by Elsbeth Vaino
I have an online client who mentioned that he was not feeling great with the front squats in his program, but he was pretty confident he was doing them well since he is an experienced lifter. He is smart and self-aware, so I tended to think he was probably right. But I asked him to get someone to video his front squat because I have a pretty good eye for small details (I’m a ski instructor – if you can find small faults as someone launches past you on a ski hill, standing still in a gym is a piece of cake) and I just wanted to see what was up. Partly I just wanted to be sure that it was good form, because that would impact what exercises I would give to him.
He did, and before I even got the link he noted that he could see one major flaw in his front squat and that he was confident that I’d be able to help with it. I saw the video, which his son uploaded to youtube, and he is correct! The front view of the squat looks great – shoulders look great, the knees don’t cave in, and no lateral (side) shift. This is the view that you would have if trying to watch your own form at the gym if you had a mirror in front of you. Then came the side view, which lets face it, we don’t get to see. When you’re deep into a squat with weight on your back, you really don’t want to be turning your head to the side to check form. Sure enough, the side view showed a form issue: his knees move forward a lot and his heels rise up slightly.
Trainers often talk about how knees shouldn’t pass the toes in a squat, but I actually don’t think that’s necessarily an issue. If you have long femurs, your knees are almost certainly going to move past your toes in a squat, and that’s fine. Heels coming up in addition to knees forward, however, suggests that his entire weight is shifting forward. That’s not ideal unless you’re doing a “sissy squat”, which he wasn’t.
Good squat form would involve the weight either staying centred or shifting slightly backwards, recruiting the glutes and hamstrings. I’m so glad that we live in an age where the technology exists for me to watch the squat form for a client from across the continent, because there’s an easy fix for this. Here’s what I recommended:
- Put a box just behind him and cue him to touch the box at the bottom of his squat, and to come up as soon as he touches it (in other words, touch but don’t sit). Ideally the box would be low enough that it would allow him to reach his full squat depth.
- Cue to move the hips before the knees, keep the weight between the heels and balls of the feet.
That’s it. A touch to box squat is kind of a miracle cure for squats, in my opinion. It fixes a lot. Or more accurately, it provides external feedback to allow the squatter to fix a lot. In fact the hips before knees cue was probably unnecesary as he would have figured that out because he’d have to do that for his butt to touch the box.
About an hour later, I started thinking about the many, many people who train themselves. In some cases, people who train themselves have good and smart programs; in others, not so good. If you train yourself, hopefully you fall into the former category, but either way, there’s something to be said for checking in on the quality of your movement.
When was the last time you got an objective view of your form?
How about the trainers among us? Many of us create our own workouts and are our own coaches. Who is correcting our form? You can only see so much in a mirror, and frankly, some exercises, like the front squat are not conducive to mirror watching as the mirror doesn’t show you all the relevant views.
Thankfully there is a solution! Setup a tripod and take a video of yourself, or get a friend to take their smartphone out and film your lifts. Then take a look. Ask them to take a look. If you are not confident in your own or your friend’s ability to critique your form, post it on an online forum and ask for input.
- Is your back rounding in your deadlift?
- Is your back extending before your legs in your deadlift?
- Are you really going to parallel in your squat?
- Is your torso parallel to your shins in your squat?
- Are you getting full range in your pullups?
- Does your right shoulder creep up to your ear when you bench?
- What are your hips and knees doing in your split squats?
It doesn’t take much effort to check your own form. If you find an issue, you may be able to correct it just by focusing on the movement, although I recommend reducing the weight a bit while you do that and then going back up. I know reducing weight in the gym is not popular, but it is probably worth it, and often only temporary.
While you’re at it, give some thought to what you’re seeing. If your deadlift is off, maybe your hip mobility is not where it could be? If your squat is less than great, maybe you could use some work on thoracic spine mobility?
Why not add some specific accessory exercises to your workout to try to improve areas that might be limiting you? It won’t take much time and it might really help your performance.
If you find this helpful, it’s probably worth doing more regularly. Kind of like maintenance for your workout.
How can you make sure you’ll remember to do it? Plan to review your form every time you take your car in for an oil change.