Women and squats

My physiotherapist had me doing squats holding onto a door frame. Face the frame.. hold on and drop your butt. Don't use your arms to pull yourself back up... engage your butt... but that will help you practice getting low.

Ya gotta stick that butt out gurl! - seriously though, stick it out to the point you feel ridiculous. Once I start feeling utterly stupid I know I'm in the right place!

Increasing your hip and ankle mobility will help a lot. You can find lots of really good videos on YouTube. I recommend Kelly Starrett's Mobility WOD series.

Also doing more squats will make you more flexible. Just keep feeding the beast and it will come. Have some one watch you to give you feedback on your form.

You need to stretch. Youtube has Elliot Hulse. The videos are kind of annoying, but he has great advice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-0Qe80fUaU

Mark Rippetoe also has great advice.

Getting low takes time, and it one of the best, if not THE best reason to take it slow with the weight increases. Learn to get low first, then up the weights. There's no rush.

I found "Garland Pose" in yoga to be very helpful in getting all the pieces to align properly. Then I started with a dumbbell doing goblet squats and concentrated on keeping the weight in the center. I just moved to 95lbs on my front squat yesterday and I must be doing something right because I feel it in my glutes today, but not my quads or knees.

Time and practice and more time and more practice.

I do a ton (TONNNNN) of body weight squats outside of my lifting routine. Body weight work has been invaluable when it comes to getting my lifting form in order.

Doing a lot of body weight squats has helped me get deeper under the bar. And a counterpoint to your strategy, OP... narrowing my stance and bringing my feet more parallel made a big difference too.

Do squats with just bodyweight until you are more comfortable with the depth. I've been doing bodyweight squats for almost a month now, and just added the barbell - it makes it much, much harder! Also, stick your butt out farther than you think you should and make sure all your weight is on your heels. Some gyms have "practice bars" to use if you want to practice the move as if you had a bar, but without the added weight. (My gym, which isn't particularly well equipped, has a pvc pipe for this purpose.)

Asian squats helped me keep my weight back on my heels by fixing flexibility problems. I warm up with a few ATG squats to loosen up.

Air squats! Get your form down before you add weight, don't rush it. More important to have great form before you focus on weights. Start light with weights too, 15lb bar? Make sure your knees don't extend over your toes. Sit back in your heels, feet shoulder with apart, toes slightly out. Maybe 25 air squats 3 times a day and watch in mirror or like mentioned above get a video of yourself to watch. I started lifting in September just air squats, slowly adding weight and 1 rep max was 180 a few weeks ago. Keep it up, you'll get it! Add me if you want.

I've been told not to let the knees go past the toes to avoid injury. You're saying that doing so will not hurt my knees? It'd be a good to know.

Excerpt from Bodybuilding.com

The quadriceps muscles can contract more efficiently when the feet are pointing slightly outward. They should never point straight ahead. If you squat with a very wide stance, your adductors tend to assist the quads. This can result in stress to the medial collateral ligament, abnormal cartilage loading, and improper patellar tracking.
During the descent phase of any type of squat, do not allow the knees to extend beyond your feet. The farther your knees travel over your feet, the greater the shearing forces on the patellar tendon and ligament.
Make sure that your knees point in the same direction your feet are pointing during the descent and ascent. Because of weak quads, many lifters inadvertently turn their knees inward during the ascent, placing great stress on the medial ligaments of the knee.
Although many top bodybuilders advocate a close stance for the purpose of isolating the outer quads, this is a myth, and it places you at risk, particularly since you'll have to use a lot of back to execute the lift, or (if you use heels) place great shear and compression on the knees. The best way to squat is to put your feet in a position where they can generate the greatest opposing force to the weight ("the athletic position").
Warm up thoroughly before squatting. Your muscles and other tissues of the knee joint love warmth! Remember the analogy, cold taffy breaks, warm taffy doesn't.
Maintain reasonable flexibility in the joints of your lower extremities and back. Many knee injuries can be traced back to poor position resulting from inflexibility.
Finally, be careful in the exit out of the rack, and getting "set" in the squat stance. After lifting the weight off of the pins, you should take just one step backward and immediately assume your squatting stance. This takes time to master, but eventually all the minute adjustments can be pared down substantially.

Once set in the stance, keep your feet "nailed down" for the duration of the set. Many people "fidget" with their feet and toes between reps which can cause a variety of problems ranging from a break in concentration to a loss of balance—and attendant stress on your knees.

A friend on my FL posted this and it helped me a lot .


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qw8Q4yxHG7Q