Squat - Hips Rising Too Fast

[BTImpaler]

Background:
Age: 37
Height: 6'2
Weight: 220-ish

Was stronger a couple of years ago, but after 2+ years dealing with a nagging knee issue and hip pain and a several month with golfer's elbow (fixed with pin-firing protocol), I reset at the end of June this year and started over with the basic LP. The hip pain has been the most persistent and for the first time in a long, long time it's behaving. Overall, this is the healthiest I've been in over 2 years, and I want to keep it that way and get stronger than ever with better technique.

With the squat, when the weight gets heavy, my hips shoot back and rise first. Kind of good morning it. Recently, I've been trying to focus on setting my knees in that first 1/3 of the descent and keeping them there as I noticed I'd been breaking from the hips before my knees rather than in sync in hopes to remedy this. In this past session I moved my feet in a little as I observed I was cutting the squats high. I cut the weight as well because the form was so ugly (still not pretty with the slight weight reduction)

Another issue I notice is that my first rep is always high - any thoughts there?

In any case, looking for feedback/cues/suggestions to make this thing better:

295
Set 1 (rear 3/4 angle)
YouTube

Set 2 (side angle)
YouTube

Set 3 (front 3/4 angle)
YouTube

325 (rear 3/4 angle)
Set 3 (of previous session - stance was a little wider and squats looked high)
YouTube

Thanks in advance.

[DerSpalter]

I think you should also make sure you set your backangle faster. You are done setting it when you are almost all the way down. But knees and back sould be set about the same time. Then when you are down there you come up with your butt way faster then your chest for a bit. This way you might squish your hips a bit every time. My guess would be (not a wild one) that you allow your hamstrings to get longer while you drive up for a short ammount of time which leads to the whole torso leaning forward a bit. Look at the position of your knees. They dont stay in place if we think about their position in a frontal plane.
Also: shove your knees out more than that. See how you cave in when you come up? That will reduce the space for your softtissue.

I hope this helps. But keep in mind I'm not a specialist on this topics.

[DerSpalter]

I forgot to check your gaze. Please try to fix one point while you squad this will help your oriantation better. You seem to start looking up mid-rep once you start to raise your chest. Work on that one too!

[Mark Rippetoe]

Disregard this German guy. These squats look fine to me, and though while possibly exaggerated by maybe 5%, your hip drive is good and correct. As far as your first rep, get the idea out of your mind that it is a "test" for the rest of the set. If it is high, don't count it as a rep. This will reset your attitude about it. Keep going, you're doing fine.

[BTImpaler]

Disregard this German guy. These squats look fine to me, and though while possibly exaggerated by maybe 5%, your hip drive is good and correct. As far as your first rep, get the idea out of your mind that it is a "test" for the rest of the set. If it is high, don't count it as a rep. This will reset your attitude about it. Keep going, you're doing fine.

Thanks for the reply! Will keep at it and post an update to see if my technique is holding together after adding another 50+ pounds to the bar.

[Archidel]

Yeah man, like Rip said these are pretty good. What I will add is that as far as I can tell your hips shooting back and rising first isn't the issue. You have a tendency to shift your weight forward a bit on the descent, which consequently keeps your torso a bit more vertical and your hips lower. Your hips shooting back and rising first is just you moving to the right position that you should have already been in finishing the descent. You can try focusing on feeling your weight in the middle of your foot on the way down and see if that helps.

But again, it's minor and you're doing fine.