Squat Form Check After Long Hiatus

[ripple]

Hi! I'm Juan, around 80kg (176lb) and 190cm (6'2), 28yo, kind of athletic from a young age (started lifting weights from 16yo due to being uncomfortably slender, on and off through the years without seeing massive changes due to poor diet and lack of strength-focus.. I also do other sports casually so fitness is alright).

Started strictly following SS (diet-wise, programming-wise, form-wise —kind of, as we'll see—) some months back and was feeling great and progressing linearly.. But then fell into a long hiatus due to a variety of reasons, from health to work to getting unmotivated due to lack of progress after a certain point and lack of access to a SS coach here in Madrid. This lack of progress appeared mostly in the squat, where I reached the 110-115kg (242-253lb) range and started to get recurrent lower back pain.. I took some videos and realized I was committing certain form mistakes (like raising the butt before the chest) that allowed me to linearly progress up to that point, but that prevented me from going forward (even after a couple 10-15% deloads I was unable to fix the form and get rid of the back pain). So I did a bigger deload while going again through the SS books and videos, and started going up again with a hard focus on form. But then as mentioned, health and work interfered, sleep and diet were not where they'd be, and I fell-off shortly after.

Now come some months from that and I'm starting again from the bottom. This last workout (after about 4 workouts) was supposed to be 90kg (198lb), but a couple days prior I noticed I was getting some lower back pain again, and linked it to the same error of butt raising before chest, so decided to take it slow, focus on form, and take some videos to post in here instead of just trying to wing it and figure it out by myself like last time. So I did 90-87,5-85kg (198-193-187lb) to not be at my current limit for the 3 sets and so be able to control form better both for myself and for the feedback. I see I still did raise the butt too fast, even as I was focusing on it.. but I'm working on that, and wanted to post this thread regardless, to maybe get extra pointers I may be missing to work on in parallel with that, to really laid a solid foundation. I'll post the next workout too in an answer to this thread, where I hope I'd fixed that nuance, but please shoot away any criticism.

The other thing I was working on in the WO on the videos was keeping the lumbar area tight and not going too low bellow parallel, as after watching the SS squat video Rip mentions losing lumbar tension due to excessive descent, and I guessed that could be what was causing me to then having to overcompensate with the hips/glutes when raising.

Here're the videos, let me know any important details I may have missed posting and I'll update. Thank you guys in advance.

- Set 1: Workout 28/Nov/22 - Set 1 - YouTube
- Set 2: Workout 28/Nov/22 - Set 2 - YouTube
- Set 3: Workout 28/Nov/22 - Set 3 - YouTube


Pd: For those wondering why I take so long at the beginning.. The other issue I wrestled with when getting to the 110-115kg (242-253lb) weights was my shoulders hurting.. Which I then found out to be due to the bar not perfectly balanced in the right position and hence by arms having to do some extra workout to balance it out through out the lift, which was okay at 90kg (198lb) but was not when the weight got a bit serious. I'm warming the shoulds more now and properly positioning the bar, and I'm noticing no pain so far so that's good. Just need to streamline the process now haha

[Mark Rippetoe]

Required reading before posting

[ripple]

Fair enough, sorry about that. First time posting.. I saw that thread just after posting mine. Reviewing it I've gathered the following things I need to improve:
- Recording from a higher angle
- Trimming more from the initial setup
- Getting a another angle aside from the rear one
- Regarding light, is there enough? I'm not sure what I could do to increase it as there's only that one power rack in my gym
- The 2nd set also has the left plates out of the angle. Is that an issue even if the whole body is showed through the whole range of motion? Just to keep it in mind for future videos

Anything else I might've missed? I'll record properly tomorrow and post back. Also, should I delete this thread so people don't waste their time going through it, and posting a new one tomorrow, or just create a new answer with the improved videos?