Squat Form Check: Round 3

[KNA]

Some background...
last year I posted this video:

I was advised that my knees were sliding too far forward at the bottom, amongst other things. I focused on keeping my shins more perpindicular, but exaggerated this fix which resulted in...

In this thread I was advised that my stance was too wide, knees not forward enough, and this was limiting depth.
Which leads to my current attempts...

*there is a back angle shot at ~1:00 mark
**heaviest set (185#) is at the ~2:30 mark
I can see that my depth is better but I'm losing lumbar extension at the bottom, despite my concentrated effort during the exercise to keep it extended. Is this acceptable "buttwink"? indicative of a flexibility issue? or a different form problem?
What else needs to be remedied?

Thanks in advance for any help.

[veryhrm]

my thoughts (on this as an SS LB squat):
1) depth is below parallel. You can even cut it off a LITTLE sooner maybe, but it's fine (black pants and rack upright still not making that an easy call)
2) the issue of moving the hips first and then the knees is much improved, but still needs some work. Knees should move forward sooner, in the 1st 1/3rd of the squatting movement says SS. You're unlocking them up top now, but still not moving them to their final forward position until at least 1/2 way through. (i'll note though that i prob. wouldn't have noticed that if i hadn't looked at the comments from the previous thread)
3) loss of lumbar extension is significant enough that you should work on fixing it. Based on the rear view i'd say push your knees to the outside. (I just wrote in another thread that it's taken/taking a multi-pronged approach for me to tackle roll under so don't know that there's a silver bullet)

Thumbs up on making a concerted effort to get the form fixed.

[KNA]

Thank you very much for taking the time to watch and reply.

[Gunnhild Bruno]

1) depth is below parallel. You can even cut it off a LITTLE sooner maybe, but it's fine (black pants and rack upright still not making that an easy call)

You keep telling people that their squats should be parallel. For our purposes, depth is supposed to be slightly below parallel.

OP, re: your knee/hip flexion coordination on descent--
It’s better in the original video. The problem there was not that your knees were forward. It was that they were sliding forward at the bottom, which is an error caused by not staying tight, i.e., not maintaining the active hip, at the bottom. Don’t know whether anyone made this distinction clear to you when you posted that first video, but given your response to it, I’m thinking not.

As for your lumbar, yeah, veryhrm is right--shove your knees out a little further and focus on staying tight. It actually helps me more to think in terms of actively pulling my knees further apart then to think about shoving them out, so maybe that will work better as a cue for you, too.

And actual weightlifting shoes will probably help.

[KNA]

re: your knee/hip flexion coordination on descent--
It’s better in the original video. The problem there was not that your knees were forward. It was that they were sliding forward at the bottom

Multiple people, including above poster, have stated that the knees should reach their position at about 1/3 through the movement. In original video it's not like the knees get into position, and then slide forward at the bottom. It looks to me like they are constantly moving forward throughout the movement. I will continue to work with TUBOW to try and fix this, but i can only use the wood with body weight squats. As soon as i add the bar, i can't set up the wood after ive unracked.

As for staying tight, I am doing this but at the bottom my lumbar just can NOT stay in extension at the bottom with my current form, no matter how tight I try and keep everything. I will focus more on shoving my knees out as you've both said and hopefully this will remedy that problem.

I do plan on investing in a belt and some shoes in the future, but for now I still very much feel like a novice and that there are more basic things I need to work on before I worry about that stuff.

Thanks for the reply!

Edit: I reread

It actually helps me more to think in terms of actively pulling my knees further apart then to think about shoving them out, so maybe that will work better as a cue for you, too.[/I]

and I am not quite understanding the distinction between the two? If you could maybe elaborate on this I would love to hear it as I'm hoping there will be some cue that I can use that will all of a sudden make everything click. maybe this will be it!

[Gunnhild Bruno]

Multiple people, including above poster, have stated that the knees should reach their position at about 1/3 through the movement. In original video it's not like the knees get into position, and then slide forward at the bottom. It looks to me like they are constantly moving forward throughout the movement. I will continue to work with TUBOW to try and fix this, but i can only use the wood with body weight squats. As soon as i add the bar, i can't set up the wood after ive unracked.

While there is no strict cutoff point, you do well on the initial part of the descent in your first video, then as you get towards the bottom, the knees continue to slide forward, which is bad. I didn't mean to say that it was only once you reached the very bottom position that the knees were sliding forward.

The thing that is good about the original video is the way you come straight down, breaking at both the hips and the knees, in the first part of your descent. Can you see what I'm talking about when you compare it to the other videos? In your attempt to keep the knees back subsequent to posting that video, you've started overthinking that part of it. In video 3, I can literally see you overthinking your descent.

As for cues, sometimes it takes a while to find a good one. The difference between "shoving out" and "pulling apart" is that "shoving" implies, to some people, forward motion, which we don't want at that point in the lift, whereas the latter makes it clearer that the primary concern is getting the knees further away from one another. IMO. At any rate, it may not make a big difference for you if you already have a clear picture of what should happen but just can't make your knees do it.

Your lumbar flexion is something you should fix, but don't panic about it. Practice your stretching in your unweighted squat. I think that, once you're able to get your knees further apart and actively keep them there, the lumbar will improve greatly. Some hamstring stretching doesn't hurt, either.

Re: absolute statements like "your knees have to be in position 1/3 of the way down and never move". Yes, this is generally the principle, but A) there is always variation among lifters and B) it's meant more as a way to identify when you're probably doing something wrong, and the wood block is a coaching tool for stubborn cases of forward slide too late in the lift, not something that you should fixate on while lifting. So use this "rule" to evaluate your lifts when you look at them on video. But it's not always helpful to think about it when you're actually lifting.

Remember that a lot of people giving advice on here are beginners like you who are getting all their info from their interpretation of the book and wiki. This is not to say that some newbies don't understand better than others and don't have a good understanding of what the lifts should look like. But just take advice with caution.

As for your squats, you can see how, in the first video, the bar tends to end up too forward, throwing your weight forward, right? This is related to not staying tight throughout the lift.

Now, look at your last video. Do you see how you have a tendency to have the bar too far back toward your heels? You actually lose balance because of it. This is because you're fixated on what your knees are doing.

Instead of worrying about how much and when your knees go forward, which is actually difficult to feel and leads to overthinking, think of the slot-over-midfoot cue and concentrate on staying tight throughout and pulling your knees apart/shoving your knees out as hard as you can. And you may want to look down even more, like practically between your feet. This gives you visual clues as to whether or not you're moving forward or back too much. Just remember to keep your upper back tight and chest up as you do this.

[veryhrm]

1) depth is below parallel. You can even cut it off a LITTLE sooner maybe, but it's fine (black pants and rack upright still not making that an easy call)

You keep telling people that their squats should be parallel. For our purposes, depth is supposed to be slightly below parallel.

Heh. i actually didn't mean point one as "an issue" though i can see how it would be interpreted that way. I meant to convey "The depth is below parallel [which is good since getting deeper was one of the goals from last time]. You might even cut it off a little sooner [since that would make it easier to address the lumbar back extension and it would still be below parallel].

If, on the other hand, you disagree about my judgment of the depth and think this still isn't deep enough, then that's a different discussion.

[Gunnhild Bruno]

Heh. i actually didn't mean point one as "an issue" though i can see how it would be interpreted that way. I meant to convey "The depth is below parallel [which is good since getting deeper was one of the goals from last time]. You might even cut it off a little sooner [since that would make it easier to address the lumbar back extension and it would still be below parallel].

If, on the other hand, you disagree about my judgment of the depth and think this still isn't deep enough, then that's a different discussion.

I meant that his depth is fine, and cutting it short by an inch, which is all he can cut it short by, won't do much for his lumbar turn-in issue. He's better off not stressing about depth and worrying instead about getting his knees out and keeping the bar in balance.

CLARIFICATION: Cutting his depth short by an inch would be cutting it pretty close to being a hair high on some of those reps. In other words, his depth is fine. My response to you was to make sure you are aware that the depth Rip advocates is actually lower than, say, an official competition squat in powerlifting, which is what most people mean when they say "parallel".

[blowdpanis]

Honestly, I think your squat looks better (than the previous video from the other thread, i.e. the second in this post), the only thing I'd do at this point:

1) Find a way to stay a bit tighter. Watching this may help:

http://vimeo.com/22011422

You seem to be assuming the set position pretty well, but you may be "relaxing" towards the very bottom of the movement, consciously or not. There's still a little remainder of the sit back first thing going on, but I think that'll kind of go away over time as you stop thinking about it, focusing more on a tight position with knees out and weight over midfoot.

2) This will probably be controversial, but as an experiment, give looking straight ahead or slightly down (a spot that would have you looking straight ahead from the bottom position is a good start) a try. See how it impacts your tightness and how the movement feels. I am guessing it will feel a little less awkward, but I could be mistaken.

In regards to the knee slide thing towards the bottom, I also think it's a product of a slightly closer stance (which I don't honestly think is a problem), which tends to have the knees drift forward throughout a good part of the movement. Having done a lot of video analysis, knees stop their forward movement sooner the wider the stance, as a rule, but quantifying this in any particularly specific way (like a 1/3 of the way down rule or whatever) is probably impossible from person to person. You can also see this pattern (knees moving ahead for most of the movement) in Zach's infamous internet squats, as he uses a fairly close stance.

Imho, if the back is actually tight with the knees out and the bar path mostly straight both down and up, you're doing it right, regardless of a little knee movement at the bottom. Watching videos of actually strong people seems to (overwhelmingly) confirm this.

[blowdpanis]

You keep telling people that their squats should be parallel. For our purposes, depth is supposed to be slightly below parallel.

OP, re: your knee/hip flexion coordination on descent--
It’s better in the original video. The problem there was not that your knees were forward. It was that they were sliding forward at the bottom, which is an error caused by not staying tight, i.e., not maintaining the active hip, at the bottom. Don’t know whether anyone made this distinction clear to you when you posted that first video, but given your response to it, I’m thinking not.

As for your lumbar, yeah, veryhrm is right--shove your knees out a little further and focus on staying tight. It actually helps me more to think in terms of actively pulling my knees further apart then to think about shoving them out, so maybe that will work better as a cue for you, too.

And actual weightlifting shoes will probably help.

edit: oops, when you said "original video," I thought you meant the prior (second in this post) one, the subject of discussion of the previous thread. I actually agree that his original video (first in the original post in this thread) was closer to correct than his second, somehow people got in his head that he should be doing typical internet squats, "SIT BACK! LOL PUSH THE HIPS BACK BRO! SHINS VERTICAL!"

Spar actually points out something interesting, that your original video in some ways is what we were talking about in that previous thread in terms of simultaneous knee/hip breaking, KNA, just lacking the tightness (lumbar extension in particular) that would make it complete. I'm not sure what happened back when you originally posted that, but you somehow were convinced that shin angle should be minimized, since you had "knee slide," when the real issue was basically one of general tightness. Either way, you seem to be moving in the right direction.