Squat Check

[axlebear]

First off I'd like to let you know that I'm a Cop and have been training in CrossFit for 8 months. I got my level 1 cert and I'm an Academy PT Instructor for my Department (large department in the San Francisco Bay Area in California). We've switched over to using CrossFit for our PT programming, which means we are teaching every single new recruit how to properly lift weights, instead of just running them into the ground and making them do pushups until their arms fall off. I'm excited that eventually the entire department will have been taught how to squat, deadlift, shoulder press, clean, and bench based on your standards. There will be a lot of us in Law Enforcement that will be bigger and stronger for it, and therefore safer out on the street, and we appreciate it.

I've read SS which was absolutely stellar. I'm now 6 weeks into the basic SS program. Hopefully I've got most things squared away with my squat form, but would like to make sure.

185lbs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djVpYJR0b3w

215lbs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCJ65Q4vHDI

Coach, thanks for your commitment and contributions to the world of lifting.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Both look pretty good to me. The first video at 185 shows a slight tendency to wait on the knee unlock -- hips and knees at the top should happen at the same time, with knees going forward and out and the hips going back. But it didn't cause a problem at the bottom and the squats looked pretty good. The second video at 215 looked good too, with a slight tendency to have a soft upper back. This is fixed by lifting the elbows up in the back and lifting the chest at the same time, which locks the thoracic spine in extension.

[axlebear]

Thanks coach. I'll work on the knee unlock, and keeping my chest up. Much obliged.

[Jeroen]

Maybe you can put your power rack a few metres back from the wall so you can look 5/6 feet down in front of you

[OITW]

Coach, I have to disagree!

He's got a body geometry very similar to mine, maybe even longer legs and torso (I'm guessing he's at least 6'4"). Now, maybe this is projection, but I was doing almost exactly what he was doing and I ran into serious trouble at about the same weight. That last rep of the first set is practically a 215lb good morning--his legs extend to push the hips up, but not the bar. The last two reps on both the second and thirds sets show the same thing--he relaxes his back so that he can lower his head to get the bar low, then drives with the legs not the hips, and to finish uses his back to right himself.

He's also relaxing the lumbar arch at the top of every rep, resetting it after he unlocks his knees and begins to drop--I don't know if that's dangerous, but it can't be good.

And in the nit-picky category, his eyes are down at the top, but at the bottom he's raising his eyes to forward. Is he raising his head to measure his depth, or because the raised eye position assures him he hasn't loosened his back to lower the bar?

I think you're missing a developing trend, but he's doing what I was doing, and at 225 I ended up with my hips nearly fully raised and the bar right about where it was when I started the drive. Someone grabbed my hips and held me while I righted myself. I could be completely wrong, but to this novice he looks to be heading the same direction.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Well, O, you might be right. All I see is a loose upper back, but damned if the road to Hell isn't paved with accumulating bad habits. Maybe he IS about to die.

[OITW]

I'm telling you, man, one day Axlebear is going to snap in two, like a wooden match, and then it will all be on you, and you're going to feel, like, sooooo guilty and stuff. I can see it now, his hips up and legs extended, but chest on the ground (yeah, tell him to stick his chest up now, little too late, huh?), head pinned to the rubber mats--thank goodness for those 45 lb plates, or he couldn't even breathe down there. You'll feel sorry then.

If you're not already.

[Mark Rippetoe]

I'm not.