I started doing low bar several weeks ago. I also have this pain in my shoulder (At least I think it's my shoulder, it's hard to pinpoint exactly) and I'm wondering if it's from switching to low bar. Thanks for any advice guys.
Posted Mar 29, 2016, 8:30 PM UTC
You can stand to go a bit lower. Keep your head neutral. Nice shoes. Nice gym.
Yeah I'm still working on that, I have basically zero flexibility. But thank you, it's my university gym.
Do hip and ankle mobility work every day. I spend a good 20 minutes getting loose before I squat or DL. It is certainly painful at first, especially stretching the groin and hip flexors....but it is worth it.
Look up Limber 11.
Your wrists should be in a straight line with your forearm and your hand should be on top of the bar with the meaty part of your palm resting on the bar. This video is long, but I've always liked Rippetoe's explanations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2tyOLvArw0
Your wrist is bent a little. You could be taking some of the weight with your arms. I have an issue with trying to keep that bar on my back. If I'm upright, the bar wants to slide down my back and my arms need to take some of the weight (this is very bad. I got shoulder pain and also some really nasty elbow pains from this. Be very careful with squatting, your arms should never take that weight). If I'm more bent over, I find my squat mechanics suffer. So the bad news is I don't really know exactly how to fix it. Two pieces of advice I do find helpful though:
Make sure your bar position is perfect. I was putting the bar too low for far too long. This caused my already terrible shoulder mobility to really mess up my squat. The bar should be right under the spine of your scapula. Don't go any lower.
Think about how your upper back feels when you do a wide grip lat pulldown. You should tighten your upper back in the exact same way when setting the bar on your back. This will really help to get you that solid shelf to rest the bar on and keep the weight off your arms.
Thanks for the tips man. I actually just got to the gym so I'll be trying this out right now! I think I was holding the bar a little too low.
Depth could be better. Hard to tell from this angle but it looks like your knees and toes are too forward. Try opening up the hip angle a bit. It should allow you to go deeper.
You should at least go parallel to get more benefits. If you can't with the weight then drop weight until you can. Also you should break at the hips first. Candito training will help.
Your poor wrists. Mate, keep them straight.
That guy behind you has a pretty sick vertical
Are your 25's on the inside of the 45's? Anyways, you start hitting depth towards the end, however it might be beneficial to you to open up your stance a bit. If it is comfortable you can move your feet further apart and try to point your elbows further toward the floor. Pointing your elbows towards the floor will help keep you more upright and help keep your wrists in line. Then again, you're much taller then I am, and have longer femurs so my advice might not work for you.
Hard to tell from this angle but I feel like you could widen your stance a bit to help with the depth.
In Texan accent: "HIP DRAAAAV, HIP DRAAAAAV"
But really.
Your depth isn't far enough, you're not breaking parallel and not hitting parallel on a lot of your descents. Also squeeze your glutes all the way to the top and thrust your hips forward to finish a rep (but don't bend backwards).
Also just for safety sake, you're moving too far back from the poles. If you fail incorrectly you might hurt yourself. Not enough places have power-racks, but if you do have them, I would suggest you use them instead.
Your heels are coming up a bit which tells me you are pushing from more towards the front of the foot instead of about mid-foot. Also, keep your head and neck neutral to your body instead of trying to look forward or up the whole time.
you're missing the extra gains from doing a full "chinese olympic squat" look it up kiddo.
Buddy.
Cut this shit out.
He's just training to be a ninja turtle, leave him alone!