Squat form check

[Rico Jones]

Here are videos of my most recent squat work sets. I tried to follow the directions in the sticky, but if I messed anything up, let me know and I'll reshoot.

Set 1: http://youtu.be/izqijOcBahA

Set 2: http://youtu.be/xcuY2QoKLdU

Set 3: http://youtu.be/r9e0Y_2Jlis

I did notice that it looks like my knees pop inward a little bit when I come out of the bottom, but, to my eye, this doesn't seem like a terribly egregious breakdown in form. Tell me if I'm wrong, though.

Other than that, my squat seems pretty good to me, but that's why I'm here: to see if I'm missing anything.

Thanks in advance, I see you guys helping people everyday and it's awesome.

[BareSteel]

Very good squats, Toaster Man.

The knee cave you speak of is essentially nothing according to my eye. Sure, be aware of keeping 'em out on the ascent, but I don't see anything close to worth deloading over. Secondly, on the ascent your hips shoot back just a bit. Remeber, hip drive is all upward - not back. That's really my only critique.

Really though these are very good squats to be performing from just the text and no live coaching.

[Rico Jones]

Thanks for the feedback, it's much appreciated.

Really though these are very good squats to be performing from just the text and no live coaching.

Well, it's a good text, plus I took lots of video of myself squatting. I don't know how anybody gets a decent squat without watching video of themselves (provided they don't have live coaching, of course).

[boot29342342]

toasterlovin, as promised, I am posting comments here. You should have probably mentioned that you have inflammation pain around your knees in your form check post. There are three kinds of form check posts, generally speaking:

"my X hurts, is it my form?"
"I am a super-cautious person and I wanna make sure everything is okay before I put more weight on the bar even though nothing hurts and I am not struggling with the weight"
"I am stuck at this weight, is it my form?"

Somewhat different advice applies in these situations; if something hurts, you want to be a perfectionist about form.

Your knees are not fixed in position very well and are moving throughout. What you want to do is get them in position about 1/3 of the way down, and keep them fixed in 3D space. The way you are bouncing off your knees right now, it's no wonder the tendons around the knee caps are getting inflamed. I would work with TUBOW to address this.

[Rico Jones]

Thanks for the reply. I guess my thinking was that a blind form check would be most objective (not looking for things that aren't there), but I failed to think about having different standards of what constitutes acceptable form based on whether or not I'm experiencing pain. Kinda dumb of me, in retrospect. Sorry about that.

I will make use of the TUBOW. Any idea how long it would take for the pain to go away once I perfect my form?

Here's a link to my other thread for anybody interested: http://startingstrength.com/resource...977#post935977

[boot29342342]

I had a similar problem, and I addressed it by taking a break from squatting and loading up on ibuprofen, and then working with TUBOW. As soon as I resumed squatting, my knees felt fine, and my hip tendinitis went away, too. So that makes me think I could have just started squatting with better form and taken ibuprofen and fixed it that way.

Since you are not working under optimal conditions, though, perhaps at least a deload might not be a bad idea so you can address the form issue. And ibuprofen.