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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3315 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for March 29, 2023

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I caught a cold last Thursday and am still unwell, so no gym for me. Bored sick at home, I decided to check my squat form, so I armed myself with a barbell broomstick and my phone's camera, and I am low-key sad now. Everyone says the bar path should be almost vertical, so its projection always crosses the arches of your feet, but I lean forward when I do the squat. I form-checked myself by squatting while facing a wall, and it looks like I'm not imagining things:

  • when I'm not careful, I give the wall a passionate smooch

  • when I'm careful, my back feels like it's being mauled by a bear chiropractor

Have any of you had to deal with leaning forward in a squat? What did you do to fix your form?

Unless you squat truly tiny amounts, your form with a broomstick and your form with your real 5RM weight will be completely different. Last time I tried squatting with a broomstick I fell backwards and couldn't go down to anything close to my usual depth. I'd suggest filming yourself again with your real working weight.

I squat 40-50kg, so not that much.

It sounds like you are high bar squatting? If you are and are trying to keep a more vertical torso, I often find that ankle dorsiflexion is the limiting factor for people. If your knees are farther forward your hips will be less far back, and therefor your torso will have to be less far forward. Ankle dorsiflexion is pretty easy to improve if you just hang out in the bottom of a body weight squat with your knees as far forward as you can put them for a few minutes a day. With good ankle dorsiflexion and front squats you can get a nearly vertical back and almost pure quad isolation if that's your goal.

My personal preference is for less forward knee travel, but necessarily your hips will have to move farther back and your torso will have to lean over more to compensate. Resting the bar in a low bar position moves the moment arm of the barbell back in this case, leaving a more vertical bar path. I've found mysquatmechanics to be pretty good if you want to visualize the paths given changes to constraints in joint angles, anthropometry, bar position, etc.

Yes, high bar squatting. I'm not even sure I can hold the bar on my rear delts, not enough mobility in my shoulders to pull the arms back and down.

What you want is specifically for your center of mass to stay balanced above the mid foot. This is not the same as having the barbell directly over the mid foot, although as the weight of the barbell becomes large compared to your bodyweight then that becomes a better and better approximation. Since you're just using a broomstick you will have to lean forwards to counterweight your hips moving backwards.

Do you still feel balanced over a constant spot on the mid foot even as you "smooch the wall"?

What you want is specifically for your center of mass to stay balanced above the mid foot.

Ah, that makes sense. But if my own weight is balanced above the mid foot when I squat bodyweight and the barbell is balanced above the mid foot when I put it on my traps, why should our centers of mass diverge? If anything, as the barbell gets heavier and I lean forward to squat, I should be using my hips more and more as a counterweight.

UPD: I played around with http://mysquatmechanics.com/ and I think I got it. Poor ankle flexion forces your squat to be hip-heavy, causing you to lean. The better the flexion, the more you can share the load between your quads and your hips. So it's either my ankles are too stiff (easy to check), or my quads are too weak.

Do a front squat. Mind that it's easier to get a better form with some weight rather than just a broomstick, the weight helps to align things.

I used the stick to lock my upper body in the right position.

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