Squat check (short torso/long femur)

[Railbob1776]

Short torso, long femur crew here. These felt good, but curious if they actually are good. My shins seem to be pretty much vertical (trying to keep my crappy knees out of this as much as possible) and I felt as if I leaned over enough to throw everything into the hips.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Even with your admittedly flawed anthropometry, the idea that your shins are supposed to be vertical at the bottom of the squat is only useful as a cue for correcting knee slide for someone with too-vertical a back angle. Shins are not supposed to be actually vertical, but rather forward enough to use the quads in the movement without making the hips useless. We cue by exaggeration all the time, and this is an example. Your flawed, substandard, and embarrassingly defective leg/back ratio effectively keeps you from squatting with too vertical a torso, so just let your knees drop to the front edge of your shoes, and it will feel much better to you. But taking yourself out of the gene pool is not a bad idea.

[Railbob1776]

Thanks for the feedback Mark, the reason I'm keeping the shins vertical is to prevent some patella arthritis from flaring up. I'll try and let the knees go a bit forward next time and see if I can get away with it. Just trying to do what I can with what I've got, which, as you pointed out (and I acknowledge), is not much. I figure that, even though my anthropometry admittedly sucks, my time is better spent doing what I can with squats instead of doing leg presses. And, since you brought it up, I, like yourself, am definitely not having any kids (although not for anthropometric reasons), so the world is safe on that front.