Back and front squat form check

[cabUK]

Ok been 7 months(ish) since I last did squats and I doubt I ever did them right lol

So I decided to film my squats and get some advice on how to improve my form as it looks terrible.

What I think is wrong on both:

1. Back rounding at bottom
2. Not going down far enough
3. Knees to far over my feet

Back Squat:


Front Squat

[strawser9]

There is definitly one problem in both your front and back squat; you're transfering the weight to your toes.

Focus on planting your heels into the ground! They shouldn't come up through the entire movement! This should keep your knees back a little.

Try to pause at the bottom briefly. The last thing you want to be doing is bouncing up and down! You don't have to do ATG squats...you're hitting parallel (or just about) every time.

btw, love the color coded plates/racks. We have black...black...black, and some more black!

[cabUK]

Originally Posted by strawser9

There is definitly one problem in both your front and back squat; you're transfering the weight to your toes.

Focus on planting your heels into the ground! They shouldn't come up through the entire movement! This should keep your knees back a little.

Try to pause at the bottom briefly. The last thing you want to be doing is bouncing up and down! You don't have to do ATG squats...you're hitting parallel (or just about) every time.

btw, love the color coded plates/racks. We have black...black...black, and some more black!

cheers mate, yeah now I think back my weight was on my toes to much and I could feel it there so I will defo fix that.

Yeah the colour coded plates make life so much easier when you need to go look for one.

[Malley]

Keep your knees behind your toes....

[Critical Mass]

I think your basic form is good. I see that you are limited to how far you can dip. If you place your feet further apart, you may open up some room for dipping further, thereby dipping your hip joint to be parallel your your knee joint.

As time goes by, you will gain more control over letting your knees protrude beyond your toes. Also, I've always been a fan of never locking out at the top of the exercise. This keeps constant stress on the quads.

[Patrick W.]

Knee can migrate over the toes a bit, it has to happen as you approach bottom positions. Saying the knees can never go over the toes is a myth.

Here is the main problem and one thing that I see a lot on other forums and board.....

You post your video of the squat and your knees are flying foreward, weight is shifting towards the toes, etc....and people say:

"Keep your heels down! Don't let your weight shift towards your toes and your knees go that far over your toes!"

The funny thing is that this is the same type of advice that traiers give their clients in the gym. they shout it out! Really though, this is a neurological problem. It looks like (without being there to poke around into the soft tissue) that you have some pretty sweet tightness in your plantar flexors and lack of mobility issues. You need to CORRECT that stuff so that your squat pattern can be corrected. Just simply saying "don't do that anymore!" wont make it go away. Remeber, if movement is restricted at one joint, we gain more movement at another joint to complete this task. So, your movement is restricted at the ankles...this causes you to get more movement from the knee. If you simply just "stopped doing that!" Then you would be pushing your hips way back to try keep the heels planted on the ground. this would restrict movement at the ankle and restrict movement at the knee (they would have to bend less in order to accomplish the task) causing you to get MORE movement at the lumbar spine region in order to achieve that depth (flex the spine foreward more and break the parallel plane between your trunk and your shins).

Does that make sense?


Active ankle mobilization drills and stretching of the plantar flexors can be very helpful. Try and do them before you squat and inbetween sets of squats in order to refine the movement pattern. Once it is fixed you will be golden.

hope that helps,

Patrick

[Malley]

Originally Posted by Patrick W.

Knee can migrate over the toes a bit, it has to happen as you approach bottom positions. Saying the knees can never go over the toes is a myth.

Here is the main problem and one thing that I see a lot on other forums and board.....

You post your video of the squat and your knees are flying foreward, weight is shifting towards the toes, etc....and people say:

"Keep your heels down! Don't let your weight shift towards your toes and your knees go that far over your toes!"

The funny thing is that this is the same type of advice that traiers give their clients in the gym. they shout it out! Really though, this is a neurological problem. It looks like (without being there to poke around into the soft tissue) that you have some pretty sweet tightness in your plantar flexors and lack of mobility issues. You need to CORRECT that stuff so that your squat pattern can be corrected. Just simply saying "don't do that anymore!" wont make it go away. Remeber, if movement is restricted at one joint, we gain more movement at another joint to complete this task. So, your movement is restricted at the ankles...this causes you to get more movement from the knee. If you simply just "stopped doing that!" Then you would be pushing your hips way back to try keep the heels planted on the ground. this would restrict movement at the ankle and restrict movement at the knee (they would have to bend less in order to accomplish the task) causing you to get MORE movement at the lumbar spine region in order to achieve that depth (flex the spine foreward more and break the parallel plane between your trunk and your shins).

Does that make sense?


Active ankle mobilization drills and stretching of the plantar flexors can be very helpful. Try and do them before you squat and inbetween sets of squats in order to refine the movement pattern. Once it is fixed you will be golden.

hope that helps,

Patrick

Thats very good. I do agree with that.

[strawser9]

most people subconsciously shift the weight to their toes because they fear falling backward, but that could be another reason.