Squat-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kY64uWV6Vqw

My depth isnt great. Last one I posted I was going ATG and causing my lower back to round, so my focus has been on not rounding the back. Im okay with not having great depth while I make sure thats fixed. My problem now is the bar seems to go in a \ path and I cant help but lean forward. I believe Im still keeping my back arched and its not hurting my lower back like it used to. What else can I do to make these better?

They arent bad imo. You can try box squats if you want to improve sitting back.

Thanks thats good to hear. As long as Im not gonna injure myself, Im happy

I am not so sure. You look like you your butt gets stuck and you pitch/roll forward mid back at the exact point you should be sitting back without any change to your back. Your back is not going to fare well from that. Further, I think that issue is going to get worse as you add weight. You will be doing good mornings.

There are a couple of reps that look pretty close to parallel and you still roll your mid back forward as if you are ducking under something. If you can keep your back tight and just work on getting to parallel, which I think is almost there anyway, you would be good, imo.

PJo,

are you shoving your knees out? Looks a bit like you're squatting on top of your legs instead of between them, to use Dan John's way of describing it.

I cant seem to keep my back tight enough to keep from falling forward. I try to focus on moving the bar straight down and it always moves in the way seen in the video. I dont know if its a lower back strength issue or just something mechanical. I may need to work more on sitting back like cha mentioned, idk

Ill focus on this as well next time around, ty

Injuried my left knee first of may and just started squatting again. I filmed my set today and have some strange knee motion going on. Is the "shoving knees out" part bad? Any ideas on how to fix it? Weight is very light, moving back up in weights slowly trying to work on technique.

light front squats http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPsqtUdAivU

That looks good to me from that angle. Shoving your knees out is good. You're vulnerable to injury when the knees get inside of the big toes.

Im not overdoing it?

[QUOTE=PJo336;29161838]I cant seem to keep my back tight enough to keep from falling forward. I try to focus on moving the bar straight down and it always moves in the way seen in the video. I dont know if its a lower back strength issue or just something mechanical. I may need to work more on sitting back like cha mentioned, idk

You may want to consider taping a body weight squat then one with just the bar. If it happens the same way, it may be a flexibility issue. I watched the video again and I feel more strongly that it is a problem that you need to fix.

Probably not. Does it hurt your knees when you do that?

I have a vid of warm ups

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f65qYpmgD-s

to me it looks like my ass starts out tucked

No, it feels totally fine

Then its good. Your feet dont have to be perfectly aligned with your knees imo. Trouble happens when the knees go inside the big toes, but outside of them is fine.

And some light back squats

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiRId_lV7cI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmBfqRXBnNg

First rep looks good, except not quite low enough. Also, I know it's only warm up but you don't take a deep enough breath and you don't lock up your back enough. Fifth rep looks same. 2,3 4 all look as though you lose rigidity in your back.

Watching the video makes me suspicious about your flexibility. You may want to try doing about 15 BW squats before you begin your work out. Take a big breath before each rep. Start the first few reps above parallel and make sure you finish the last few reps ATG. When all the way down, you can join your hands together and push your elbows out against the inside of your knees. Good description of this in SS. Really make the effort to increase your flexibility, get ATG and push those knees out stretching all as much as feels safe.

THe whole point being to stretch out just enough so that when you do weighted reps (which will fall well under the BW stretched reps) you will be able to maintain your back position and you will be able to sit back low enough to get at or slightly below parallel.

PJ - None of your reps are going to parallel or below parallel. You mention that before you were trying to go ATG but had lots of lower back flexion. It's good that you don't have flexion now that you're not going as low, but you should still try to go parallel or a bit lower if you can with good form. Long-term if you don't get in the habit of going to parallel you could start cheating higher even more and the forces on your knee will be lopsided and this can cause knee injury for ppl who do heavy 1/2 squats and 1/4 squats or w/e.

I doubt your biggest issue is flexibility but it could be contributing. A big part of it could be something weak in your back. I've been having a hell of a time not folding forward (doing good mornings) on my work sets (I'm lifting more maybe than you but not that much really yet). Things that have helped me are:

Using "big chest/lead with chest" as my cue on squats when coming out of the bottom of the squat. The normal cue is "lead with the butt/drive the hips" but if your upper body is folding over, the opposite cue can really help.

I also really try to get as big of a chest as possible before starting each rep of my squat. I don't pause too long, but concentrate on doing that each time, as if I was getting ready to bench. My guess is my Lats are crap (relative to other parts of me) b/c they had new adhesions after the last couple times I squatted when reallly focusing on big chest/flexing my lats. This cue is important for every single lift in SS and really for every single moment of every single day of your life (lol). But especially on any heavy lift, you want a big chest and muscle that will hold your spine in place and stabilize the squat/DL/bench/press load really well so you can lift it with good form.

I'm guessing at flexibility because it appears that he just stops above parallel and then his mid-back levers forward. Back is an issue but what is stopping his descent? Why can he not sit back more? I think if he can just sit back a little more his back would not have a chance to lever forward.

Regardless, strongly agree w everything else you wrote. Back, most of the time, is the weak link in the chain and where I think you fail first.

Thanks for the responses. I am one of the most inflexible people I have ever met, so I just assume thats a huge part of the issue.

I did box squats with just the bar for a while today. I have like 0 power from my hams/glutes/hips. I could barely stand up without pitching forward with just the bar. I think this translates to my problem and relates to what BPA said first, which is I basically get stuck in the hole, and pitch forward in order to cheat and activate my quads way more to get out. That explains the incorrect bar path and the appearance of me ducking under something. The problem is I dont really know how to fix this quickly. I could just do Box squats for a while, adding weight each time, as I really felt it in the hamstrings today. Should I add accessory work as well?

Box squats:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZI1CSWP4g8

Not even sure im doing those right either, but I do feel stuck at the bottom, which is a huge problem

BPA - the reason I'm thinking it likely isn't purely flexibility is Ripp wrote an article all about how lower back flexion getting to parallel *isn't* a flexibility issue (obv there are always outliers but it's more likely something else isn't being done right): http://startingstrength.com/articles...2_rippetoe.pdf.

Taken from the beginning of the second page (the article is wordy, ldo):

"Most people that have trouble with the squat are having trouble getting good depth while keeping their low back from rounding. Pretty much anybody can get deep if they allow the lumbar spine to relax into flexion. But we have found that almost every single human being on this planet can squat below parallel with pretty good lumbar extension if their stance is correct and if they simply shove their knees out to the sides as they squat. This is because a type of impingement occurs at the bottom of the squat that is relieved by shoving out the knees, allowing for a below-parallel squat with this simple skeletal position adjustment. At the same time a drastic improvement occurs in the way the hips work."

Btw, I read this article a while ago and still have "knee out" issues and lower back flexion issues if I try to go more than a bit past parallel. But I haven't been able to fully correct them yet imo.

PJ - I'd pause on the box a bit rather than bounce off of it. You want to keep everything really tight though, the pause isn't a break to relax. Seems you are quad-dependent and when things get tough you are trying to use those at the expensive of your other muscles, which requires incorrect form. I think I have this issue too.

I did box squats for a while and then when I switched back to LBBS I made gains. But, now I'm having upper body cave issues again so I'm not sure it's a magical cure-all. It can definitely help though. I'm learning there's no magical way to learn great form other than making sure every time you move up weight, it's not at the expensive of cheating form and while every rep maybe doesn't have to be perfect, if you start moving up by doing something off, some muscles may not be getting stronger as a result and your problem will just worsen (in my case anyway).

Sorry no vid for this:

I started doing OH Presses again, and am having a similar issue I had a couple years ago, the last time I did them seriously. My right wrist experiences significant discomfort after the exercise, and it will probably linger until next time I do them. Left wrist has no issue. I assume it has something to do with my grip (though not sure why it is only affecting the right wrist, as the grips appear identical.) Any ideas? Or suggestions on how to grip with hands/palms/fingers/wrist while doing this?

Thanks in advance.

420DMX69,

I had wrist problems with my wrists during presses and was able to correct it. This might help you.

First off, make sure everything's in line. Your forearms should be perpendicular to the bar.

Your forearms should also be perpendicular to the ground, which means get your elbows out. Film yourself next time, because elbows perpendicular to the ground FEELS like "elbows way the **** out past the bar"

Now, assuming you're doing that, my guess is you aren't keeping your wrists as stiff as you can, this is what I was doing. Your wrists need to be straight with your forearm. Consciously think about this as you're pressing, especially on the way down, and it should correct itself easily.

For me, every time I finished my last rep of a set I simply let the bar "come down" rather than really trying to control it, and as a result my wrists were bending slightly back. It was so subtle I didn't notice it for a while.

Thanks. So my wrist should keep the back of my hand in a direct line with my forearm?

I probably am closer to a 90 degree angle there, putting a lot of pressure on my wrist.

Your comments are very helpful - thanks.

Howdy form experts. Hoping I could get a look at my squat since it's been a while. Also, linked to a recent bench vid (just 2 warm-up reps). If you have comments on that, I'd love to hear, but my main focus is the squat.

Bench (2@195 warm-up): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duRiOT-dX54
Squat (5@335 work set): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UA42uvJlT34

Thanks!