Hi, my name is Tim, and I'm a butt winker...

timg760

So a post from Iron Radio came up in my FB news feed this morning. It was about butt-winking during squats, and it had a video. I watched the video, and I LOL'd. However, it DID make me finally understand what a butt wink is, so that's a plus.

The other plus was when i checked my form during my workout today. At a warmup weight, I went below parallel... and WINK.

Oh shishi... let me try that again.

WINK.

Dammit!

So Now i'm not going below parallel until I find out how to correct it. How far is too far? Is this one of those "it's different for everybody" things and at some point, everyone would butt-wink if they went low enough?

I'd watch more vids right now to research this but i'm at work... hence the post. Plus I wanted to start a support group. DON'T JUDGE ME!!!

TG

DopeItUp

Meh, excessive buttwink can be a problem, especially if it results in too much spinal flexion. Basically everyone has it to a degree though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1f6mk1aVuA

I'd really have to see a video to judge how bad it is. Myself, I just limit my depth to a few inches below parallel. If I try to go ATG it gets pretty bad. No need to go ATG with a low bar squat anyway (especially for powerlifting) so I'm not really losing anything.

tigerblue

What is butt wink? I'm scared to google it. . . .

DopeItUp

tigerblue wrote: »

What is butt wink? I'm scared to google it. . . .

If you look at the video I just posted above you, it illustrates and describes it pretty well.

n3ver3nder

Get some video of your squat and post it here.

A lot of novices over extend their squat on the way down and then go from over-extension to neutral at the bottom and interpret that as lower back rounding. Overall, in the best case scenario your spine should maintain a braced neutral (in it's natural curve, not poker straight) position through the whole lift.

If you can't keep a neutral spine for the whole lift, go as low as you can without rounding, and do lots of bracing exercises that activate the core and the glutes alongside the rest of your routine - that's stuff like planks, dead bugs, bird dogs, split squats, hip airplanes etc. Over time your stability in the bottom position will increase, and your body will allow itself to go lower without compromising position.