Steve's Squat Form Check #1

[heinz83]

His arms and shoulders are packed in as tight as they can be, but he is further narrowing his grip to produce vertical forearms such that his hands are actually *above* the bar. This is the situation an artificially (i.e., one not dictated by flexibility) wide grip is incorrectly utilized to address: the wrists are held in flexion to "hold" the bar, and the grip is widened to keep the bar in the hands. If the grip were narrowed, the flexed wrists would be unable to "reach" the bar without being held neutrally, so the error is made to widen the grip. However, if the grip is narrowed past the point where the shoulders are capable of moving the humeri, the hands will lie "above" the bar, and the wrists will need to flex "down" to reach it.

No Floating Fingers On Your Squat Grip!

So do you still think he should widen his grip, or just move his hands down like in the video?

[Spelitere]

So do you still think he should widen his grip, or just move his hands down like in the video?

This is a good question. Which one should I do?

[heinz83]

This is a good question. Which one should I do?

Try moving your hands down with your current grip width so you can have your wrists neutral (slight extension) and the bar in the meat of your palms. If you can't then try adjusting your grip width. I would try going narrower first. Generally you want the narrowest grip possible while maintaining low bar position and neutral wrists. Its trial and error. The photos in the blue book will help you see what wrists and elbows are supposed to look like.

[Maybach]

It's hard to tell from this angle, but it looks like your arms and shoulders are down as low as they can go, and your grip doesn't look very wide. From here, it looks like you should just take a wider grip. But it's going to depend on your actual anatomical range of motion: get your wrists as low as possible with shoulder position first, then move your hands out until they are in the correct position relative to the bar. If you can get your wrists neutral by moving your shoulders, do it. If you can't, then widen your grip. Either way, the source of your problems here is the fucked up wrists. How you fix it is actually secondary. I told you to widen your grip because chasing vertical forearms with well positioned shoulders fucked *my* elbows up. You might be different. The following digression might not be helpful to you: get your wrists correct by any means necessary.

Most people when they take too wide a grip end up having to use force directed through the elbow joint to keep the bar up, which produces pain from stress on the tendons of the arm. If the grip gets narrowed "artificially," by moving the hands in without "packing in" the shoulders, then this stress is simply shifted to a different spot on the elbow joint, so "narrowing the grip" ends up not helping. Conversely, if the shoulders are already "packed", then the upward force is already taken up by the back and deltoids, and so a wider grip won't produce the same problems, even if the forearms are a little less vertical than they "should" be. Conversely, trying to pull the grip in when the shoulders are at the limit of their flexibility ends up producing tension on the forearms and even *torque* on the elbow joints, as the forearms move out of alignment with the upper arms. This can really fucking smart. It's effectively the same problem as dropping your elbows, but hard to see because the joints are so tight that the elbows don't actually move, even though they're "yanking" on the tendons in the same way.

The article below sort of aims at what I'm getting at. Your grip looks like it's somewhere between the bottom and middle grip shown in Figure 5, but your forearms are moved in further, which raises your wrists, which have to flex over. You might be able to pack your shoulders in tighter, which you should make every effort to do. But if you can't, just take the grip you can actually secure through moving the upper arms.

Long Forearms in the Squat | Andrew Lewis