulting more or less in the same picture.

[Adam Franklin]

I want his back angle during the descent of his squat to look like his back angle during the ascent, while keeping his knees in their proper place. Or to put it another way, a horizontal back angle is fine in a low bar squat, but you do not want to see a drastic change in back angle out of the hole, so coach the movement appropriately. His back angle changed out of the hole because it was too vertical going down, not because his quads are weak.

[Marenghi]

(I hope you have got your dose of the black Sunday gold ).

I agree that if you have a preference for a certain back angle (and Im also quite content with a pretty horizontal back angle in the low bar), its good to have a very similar back angle during ascent as descent.

But thats not an explanation why in the ascent he resorted to the stripper squat - you can squat low bar, high bar with various back angles and forward knee/shin travel and not do the stripper squat - or do a stripper squat. So theres another or various other reasons for that.

Imo the most frequent of them are bad technique (a cue like the one i mentioned often help) and discipline to try hard to keep the correct technique and/or maxed quads so that the trainee automatically tries to reduce the moment arm of the quads without extending them against resistance (which is what happens in a stripper squat) - at the cost of a more horizontal back angle.

So even when a more horizontal back angle works - there must be a reason (or various) a more vertical one didnt work: and those two i mentioned happen pretty often.

Short: If he wants to squat with a more horizontal back angle and less forward knee travel, thats fine with me. That may alone get rid off the stripper squat, maybe he still has to cue himself like I wrote. If he wants to squat with a back angle as he showed on the descent (which also looks fine), then he can try the suggestions I gave. Which have worked pretty well so far.

[Satch12879]

(I hope you have got your dose of the black Sunday gold ).

I agree that if you have a preference for a certain back angle (and Im also quite content with a pretty horizontal back angle in the low bar), its good to have a very similar back angle during ascent as descent.

But thats not an explanation why in the ascent he resorted to the stripper squat - you can squat low bar, high bar with various back angles and forward knee/shin travel and not do the stripper squat - or do a stripper squat. So theres another or various other reasons for that.

Imo the most frequent of them are bad technique (a cue like the one i mentioned often help) and discipline to try hard to keep the correct technique and/or maxed quads so that the trainee automatically tries to reduce the moment arm of the quads without extending them against resistance (which is what happens in a stripper squat) - at the cost of a more horizontal back angle.

So even when a more horizontal back angle works - there must be a reason (or various) a more vertical one didnt work: and those two i mentioned happen pretty often.

Short: If he wants to squat with a more horizontal back angle and less forward knee travel, thats fine with me. That may alone get rid off the stripper squat, maybe he still has to cue himself like I wrote. If he wants to squat with a back angle as he showed on the descent (which also looks fine), then he can try the suggestions I gave. Which have worked pretty well so far.

Back angle is not a choice; it is dictated by the lifter's anthropometry and the position of the bar on the back. What Adam is saying is that the OP has not established the correct diagnostic angles for the back/hips and knees/shins to involve the most efficient amount of musculature, thus the correction he has had to perform on the ascent. This was done to maintain balance over the middle of the foot and ultimately complete the lift.