Do I have Hip Drive?

[Gary Gibson]

Its just that the way I always understood it was that if you contract glutes hard it makes your spine very stable. It is often a cue given to people overhead pressing to stop their lower back bending.

That cue is helpful when the forces at work put you in danger of leaning BACK, which is what happens in a heavy press. It's not so useful in a squat.

[bugbomb]

That cue is helpful when the forces at work put you in danger of leaning BACK, which is what happens in a heavy press. It's not so useful in a squat.

Yeah, contracting your glutes should NEVER come at the expense of lumbar extension.

[Raskolnikov]

What would you suggest as a warm up?

Definitely not what you've been doing.

I would do something like
bar x 2s x 5r
95lb x 5
135lb x 3
155lb x 2
175lb x 1
195lb x 3 x 5

[Dastardly]

Hello again everybody.

I have had an unwilling break from lifting due to christmas/new year closure at municipal gym.

Last session was on 21st December, I am hoping to get to gym tomorrow (if hangover is gone) 2nd January.

During this time I have been doing bodyweight squats to maintain flexibility and work on my hip drive. I filmed myself doing some when I thought I had depth & hip drive dialled but had a horrible surprise.

I cannot get anywhere near parallel without my back rounding. I fail to get a strong back arch even at the beginning of the descent. My back starts of kind of flat, but by the time I am parallel what little bit of arch I had is gone. I can perhaps get 2/3rd's of target depth with a sufficiently tight lower back.

I experimented with a lot of stance widths & feet positions. But none helped.

One of the first comments in the thread about moving knees forward at the beginning got me thinking so I read the whole squat section in SS and came across a few points Id like to ask about too.

Questions:

Mark says that if weight stays on heels then knees cannot travel too far forward.

Is this reliable? I want to implement the knees forward at the beginning method but need a simple way to make sure im not killing hamstring tension.

Mark mentions that for trainees lacking flexibility

"It is far better to approach full squat depth a little at a time each workout"

Should I reduce my squat depth to ensure a tighter lower back? - I have been squatting for about a year, very focused & consistent for past 8 months. I have done vigorous post workout static stretches focusing especially on hamstrings for the past 12 months but have not noticed any flexibility increases during the past 6 months.

Mark also mentions that placing a block of wood under the heels to improve depth is bad as it prevents stretching the muscles and it is better to improve squat depth slowly as stated above.

I just got some olympic lifting shoes and the heels are as high as a plank of wood. I was looking forward to using them, but would it be better to stick to flat shoes and just squat as deep as I can maintaining back tightness?

Doing bodyweight squats for the past few days focusing extra hard on back tightness and hip drive have been as exhausting as my work sets of barbell squats! at 90kg. (my BW is 70kg)

I have been stalled at this weight for a long while and was thinking of deloading to tweak form & get used to olympic shoes.

How much should I deload to?

My last two deloads were from 82.5kg 3x5 (I wanted to achieve 5x5) down to 70kg. I worked up to 77.5kg but decided I needed to increase depth. So I made a big deload to 60kg. And tried to work back up to the 80kg+ ballpark using 5x5.

But once I got to 82.5kg again I was very dissapointed to find myself stuck at 3x5. So I accepted and tried to continue with 3x5 with poor results. I made poor progress over the past 2-3months and reps have fallen & fallen as I tried to force myself to my end of year goal of 1.5xBW squat (105kg). I got nowhere near! My last session being 90kg 3x3.

[JayvH]

I just got some olympic lifting shoes and the heels are as high as a plank of wood. I was looking forward to using them, but would it be better to stick to flat shoes and just squat as deep as I can maintaining back tightness?

I also don't get why a plank of wood is not recommended but weightlifting shoes are. Rippetoe says it's better to use them.

I also have the problem, that I don't find the hip drive at the moment. I just can't feel the tension on the hamstrings when I come to the bottom of the squat. My current weight for the worksets is 67,5kg after I failed to break 70kg. I've read somewhere else that you only get the feeling of the tensed hamstrings at higher weights. I hope so or I will have to make some videos too.

[nisora33]

I cannot get anywhere near parallel without my back rounding. I fail to get a strong back arch even at the beginning of the descent. My back starts of kind of flat, but by the time I am parallel what little bit of arch I had is gone.
I experimented with a lot of stance widths & feet positions. But none helped...



Mark says that if weight stays on heels then knees cannot travel too far forward....

Dastardly, I want to give you the benefit of the doubt that you've actually read SS, but you make some comments here that I can't imagine anyone making who has actually read (or read well) the book.

First off, one of the 1st comments Rip makes in the squat section is that a person's unweighted squat often demonstrates a lack of rigid lumbar extension and that the application of a little weight held on the back resolves the issue, as it gives the back musculature something to contract against. Your unweighted squat WILL NOT look like your weighted squat, and trying to judge your squat form this way will not give you an accurate look at your WEIGHTED squat technique, particularly lumbar extension. You have somehow missed this in your reading and you have also failed to use the search function, as I'm pretty sure Rip has addressed this at least a few times.

Second, you do not, I repeat, DO NOT want to keep your weight on your heels during a correctly perfermed SS-model squat. This point is so fundamental that I can't imagine that you've read the book. Your weight should be evenly distributed across the bottom of the foot, NOT focused primarily on the heel.

Reread, harder.

-S.

[Dastardly]

I just re-read the bit that talked about heels down/toes up and realised I missed a bit. It is recommended as a temporary technique to learn to avoid letting knees come too far forward, not a permanent method.

Well especially as this is the case, can anyone recommend a simple/foolproof technique to prevent knee going too far over toes?

I suffer from the problem mentioned on page 45 of SS. About knees moving forward at the bottom of descent. So I am planning to try going straight down instead of sitting back so much. I am worried about knees going too far forwards, especially if I use my new lifting shoes which have a pretty high heel.

[misspelledgeoff]

use the Terribly Useful Block of Wood.

I just re-read the bit that talked about heels down/toes up and realised I missed a bit. It is recommended as a temporary technique to learn to avoid letting knees come too far forward, not a permanent method.

Well especially as this is the case, can anyone recommend a simple/foolproof technique to prevent knee going too far over toes?

I suffer from the problem mentioned on page 45 of SS. About knees moving forward at the bottom of descent. So I am planning to try going straight down instead of sitting back so much. I am worried about knees going too far forwards, especially if I use my new lifting shoes which have a pretty high heel.

[nisora33]

I just re-read the bit that talked about heels down/toes up and realised I missed a bit. It is recommended as a temporary technique to learn to avoid letting knees come too far forward, not a permanent method.

Well especially as this is the case, can anyone recommend a simple/foolproof technique to prevent knee going too far over toes?

I suffer from the problem mentioned on page 45 of SS. About knees moving forward at the bottom of descent. So I am planning to try going straight down instead of sitting back so much. I am worried about knees going too far forwards, especially if I use my new lifting shoes which have a pretty high heel.

Knees OUT. It's helpful to exaggerate the cue: think "split the crotch of my pants" when you shove those knees out. Your knees can't be darting forward at the bottom of the squat if the distance they would travel forward, allowing the hamstrings to go slack, is being taken up laterally by the knees being shoved OUT. If you do this right, you should feel as tight in your inner thighs as you do in your hamstrings, IMO.

This, and use the TUBOW approach.

-S.

[drecar]

S

Should knees out be done as hard as possible during the descent to prevent knees sliding forward at the bottom? Will this provide for the better bounce?