She needs to stay in control a bit better on the descent. Slow her down a little and make sure the knees are going where they're supposed to go.
Teaching my girl how to squat...
...has been a challenge, she's light and doesn't want to eat because she's afraid of getting fat.
Anyway, here's where she's gotten is so far at 30kg, after a deload at 37.5kg (she missed 3 times).
I'm micro-loading the bar with 0.5kg ankle weights.
Form check, please.
I'm no coach, you guys know my max squat is 5x145kg.
Starting Strength Coach
She needs to stay in control a bit better on the descent. Slow her down a little and make sure the knees are going where they're supposed to go.
Member
In addition to what #CoachNikolai said, you may also want to do the teaching method with her, where she goes to the bottom, pushes knees out with elbows, and drives her butt up to stand up a few times. Then as many times as needed with someone blocking her hips, so she can feel driving her hips up against resistance.
You can very clearly see that when she uses her hips, the bar moves right on up; but when she tries to lift her chest, which is still her default mode, she struggles to stand up. It looks like she doesn't really yet understand using her hips to get up.
COACH WOLF, MAN!Originally Posted by Michael Wolf
God knows I did that with her for a long time, man, but I guess she forgets under the weight. I learned that way so I automatically teach that way.
Should I do it again?
I wonder if this is any better.
First set:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WfUmV3hrsg
Last set:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fro__5Uz8s8
Spotter just to be safe. Told him to spot the bar not the lifter just like The Bible says.
Member
The last rep of the last set, which went up faster and with less struggle than any of the previous reps, is instructive: that's the rep in which she best stays in her hips. She continued to drive her hips up when it got hard, instead of trying to lift her chest, and the bar went up powerfully and smoothly. That's what I would do with her in the teaching method: keep blocking her hips and have her practice not just initiating 'up' with her hips, but staying in her hips the whole way up. Have her purposely go slow, keep the pressure on her sacrum as she stands up, and make sure she's staying leaned over and not trying to make her back angle more vertical too early. Do this as many times as necessary for her to tactilely 'get it' and feel the difference.
One thing you'll also want to adjust is her descent. She's sitting back with her butt markedly first, before her knees bend; then allowing her knees to crash forward into the bottom. So she's getting off balance towards her toes, which I think is also making her more prone to want to lift her chest. Knees and hips unlock together; she may have trouble with this since she's so used to "butt back first," so you may want to tell her to initiate the movement with knees out. This should help keep bar over midfoot and prevent the knee forward crash that's giving her some trouble.
Member
My wife's squat looked a lot like the one in the video for about twenty weeks, and the cue that fixed it was "knees out HARD!"
I'd like to know what Wolf thinks of this: on the reps that the lifter loses hip drive, the knees go in and back out of the hole. This pushes the hips back, makes the back angle more horizontal, and pushes the bar forward of the COG. With the bar forward the lifter is on her toes, she stops hips drive and lifts her chest to get her balance back. She doesn't stay with her hips b/c she gets herself in a position where she feels like she's going to fall forward.
"Knees out HARD" fixes all of this by keeping the hips closer to the COG, which keeps the back angle from collapsing, which keeps the bar from going forward, the weight shifting to the lifter's toes, which keeps her balanced SO she can stay with her hips.
Member
Anthony, you are correct, but I'm thinking of two things here:
1. He's already yelling "knees out!" at her every rep, and it's not fixing it. Is it possible that adding more emphasis, like "KNEES OUT HARD!" would help? Yes, but it's not likely. There are some things I might say to her if I were actually there along these lines, but that's the kind of thing you can only really tell in person, not instruct someone else, who isn't really a coach, to do by rote and hope it works.
2. The reason the knees are shifting back is because she's gotten herself into a bad position in the first place, which is something Nick was addressing in his initial post, and which I then addressed further in the second part of my last post. Knees and hips break together, perhaps thinking "initiate the movement with knees out." That is intended to address this very problem, and I've seen it work many, many, many times.
Again, one of the perils of internet coaching/form checks is that you can't see how the lifter actually reacts to cues, and you can't deliver them at the moment you want to. So it's all a bit sloppy.
"KNEES OUT HARD!" is indeed something I've used to fix issues like this; I suspect that here, however, something else is needed to get it to 'click' for her.
Member
I know most people around here hate this kind of thing, but I had a coach put a rubber band around my knees and told me to push my knees out hard as I could. Then he made me do box squats pushing my knees out hard as I could for 2 minutes or something ridiculous. Don't let the rubber band fall, keep the knees out. He said he wanted to pre-fatigue me so that when I did my squats I would know when I was pushing my knees out by the pain in my butt. I thought it got the message to me pretty well.
Member
Wouldn't say we "hate" that kind of thing; it's more that we prefer to correct problems with the squat, by squatting correctly rather than by doing some other movement that we hope will carry over to some unknown extent to help correct the problems we're having with the squat. This way, not only did you fix the technique error, but you learned it in the context of the very movement you're trying to do correctly, requiring you to figure out how to use all the interconnected bodyparts involved in that movement.
It's not that the way you did it is useless and can't be done. It's that, when you've got the rubber band around your knees and are squatting down to a box, we don't really know how much of that will carry over to a regular squat without a box or a rubber band. I'd use something like that if it was just impossible to get the person moving correctly with verbal, visual, and tactile cues - however, I have yet to see this be required.
If you'd have asked me the same question about 7 years ago, I would have agreed with you. What happened in between is that I became a good coach.
Okay we've tried one more time using the new cues.
We also did the drill where she pushes her knees out with her elbows and I resist her ascent by pushing her hips down.
This is the result:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXgF6RjFjlw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucwdVID3f9E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iP53lBnC4oY
What do you think, coach?
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