Not Just a Man's World

I’ve often seen trainers telling people that they shouldn’t squat because it is bad for their knees. 

Ok, that’s not true.  What I tend to see or hear is people who have been told by their personal trainers that they won’t be learning to squat because it’s bad for their knees.  By working out in my own garage and doing most of my research online on sites where people who really know what they are talking about tend to loiter I successfully avoid meeting any trainers who reject the squat.

Of course we are designed to squat.  If we weren’t then why would small children naturally choose to use the squat to reach the ground until we start to teach them to sit in chairs and bend over to pick things up?

Why did I care about squat form this week?

Actually it was the week before, when I did my 70kg squat, that I cared most about squat form.  I had done seven sets of squats with excellent form.  Nothing hurt (other than a healthy dull ache in my glutes).  Finally, with only three sets left to do I took my eye off the ball.  On the final rep of my eighth set I accidentally leant forward too far, the additional weight pulled me onto the balls of my feet and I pushed up out of the rep on my toes instead of my heels.

Instantly my right knee started to ache.  A sharp pain which, while not sore enough to hinder completing the final two sets, was still there a few days later.

One single rep with poor form and I was feeling the consequences for several days.

When to not squat

I do believe that there are times and places when one shouldn’t squat and there are people far more qualified and experienced than me on this subject.  Everything I’ve written below is based on my own long-legged experiences.  However, I understand that I have a classic female build of long femurs and large hips, so I wanted to share my thoughts with you all.

The crucial point for me is to stay within my own abilities (other than pushing that little bit harder each week on the strength front and risking injury).

If you don’t have enough mobility to get into a partial squat then don’t squat.  Instead work on strengthening weaknesses and loosening up where you are too tight so that you can eventually get into a squat position.

If you can only get to parallel then, when you start loading the bar up with weight, don’t try to do ass-to-grass squats.  Instead do weighted squats to parallel and then separately, without weight and with assistance exercises, work on mobility or whatever it is that is stopping you from successfully squatting any lower without losing good form.

Only squat within your abilities once you add weight. Work on increasing the depth separately.

As I proved with my knee the other week, it only takes a single rep with bad form to create a minor trauma on the body.  Just to clarify, that’s not the good type of trauma that you’re looking to inflict on your muscle fibres with each workout either.

What is good form

Based on my experience, I believe that good form involves two particularly crucial points:

• keep the glutes stuck out behind you and don’t let them “tuck” underneath – as you go deeper than parallel the glutes will actually move underneath the body, but if you’re squatting to that depth then you probably know exactly what I mean by tucking already); and
• keep the knees above the feet with the lower legs as close to vertical as possible – depending on your mechanics you may need to let them drift forwards a little bit, but for most people they shouldn’t need to go further forward than above the toes.

This video shows part of a squat workout the other week that, while not perfect, had acceptable form:

Until recently I was fully bought into the belief that if you have long femurs, then you aren’t really designed to squat and will probably need to allow your knees to drift forward further.  It was only when I developed sufficient hip mobility with Romanian Deadlifts and additional lower back strength from Good Mornings that I realised this is only half the story.

The reality is that you can stop yourself falling over by judicious placement of the barbell in relation to your centre of gravity.

Using the weight of the bar to maintain good form

You need good lower back strength and good hip mobility to squat well with long legs and a light weight.  This was something I didn’t truly appreciate until recently. 

Think of the weight like a see-saw.  At all times you want to keep the centre of mass above your heels since this gives optimal power to drive out of the hole.  To achieve this you need the total weight in front of this vertical line to equal the weight behind the line.  To add complication to this, anyone who has studied moments in physics or maths will know that the further away from the centre line the weight is, the more of an effect it has.

Since I carry a significant proportion of my bodily weight on my hips and glutes this has quite a powerful effect on the equation if I am keeping good form and sticking my glutes out far behind me with the help of my exceptionally long femurs – a problem faced by many women.

If the barbell has an extremely heavy weight on it then I don’t need it to be very far forward from the centre line to keep the equation balanced.  Instead I can keep my torso reasonably upright.  The error I made the other week was to lean forward too far so that my centre of mass moved above my toes.

I used to think that to keep the equation balanced with a lighter weight I had to drift my knees forward so that my glutes weren’t as far away from the centre line.  In reality you just have to concertina your upper body lower down so that it is closer to the horizontal than the vertical.  This brings the bar further forward from your heels and means that the light weight has a greater effect in the balancing equation.

Tell me what you think

These are just my thoughts on back squat form, based on my own long-femured, big-bottomed (and tiny-chested) experience.  I’ve certainly found that it works for me, and when I didn’t apply it I quickly got damaged.

Do you have any other rules for squat form?  Do you think squat form is as important as I do?  Are you like many women and struggle with long femurs and plenty of weight round your hips and glutes?  If so, how have you dealt with squatting?

Related posts:

1. Why I squat
2. Lessons learned: thoracic spine mobility (part 2)
3. Lessons learned: training outside the box
4. Lessons learned: mental strength