I haven't watched your videos, but it sounds like you don't know what it feels like at the bottom of a good squat. When I do unweighted bar or bodyweight squats I don't care so much about getting low enough. The main concerns are keeping the back straight and stretching everything out. Once depth is attainable I might focus on other cues if I'm screwing something else up of course. This way you never let your back round, so you don't practice your mistake. Then again I've heard some say that they can't keep extension during warmup sets but the workset is heavy enough to stretch them into the proper depth, but these people know what it feels like to do it right.

Had to see the on-duty PT at my gym today. Months ago I first developed IT band syndrome from running, which was a good indication that running is not for me. For the past week and a half my IT band has been giving me trouble again when I've been walking around (especially while barefoot) to the point that my knee goes stiff or the outside of my right leg feels a dull pain that makes supporting my weight difficult. I have been icing it regularly.

I was told that a big reason it seems to be acting up is due to the band being very tight. I was shown a couple stretches to do to help increase the band's flexibility. Doing these stretches along with foam rolling should help rehab it. So far it's been a little better, but we'll see how it does in the long term. For now, I shouldn't have to back off my lifts since they don't irritate the injury.

Session #20 (8/16/10)

Squat (-20 lbs, form work again)
3x5x217
Have some videos of this, will post them later. Today my priority was to take my time and really stretch out my hamstrings and sit back in the way that Bob147 described. This seemed to help a lot.

Press (+5 lbs)
2x5x107
1x4x107
Failed the last rep. I'm not surprised, I'm weak on this lift. Probably going to have to microload this one once I get all the reps.

Power Clean (+5 lbs)
5x3x117
Starting to get the idea of squeezing the bar off the ground. No videos, but I'm getting more confident with these.

Uploaded squat videos.

Warmup Set 5x45
Workset 3 5x217

Obviously my form suffers when extra weight is added (my knees move around a bit, everything is slower). But especially in the warmup set, is this proper form? It looks a lot better to me. Any comments welcome!

definitely an improvement

it is very slow like you say so think about speeding up and trying to get some rebound

Finally got to the gym on a recovery day.

Did mobility drills, foam rolling, and static stretching. In between those also did

Pullups
2x2xBW (Strict)
1x1xBW (Strict)
3x1xBW (Cheat, slight pushoff from ground)
Doing this to try and develop the ability to do at least 5 pullups in one set. The volume is low, so it shouldn't hurt my recovery. BW is ~220 lbs.

Also did 10 minutes on the Concept II on resistance 4. Harder than I anticipated. My endurance is lousy recently. I'll probably incorporate some more Concept II work to improve this.

Yeah, my next step is to speed it up. For those videos, I was trying to get a better feeling for what a proper squat feels like.

Keep your weight back on your heels

Workout was bad today (8/18/10). Only got to do squats.

Squats (+10 lbs)
2x5x227
1x3x227 (couldn't keep lower back tight, knew next rep would fail)

Once again my elbows got really sore during squats. Looking at my videos, I know that I'm not supporting the weight on my wrists during the set. I may be putting weight on them while I'm racking though. I may also be lifting my elbows up too strongly during the workset (more than my flexibility should allow). Elbow soreness kept me from doing bench, so I decided to just stop there. Will redo this workout on Friday.

Again my squat form breaks down at the heavy workset (knees slide forward, weight off of heels on the way back up). I need to lower the weight until I find the point where my form stays correct through most of the worksets. Then I will progress from there. I'm getting better on the downward phase with sitting back and maintaining back tension, but now my problem is on the way back up.

Form issues really have a way at holding back your progress

go down faster on squat and keep weight on heels

Recovery Day
5 minutes light warmup on Concept II (Resistance 4)
Foam Rolling
Mobility Drills (including air squats)
Static stretch my IT band

Tried some BW pullups, but I could only get one. I think that the best way for me to get more pullups in a set is through a linear progression on the assisted pullup machine.

Assisted Pullups
2x5x(BW-100 lbs)
The machine lets you adjust in increments of 10 lbs.

Concept II (Resistance 4)
5 min - light
4 min - moderate
1 min - cooldown
For now I'm just trying to get my endurance to a more acceptable level. I'm keeping the cardio short and easy so I don't hurt my recovery.

Finished up with some static stretches and more foam rolling on my IT band.

RE: My squats

I don't know why I'm having such difficulty with the form. As several have said, I'm not keeping the weight on my heels, particularly during the upward part of the movement. I have a bad sense of what my body is doing during the movement, so this has been a tedious and slow process.

I'll keep working at it. It's obvious to me though that I need to start at a weight where I can get the form right so I don't keep reinforcing mistakes and work my way back up from there.

one thing is that it seems you are breaking with your knees first for the descent. try having your initial cue as shoving your ass out and sitting back into the squat

also i guess you watch this series already but if not theres some talk about this here and theres also a couple of drills in here you could try out (if you can make it past the intro)

hmm rewatching these now gave me some stuff to work on too :/

"When you squat from the heels, your knees will stay back. Now, you will not be able to continue to squat on your heels because this is also an unbalanced position, but after three or four reps this trick will have done its job and you will have settled into the middle of your foot with your knees in the correct position,....." SS p44.

If you exaggerate keeping the weight on your heels, you may start shifting the weight forward to maintain your balance. With more weight on the bar, staying on the heels is easier because the weight helps to even you out.

These other guys are not wrong, but maybe taking it too far with the 'on your heels' cue.

When your feet are wet, what kind of spot do they make on the floor? You'll notice the outside of the foot is the only point of contact that could be considered the 'middle'. When you feel the weight on the heels and this outside bone, you will be in balance.

The way you squat it looks like your knees/quads are doing all the work. This will probably cause quad/knee tendonitis, but on the flipside you may get some sweet teardrops going on from the quad isolation, so may be worth it depending on what your motives are.

As long as you are hitting depth you should be able to fix all of your form problems without decreasing the weight. You need to learn how to maintain good form under a heavy load.

Yeah, my issue is keeping good form while under a heavy load. I lose some tension, but my biggest issue is my weight transferring forward when I start going upward. Probably means I'm losing any potential hip drive, as others are pointing out.

Anyway, didn't get to the gym this past Friday. Was running late that day, and my IT band was really being a pain in the ass, so I decided I needed to give my legs a few days rest. It paid off a little, as I'm having less discomfort than all of last week. Also saw a doctor today to double-check that I didn't injure anything else. It seems to be just the IT band, and I'm seeing one of the PTs at the Health Center (so it won't be a student-in-training or something like that) on Wednesday. Hopefully this will benefit my recovery.

Got to the gym today:

Session #21 (8/23/10)

School's back in session, so there are a lot more people around, meaning the racks and stuff are being used more frequently. I've got to get to the gym earlier if I want to deal with less people.

Squats (-20 lbs, form work)
3x5x207
Videos: Set #1, Set #2, Set #3 (Angle is bad since there were more people around today, and I had less options with camera placement)
Although I don't feel they reveal anything except the same old BS issues I have, I thought I should probably post them anyway. I dropped the weight to get better form, but it obviously didn't help much. For anyone that watches all three sets, let me know if any of the reps have what can be called "proper form" or something close.

Bench Press (+5 lbs)
1x5x165
2x?x167 (Collars, lots of bad form and spotting here)
I asked a student worker to spot me on the second set, and he wanted the 1 lb collars on each side (although it's pointless for a balanced bench). He kept pulling up on the bar with his fingers as I neared the top, so I can't really say I completed the set. Decided to not ask him for help again on the final set, although it made me nervous to be without a spotter. This led to incomplete ROM on final reps. Meh... gonna repeat the weight instead of moving up, hopefully find a better spotter too.

Deadlift (+0 lbs)
1x5x267
Video: Set
Although my back isn't as rounded as it has been in the past, I still have issues with this lift. My biggest problem is my shoulders rounding. I don't have the flexibility to keep them straight at my current setup. Should I sit back some more during the setup? Any other observations are welcome.

set 1 rep 4 id say is the best.

the set 1 vid is awesome with that guy in the background and his epic final rep

Romulus - Time to experiment with different techniques on your squat. You're definitely losing tension in your hamstrings at the bottom. Once you lose tension in your hamstrings, your quads take over the lifting. I wouldn't be surprised if this is all just a hitch caused by you wanting to use your quads to push the weight up. The easiest way for you to accomplish that is to shift weight to the forefoot, which slides your knees foreward, which increases recruitment of quads and decreases involvement of posterior chain. (Just like the difference between LBBS and front squat being quad involvement via bottom knee position.)

Things you can try:

1. You're going below parallel. Try keeping it a bit higher.
2. You're going way too fast below parallel. Keep it slower on descent so that you can't give your glutes & hamstrings a chance to slack.
3. 45 plates standing a few inches from your toes so that you know when your knees have gone too far forward.
4. Different cues: I imagine my knees being locked from going further forward once I've hit the bottom of the squat. On the drive up, I don't think about pushing the bar with my legs. Instead, I'm thinking about the Rippetoe cue to push up with my lower back, and "pulling" my knees back into extension (like I have string tied to the backs of my knees that someone behind me is pulling).

Yeah, probably the best rep since my legs don't move much on the ascent. And yes, that guy who was squatting next to me was fun to watch. No matter how bad my form is, I just have to look around at the other squat racks to see that I'm at least in the correct ballpark when it comes to movement and depth.

Thanks skunk. I didn't read this until after I just came back from the gym so I'll have to try some of this next time. But yeah, I think going below parallel isn't helping me at the moment. It's too easy to let me back slack at that point. I tried going slower in some other vids, although I was then told that it was too slow and I wouldn't get any bounce that way. I'll go back to a slower descent and really make an effort to hold everything tight.

Unfortunately I don't think I can get away with standing plates in front of my feet while I squat. Aside from the power rack being smaller than normal, the student workers can get over-zealous there, and would probably tell me I'm going to damage the weights or floor or something.

I'll try using your cues when squatting next time. You may be right, I really have a desire to finish the squat with my legs driving the action. At this point, I don't have much of an idea of what "hip drive" feels like. I get the impression that once I do it right, it'll make my current squat weights feel easier.

Session #22 (8/25/10)

I took some videos, but I'll post them later if any of them are of interest. I've been taking creatine since last week. My loading phase ended on Sunday, so by this workout any effects should start being felt. My weight didn't change though from taking the creatine. Still weigh 217 lbs.

My workout for today:

Squats (+10 lbs)
3x5x217
Still working on the form, still having issues...

Press (+0 lbs)
3x5x107
Yes! Finally got this one. The last rep on the last set was super slow, so it's time to microload the press.

Power Cleans (+5 lbs)
5x3x122
I realize I get a sort of performance anxiety when I record myself doing power cleans. My form always feels worse on the sets I record, and feels better when I don't. At this point, I don't think I have glaring issues anymore (eliminated the donkey kick, stopped pulling with my arms), so until I start having problems, I won't be recording this anymore.

So I've obviously been away from this log for a while. As you'll note a couple posts back, I said that I was going to see an actual physical therapist about a pain in my right leg, which I was attributing to my IT band. As a summary, the workout before the pain appeared (look in my log to see when I started to bitch about it) I was doing deadlifts and I felt like I strained a muscle in my right leg. For the rest of the day I had some discomfort with sitting, and in the following days my leg would experience sharp bursts of acute pain, which at its worst made walking extremely difficult. The pain tended to subside after extensive stretching and warmup, but would come back worse than before a few hours after completing a workout. The student physical therapists and a doctor both thought it was my IT band. However, I decided to get a third opinion and saw a licensed physical therapist.

As it turns out it wasn't my IT band and instead the acute pain I was experiencing was more likely related to the pain sensors in my sciatic nerve being activated. It's still not clear what exactly happened or what was damaged, but I was injured in such a way that I had to stop doing squats and deadlifts for the past couple of months. I was given some band and recovery work from the PT, which I sometimes did and sometimes didn't.

Since squats and deadlifts are essential for making any real progress, I lost a lot of motivation to go to the gym (which meant I also lost motivation to do the recovery work regularly). I tried just doing upper body lifts for a few weeks, and after that I just stopped going. This also coincided with my work schedule getting a bit busier, which didn't help with finding time to lift.

I lost about 10 lbs over the past couple of months, most of it was probably muscle. So I was left with a lot of the fat I gained from my caloric surplus while doing SS.

In better news, time has done wonders for my right leg. Although it's still comparatively weaker than my left one, it feels much more stable compared to two months ago when I could barely put weight on it. Given this development, the physical therapist said I can start doing my full-body lifts again, obviously starting slow so that I can gauge how recovered my leg is.

Starting last week, I began SS over again. I didn't want to update right away, since I had no clue how my right leg would react. I've had three sessions now, and it seems to be okay, so I'm going to restart my log. I'll post the previous three sessions within a day or two, potentially along with some revised goals and a long-term plan.

Additionally, I want to try and get rid of some of the excess fat I still have left over from my first go at SS. As a personal experiment, I decided to try out the RFL diet to see how my body would react to it and how effective it is for someone like myself. I'm currently on Day 10, and I'm hoping to make it 3 full weeks and end the diet in time for Thanksgiving (no way I'm dieting that day). The weights I'm lifting right now aren't too heavy since all the weights were reset, so recovery between workouts hasn't been a problem, and my right leg has been responding very positively to doing squats again.

So, for the TLDR: injured my right leg and had to take a two-month break doing physical therapy. Started SS over last week, and my leg is responding well. Also started the RFL diet to remove excess fat from first go at SS (I know it may not be the optimal way, but for me this is like pressing a reset button and will help with adherence and motivation). Overall plan will be to work my way, slowly, back to the strength levels I had pre-injury.