Squat Form Check and how to safely miss reps

[unruhschuh]

Hi Mark,

here's another squat form check. You didn't answer my last one and I guess it's because you couldn't see it as it was set to private. This one should work:



The shoes suck, I know, I'll buy weightlifting shoes next week.

As the weight is getting pretty heavy for me now, I'm concerned about missing reps. It never happened to me and I would like to know how to safely put the bar on to the safety pins. Should I lean forward or backward? Or maybe to the side? I tried with an empty bar but couldn't figure out a way to do this. It's probably because the pins are too low?

Cheers,

Tom

[Mark Rippetoe]

If it happens, you'll figure it out at the time. You'll probably go forward. And you're raising your chest instead of driving your hips.

[JohnKreg]

If it happens, you'll figure it out at the time. You'll probably go forward. And you're raising your chest instead of driving your hips.

Huh? Shit. I'm really trying to get to where I can see "good form" and this guy does some things very well which I have problems with: 1) he using more weight than I am 2) his lower back stays very nicely extended. I'm not sure I would have seen *anything* wrong if Rip hadn't said something -- and even now all I can see is that maybe his knees continue forward as he descends... maybe. But Rip you say he's leading up with his chest -- I know you've looked at this movement a gagillion times more than I have, but could you point to which rep this is most exaggerated on? (Would you say for example that they progressively improve?) I really want to train my brain on this movement and I seem to be encountering problems...

[jh50]

Mark,

Why do you say his chest is rising before the hips? To my untrained eye, it looks like his back angle doesn't change from start to finish and he keeps his lower back tight at the bottom of the squat. I guess I'm confused because I've seen too many videos of guys who overemphasize raising the hips, while their backs look almost parallel to the floor when come out of the hole.

Joe

[Mark Rippetoe]

If you have my DVD, refer to it for what I consider proper hip drive. Or any of the hundreds of videos in various threads on this board.

[unruhschuh]

Mark, in this video you're fixing a guys squat without hip drive:



I can clearly see what he's doing wrong in his first set. His chest rises way too early so that his back angle increases early in the ascent. In his 3rd set at 4m15s he does quite the opposite: His back angle decreases early in the ascent, causing a tiny good morning movement during the squat.

As JohnKreg and jh50 pointed out my back angle doesn't change until I'm way above parallel, which leaves me somewhere in the middle between the 1st and 3rd set of the guy in the video above.

The question is: Is the back angle supposed to decrease early in the ascent?

This is not me being stubborn, I just want to understand the concept of hip drive and what I should do differently.

Thanks for your advice.

Tom

[Mark Rippetoe]

The back angle with change enough to see that hips have engaged, but not enough to throw the bar forward of the mid-foot. It should be obvious that hips have initiated the drive up, but this must not turn into a goodmorning.

[RobCor]

As the weight is getting pretty heavy for me now, I'm concerned about missing reps. It never happened to me and I would like to know how to safely put the bar on to the safety pins. Should I lean forward or backward? Or maybe to the side? I tried with an empty bar but couldn't figure out a way to do this. It's probably because the pins are too low?

The bar has all the answers. It will tell you to go down, even though you want to go up. The bar will get its way, and you'll be sitting on your ankles with a bar on your back. At that point, judging from the vid, the bar may be on the safeties. If not, lean forward and set it down.

[JohnKreg]

OK, I think these are the two videos to put side-by-side:

Tom (chest-initiated):


Rip (hips-initiated):


So, is there small movement of the hips first and the trick is being tight enough to bring the chest along soon enough to keep it from becoming a good morning? Or, is the "hips first" perception in Rip's video just the muscles in the posterior chain contracting as they initiate the movement, but actual vertical displacement is the same at both hips and chest?

[Ian Kovtunovich]

To the OP, regarding missing a rep; just practice it to see how it will go. Try it with the bar, or a weight that's easy for you but still enough to get a feel for the procedure. It's much more relaxing to try and then realize that it works, so that when you need to bail, you won't need to worry about it.