Horrid Squat Form

[Elementi]

Coach, I'm in dire need of help. The consensus from my gym is my squat form is shit. How can I remedy this situation.



On the 2nd set, I was off balance a bit because the weights on the right side slid off a bit after the few couple of reps, but I tried to finish the set the best I could.

[veryhrm]

Not sure i'd say "horrid"... it looks like a parallel LB squat.

Some thoughts:
- Knees are coming too far forward. Sit back more so your knees don't come so far forward. This will also get you a bit more depth
- push your knees out and keep them there. The thing that looks most strange about your squat is that there's a lot of corrective "motion"
- also your feet seem to be turned out too much ( don't know if your heels are too close can't tell from these angles). This might be causing some lack of stability which is causing that knee motion.

curious to see what others here have to say. Also lowering the camera about 2 feet would give a better video.

[Carlos Daniel]

It's hard to say with the plates blocking the view. I can say that it isn't horrid, but I can't say more than that.

[Tom Campitelli]

Check out the sticky on this forum about videoing form checks.

Your squats aren't awful, but you may be rounding your back. I can't quite tell from the video. You could benefit from getting tighter at the top so that everything is nice and stable when you start. Lifting shoes would help, too.

[veryhrm]

Some thoughts:
- Knees are coming too far forward. Sit back more so your knees don't come so far forward. This will also get you a bit more depth

Don't know why i said that about the depth. I still think you should sit back more but depth will be independent of that.

Also i hadn't noticed your statement about the weights sliding in the 2nd set. Yeah... put some collars on that bad-boy. On 1 or 2 occasions i've hit the uprights when taking the weight out (my gym has a pretty wide rack) and i've been quite happy to have the collars on. Now i put them on for everything except bench (in case i should get pinned).

[Elementi]

So things I have noted are...

-Sit back more
-Turn feet in more
-Keep knees out
-Increase tightness to prevent rounding
-Use collars

I am going to assume my form has greatly improve since a week ago. I used to look straight down, not sit back, round my back, and not use use hip drive.

Thank you for the feedback.

[Tom Campitelli]

-Turn feet in more

Probably not. Remember, we can barely see what is going on from your videos.

[frosty-g]

Probably not. Remember, we can barely see what is going on from your videos.

depends as well on what is natural for you- i do turn my feet out a little more than normal when i stand or walk, and keeping to the pointed out 30 degrees as standard in the book just never felt right. reading mean ol' mr gravity there was someone with same issue and advice was to go with the naturally more angled out position. i've started doing that now and it's a lot better for me. might well not apply to Elementi here but worth bearing in mind.

[Elementi]

Probably not. Remember, we can barely see what is going on from your videos.

depends as well on what is natural for you- i do turn my feet out a little more than normal when i stand or walk, and keeping to the pointed out 30 degrees as standard in the book just never felt right. reading mean ol' mr gravity there was someone with same issue and advice was to go with the naturally more angled out position. i've started doing that now and it's a lot better for me. might well not apply to Elementi here but worth bearing in mind.

I don't think the angle of my feet is exaggerated. Its less than 45 degrees. But that's not my main issue. I seem to have trouble with my knees going past my toes even with keeping in mind that I need to sit back more. Is it possible that I just have femurs that are longer than my tibia/fibula? Or am I missing something about sitting back?

In the video I posted, how much further should I be sitting back? Honestly I don't think I could sit back any further and my hamstrings should not be tight because I stretch for ~15 minutes before I begin.

[veryhrm]

new video angles would help. knees a little in front of toes is fine. looking back at the video and my comments... i'm not confident that knees are too far forward. i assume that what i meant by sit back was go deeper (which was the wrong phrase for me to use).

something about this squat or vid is clearly confusing me so don't weigh my comments too heavily.