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Thread: Knee Movement in Squat - Long Femur Lifters

  1. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Rippetoe View Post
    CDG seems to have made some important discoveries about injuries that I have missed. What would you suggest we change about our teaching method to mitigate the situation?
    You’re smarter than me. I have nothing useful to contribute aside from observations, but you’ve got the years of experience and technical knowledge. I was just trying to understand some specifics. I’m probably wrong.

  2. #22
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    I think your observations are inaccurate, and probably incomplete because you are not considering anything except the angles in the saggital plane. But thanks for your contribution to the forums.

  3. #23
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    Dear CDG,

    Coaching makes a difference, and I have enjoyed and benefitted from my sessions with Starting Strength coaches. Here's an inspirational article on that theme:

    Squatting 405 lbs at 40 | Jeremy Wooden

    You appear to be in Indiana. You might consider pointing your car to Yellow Springs, OH (less than 5 hours from any point in Indiana--I've driven farther for coaching), and booking a session with Mia Inman. She's highly recommended:

    Testimonial, Mia Inman, SSC

  4. #24
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    Quote Originally Posted by CDG View Post
    L
    Long femur lifters have to get the hips in place, with unlocked knees, and then drop down as far as they can, being sure to keep tension before hitting the bottom so they don’t just stay down there. That tension is generated closer to the bottom by stopping the knee travel, not just bending over a little more when they’re incline that far forward. I can guarantee that if you tell these guys to think about getting their knees somewhere quick, they will end up in flexion. And, if you stop the knee travel too early, you won’t hit depth.
    Long-femured lifter here. I'll admit that I struggle with this. I have tried like hell to get my knees to stop moving 1/3 of the way down but it just won't happen without compromising my lower back or sacrificing depth. I have found that proper foot position is critical and I have little room for error in where I set my feet to get a proper squat. For me, the difference between too wide and too narrow in my stance width is separated by maybe 1/2" overall. On the narrow side, I can reach depth easier, but my knees slide almost all the way through and I feel some rounding of the lower back. It is, however, the knees that bother me more than my back. Too wide and I get a nice hamstring stretch that I can bounce from, but I'm usually high or so close to parallel that I can't tell if I made depth or not. That's with 3/4" heel lifts. I've thought about painting feet on my platform like they have at Parris Island so I can at least have a consistent foot position. I just haven't figured out the logistics to that yet. Until then, I have to video every single warmup set to get it right for the working sets, make adjustments, and even then, some days it just doesn't happen.

    I've seen an SSC and, in person, they can tell me precisely when my positioning is correct and I do fine. When I'm not under their watchful eye, I can't detect the subtleties of the exact spot I need to be. I approximate it better some days than others. Occasionally, I hit it just right and my squat definitely has improved since I saw an SSC. I don't think our/your understanding of the squat is necessarily flawed, CDG, or that there's some fly in the SS ointment when it comes to the squat. I think that there are certain people who just have better levers than others and for those of us with shitty squat levers, we might have to consider the fact that there are days where a parallel squat is the best we can safely muster. It's not from being a pussy or not committing to depth. It's just that there are days where I pull the phone off my tripod and go, "No idea if that was deep enough or not. My hamstrings stretched like hell. I couldn't go any further down. I bounced out of the hole. Did I make it?" I don't allow myself to move the weights up on days where I fail to reach depth. My progress is probably slower than most because of that, but at least I'm honest about it (not that you aren't... I'm just saying people add weight in lieu of form just to get the number on the bar up there).

  5. #25
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    I have long femurs with a shorter upperbody. As Rip said -- this just manifests itself with a greater lean.

    I don't have any experience with the falling-over, back-rounding, un-safe lifiing past parallel, or whatever other issues have been attributed to long-femurs in this thread. I do have problems with knee-slide but that's just because my squat is imperfect. Here's a set at 500x5 where you can watch me knee slide on the first 3 reps, and then I fix it on the last 2, so obviously it isn't a problem caused by anthropometry.


  6. #26
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Rippetoe View Post
    I think your observations are inaccurate, and probably incomplete because you are not considering anything except the angles in the saggital plane. But thanks for your contribution to the forums.
    You're welcome. Thanks for writing things down and giving a mechanical analysis of the movements, it's helped me immensely. The criteria of depth with regard to hip/knee position is based on the lifter's projection in the saggital plane. Sure, you can always widen the legs, but that is really just "shortening" the femur in the saggital plane, when viewed from the side. My hips don't tolerate too much width, but anybody who can go wider and still hit parallel without reaching the limit of the adducters is solving the mechanical problem by reducing the moment arm in the saggital. If those hips don't open though, the knees have to go forward, even though they still move outwards. Unless you're talking about something else.

    CDG, you mentioned Layne Norton as a supporting example. But, under a heavy bar, he gets ridiculously horizontal, and he doesn't have appreciable (intentional) knee slide.
    Appreciable is a funny word, isn't it? I can have knee slide, but if it's not appreciable, then I'll say my knees were set early. I guess I can say that I squat according to the model then, under that logic. Intentional is an even weirder word because I've read around here somewhere that a potentially helpful cue is to "let the knees forward," which sounds pretty intentional. Maybe we need to let those knees forward closer to the bottom? That was the point of all this, not to say that the knees should shoot forward to give a vertical back angle.

    I would prefer if she went from position A straight to position C, that is stop moving the knee at halfway point and stay in the hips to reach depth. This is being pretty picky on a young female squatting nearly 200.
    But she doesn't, right? At heavy weights, people do things to complete the lift, like raise the hips high in the deadlift, lean forward out of the hole in the squat, and press the bar close to the face in the press. As weight goes up, you've got to do something right to complete the lift, and my point is these people do something that works, it's called pushing the knees forward at the bottom with the correctly inclined torso to facilitate depth. Maybe they are all wrong, or maybe it's something else. I've seen it happen every time.

    Indeed. Very interesting. Mr. Norton could use a coach based on the above-linked heavy squat video.
    Do you have a lot of experience coaching world-record champions in their craft?

    Coaching makes a difference, and I have enjoyed and benefitted from my sessions with Starting Strength coaches.
    Thank you. I will check it out, the drive is not that bad. I was saving up some funds to go see somebody locally, but they aren't an SS coach anymore. She isn't too far away.

    Long-femured lifter here. I'll admit that I struggle with this. I have tried like hell to get my knees to stop moving 1/3 of the way down but it just won't happen without compromising my lower back or sacrificing depth...
    That's what I've observed. I have to film every squat set, but I can get away with filming work sets on deadlifts and presses. I hate the squat so much. I have gained a ridiculous improvement in all my other lifts from incorporating these lifts with the programming. It honestly works better than anything else I've tried. One of these days, I'll squat perfectly, and then book a trip to a seminar, and become a coach(if I'm good enough).

    I don't have any experience with the falling-over, back-rounding, un-safe lifting past parallel, or whatever other issues have been attributed to long-femurs in this thread. I do have problems with knee-slide but that's just because my squat is imperfect. Here's a set at 500x5 where you can watch me knee slide on the first 3 reps, and then I fix it on the last 2, so obviously it isn't a problem caused by anthropometry.
    Long-femur/short torso lifters can lift safely and get stronger by squatting correctly. They will have a greater forward lean. I never stated that these lifters can't squat. I was trying to figure out if knee movement position is a function of femur:torso ratio. Also, you're knees are being pushed forward by your correctly inclined torso on every rep. You're making my point. It's a good squat, you're very strong, but your knees are certainly moving to facilitate proper depth. The angle is a little rough too, I can't really tell if you have a 1:1 femur-to-torso ratio. You could just be squatting too vertical, which is what Rip states as the cause of knee movement past the first 1/2 of descent. Now you're caught up on the thread.

  7. #27
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    Listen here bucko, did you even watch my first rep vs the last? I said the first rep knee movement is dog shit.

    1:1 femur to torso ratio means massively long femurs what the fuck are you talking about?

  8. #28
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    Quote Originally Posted by m s View Post
    Listen here bucko, did you even watch my first rep vs the last? I said the first rep knee movement is dog shit.

    1:1 femur to torso ratio means massively long femurs what the fuck are you talking about?
    I’m not interested in having an argument with someone who starts a reply with the term “bucko”. It’s a silly word. Clarification was needed on my claims, which you botched, and your video, which didn’t prove your point. You seem like a reasonably strong person, I wish you the best in your endeavors.

  9. #29
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    It's very clear that you're interested in having an argument. I'll admit that "Bucko" is quite inflammatory, but I don't think you're interested in being refuted, whatever your nebulous point might be.

  10. #30
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    Maybe Mark can check my thinking, as I'm only familiar with my own anthropometry, but I don't think the timing of knee movement is a function of torso or femur length. The degree of knee movement, yes. At least in analyzing video of my own squats, knee slide at the bottom is always the result of not leaning over soon enough. The only way to set the knees early is to set the back angle early. Otherwise if I start out too upright, and then correct the back angle later in the descent, the knees have to move late in order to maintain the balance of the bar over the midfoot. For me the cue is "lean over right away," and that along with the TUBOW has pretty much fixed it.

    I *think* that getting the back angle set early would get the knees set early for anyone regardless of their torso to femur relationship, but I'll defer to Mark or others with coaching experience to confirm or refute that.

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