BenM wrote: ↑Wed Aug 10, 2022 8:04 pm
Thanks @MarkKO - once again you gave me food for thought, I needed a day or two to digest this and mull over it. After tossing it round in my brain for a bit, some of what you say makes sense and some doesn't.
The part that makes sense is to tweak my technique, especially with the deadlift - with the squat, I've already widened my stance about as much as I'm comfortable doing (a few weeks ago). Much wider, and my hips get annoyed. But I haven't changed deadlift at all and I'm definitely keen to try it - although I think my quads are doing more work in that lift than you give them credit for.
The part that doesn't make sense is changing my back angle in the squat. Widening my stance really hasn't affected it much if at all, and I don't see how I can sit back any more. I squatted this morning (will log it in a minute) but I don't think the bar is drifting forward much at all - it needs to stay over mid foot, and if I sit back any more I'll be tipping over backwards (case in point, that max single that I failed a couple of months ago). I didn't video from side on this morning but I will next time.
I'm not at all attached to the weight on the bar like I used to be - I honestly couldn't care less these days. So I don't mind dropping the load. I might even change to high bar for a while - that
does change my back angle a fair bit and work the quads harder, and so does the SSB work. In fact I honestly feel like my quads have grown a little in the last couple of months even though I've not been squatting heavy, purely just from the lunges and unilateral work I've been doing, especially the split squats.
That's fairly typical of any advice I give. I aim to have a higher sense to no sense ratio. It isn't helpful the other way around.
When widening your stance did you play much with foot angle? That can make a pretty big difference with how comfortable wider or narrower stances are, simply by making it easier for your knees to move out rather than forward. It also can somewhat change where your mid foot is, and that in turn impacts how much you can or can't sit back or set your torso angle. I ask because from the videos to me it looks like your feet are pretty much pointing forward; and absolutely that will determine how much you can sit back before tipping over. I found that out the hard way and nearly cause a monolift to tip over into a window.
Where I'm going with this is that looking at your squat a couple of things stand out that relate to what I was talking about, at least as I understand how these things work. Part of it is that you set your feet to point relatively straight ahead. The second is that it looks like you start your squat by bending your knees, which makes a ton of sense when you have your feet pointing forward more than out. That's exactly how I squat when I want to bias my quads. What that does do, though, is mean any sitting back is somewhat cancelled out because you start by moving forward. It's hard to sit back in a squat without falling back when the knees break first and are moving forward. The third thing that relates to what I initially said is that most of the time I noticed as you come up, just past parallel you pitch forward slightly. It isn't huge, definitely no squat morning but it's absolutely there. What it looks like is your hips rise that little bit, very very similar to when you deadlift, and that's exactly where your back starts working more. So your torso angle on the descent is pretty much set, but as you come back up is changes.
So let's say for argument's sake you point your feet out somewhat more. Nothing extreme, but enough that your knees are now pointing outwards more than forwards. I'm pretty sure that shifts your mid foot back a bit. Then you start your squat by sitting down, not bending your knees. They'll bend naturally to accomodate, and they're pointing outwards. Generally when you sit down, you sit back some, so that's taken care of. Because your mid foot is a bit further back relative to where it was, you're able to stay that little bit more upright, so your balance is good going back down. Coming back up, you're already more upright so you're in a better positon to push with your legs and bring your hips back under you. All your back really needs to so is keep you in position rather than move the weight up.
A couple of really helpful cues to squat like this are either open your taint (Ed Coan), or spread the floor. They both do the same thing. More than anything I think they work by shifting focus away from bending your knees, and instead get you to just sit straight down. That means you do end up sitting back more, because you're moving your knees out rather than forward. There's no effort to limit forward knee movement, rather you're positioning yourself so that knee movement forward doesn't move the rest of you forward. That means you get all the benefits of your quads working, but are also in a position to get your hips and hamstrings to take over when the quads stop being as useful, somewhere past parallel.
I hope that makes sense. I totally understand what you mean by not wanting to sit back too far because I do the exact same. If you're going to focus on sitting back completely that's a whole different ballgame and really is probably best for just box squats or a suit, and then you want to have vertical shins which isn't helpful for plain old squatting.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if your quads have grown from the work either, and you absolutely would find that added mass useful even if you did make those changes to your squat.
