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Thread: Squat Form Check for Grip Width & Bar Placement: 140kg

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jun 2019
    Posts
    474

    Default Squat Form Check for Grip Width & Bar Placement: 140kg

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    Would appreciate a form check on these recent sets.

    My numbers are:
    age: 39 (in 6wks)
    Weight: 112kg
    Height: 5'9"
    DL: 162.5kg
    BP: 75kg
    OHP: 47.5kg


    Here are the squats, @ 140kg *3*5
    (The camera is mirrored so what appears on the right is actually my left side)
    Set 1: rear left quarter view
    11-9-22 Squat Set 1 140kg Left Rear Quarter View - YouTube

    Set 2: left side view
    11-9-22 Squat Set 2 140 kg Left Side View - YouTube

    Set 3: rear right quarter view
    11 9 22 Squat set 3 140kg Back right quarter view - YouTube


    What I especially want feedback on as it's been driving me crazy since around 130kg (when it truly started feeling heavy) is my grip width + bar position on the back. At around 130kg I noticed that with the bar a little lower, the weight felt more over my midfoot at the bottom of the rep, but with a wider grip (thumb tip on the inner edge on the knurl) the bar didn't feel secure, and my outer elbows starting hurting a bunch, affecting the following OHP and BP work.
    So on these sets I really focused on a narrower grip (halfway between the knuckle and the base of the thumb on that inner knurl), but now I'm not sure whether the bar is too low on my back. And my left hand especially rides up over the top of the bar throughout the set.

    You'll notice that my left hand creeps out wider throughout the lift, and I'm assuming this is due to the residual left-side weakness from a head injury that I suffered at age nine (with stroke-like effects of left-side weakness along the whole body), and if that's hurting my form too much I'm going to start chalking up the left hand.

    On the third set it felt like my stance was too narrow but on the video I see that it was fine.

    I send great thanks out to Jovan and others who explained awhile ago how my back was a loose piece of shit as the cue of extending the upper back before unracking the bar has worked wonders.
    And in case any of the hard gainers or aspiring 'bodybuilders' are lurking and reading this, it has been amazing to me how at a BW of about 100kg three years ago the squats at 120kg were so taxing and damn near impossible, yet now, after putting on some COVID fluff of about 20lbs, these 130kg squats actually feel quite EASY, sans the grip width and bar placement issues!

    Here's the link to my previous squat form checks, in case you enjoy looking at old form checks and don't believe how difficult 120kg used to feel 20lbs lighter: Squat Form Check - 112.5kg on 2nd Round of NLP

    Thanks, everyone.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jul 2007
    Location
    North Texas
    Posts
    53,557

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    The descent is too slow, not generating any rebound out of the bottom. More importantly, it appears that you have a significantly short leg, right-hand side of my screen in the first video. Note the difference in the angle of your legs at the floor. Read my article about this and get it measured.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jun 2019
    Posts
    474

    Default

    Incredible. I am so intrigued and thankful to you, Rip! I even watched one of your vids not long ago about LLD but never even thought that it could apply to me! Just read your article and of course I'll get the leg length discrepancy checked out.

    I do have flat feet as well, have worn orthodics for as long as I can remember, but don't wear them while lifting.

    In fact, this pain arose in my left tibia after I did my 137.5kg work, about a third of the way up from the bottom of the bone on the front inner side, hurting enough for me to walk cautiously and even limp a bit the next day, but I didn't worry about it since the pain wasn't present while squatting 140 (& wasn't present today at 142.5kg, either).

    I had been starting to think this could even be related to this operation the docs did in my teens, after my growth spurts finished, cutting through the tibia just above the ankle and rotating it outward a few degrees.

    But the explanation in your article makes perfect sense, that as you are lifting the weight "finds" these discrepancies or weaknesses throughout the kinetic chain, and can cause hypertrophy (too much stress?) at those spots, causing pain. A Russian massage therapist even said essentially the same thing to me today, but I ignored her opinions because her advice of what to do next was typical of all of our heavy-weight-fearing cultures: you're getting older, you need to rest and skip a few sessions, and stop lifting so much weight in general (it's only three plates!) lest you tear the muscle and permanently injure yourself.

    Rant:
    It's all so tiresome; nobody would tell you you're killing yourself if you incrementally increased your running distance from 0 to 20 miles, or the number of push-ups, or any other various types of exercise, but lift heavy and they all think you're going to permanently injure yourself!

    Pardon my long reply here but I am quite amazed that this may get fixed through a shim, as outlined in your article, rather than being an ongoing pain & discrepancy in uniformity (the left side being weaker than the right) that I just must forever deal with due to the head injury.
    And I'm so grateful and impressed at the skill level and awareness you have developed to notice things like this just from a simple recording, thanks to the years of time and effort that you have been putting into perfecting your narrow-casted craft.

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