Does being overweight make squats harder?
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caseys29
Posts: 63 Member
I always see that the more you weigh, the more you should be able to lift, but I struggle so much with squats. I currently weigh 254 and the most I've ever squatted was 65 pounds. When I go all the way to the ground, I can barely get back up with just the 45 pound bar. On the other hand, my working weight for deadlifts is 155 and I've lifted 185 before and feel like I could do at least 205.
I've been lifting for about three months with my husband and his boss, but we've just started doing a program very similar to SL5x5 in the last couple of weeks (finally!). I stuck with just the bar for squats for weeks and weeks before adding even just a bit of weight and now that we're doing *kitten* to the ground squats, I'm back to the bar and struggling with that.
I feel like I have so much body weight to push up that it makes me struggle with squats. Has anyone else experienced this? Does anyone else have such a disparity between their squat weight and deadlift weight?
I've been lifting for about three months with my husband and his boss, but we've just started doing a program very similar to SL5x5 in the last couple of weeks (finally!). I stuck with just the bar for squats for weeks and weeks before adding even just a bit of weight and now that we're doing *kitten* to the ground squats, I'm back to the bar and struggling with that.
I feel like I have so much body weight to push up that it makes me struggle with squats. Has anyone else experienced this? Does anyone else have such a disparity between their squat weight and deadlift weight?
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Try going parallel or slightly below instead of ATG and see how that works. You're not going to get any benefits from ATG that you don't get from just hitting parallel (other than bragging rights
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You're going to have (at least) one lift where you progress slower than you think you should. Just make sure you're really nailing your form, hit parallel, and see how you progress.0 -
Fellow overweight (I'm 5'7" & 270) newbie lifter checking in!
I found that playing with foot and leg position helped me out a lot on increasing squats. I broke through my stall @50 pounds and got to 70 pounds recently.
Try these as body weight squats: an ATG narrow footed squat, then a just beyond your shoulders leg position, then try sumo squats. Try putting your feet pointing straight and then try out to a 30 degree angle on each.
Being a woman, you may need a slightly different position than your hubby does for squats.
My hubby squats best with narrow leg-width and feet pointing more forward. I squat better with my feet about an inch further than my shoulders and feet pointed out 30 degrees.
Just be sure your form is good.
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I noticed in The New Rules of Fitness for older folks (the only one I have looked at) that there were some really good exercises for improving flexibility and pre-squat strength. I'd say working to ensure that you aren't struggling with the motion, balance and flexibility would be a good place to start - supported squats and air squats could be really helpful. Can you do air-squats okay? I am one who is heavy and can lift heavier because of that.... but before starting SL I was doing about 50 air squats a few times a week and I'm sure that helped.
FWIW squats are my weakest lift, I think. I notice some people whose DL and squats are quite close - mine are definitely maxed out and 60 pounds apart.0 -
Thanks for all the advice! I can do airsquats/bodyweight squats just fine, it's just when I start to add in weight that I struggle. I definitely use a different stance than the guys. I stand with my legs wider and point my toes out more - otherwise it just hurts my knees too much. My knees were aching pretty much all the time from running, although they are feeling much better now after a couple of months of running and the pain is nearly gone. That's another reason I haven't been adding much weight to the bar.
Now that we're doing 5x5 instead of 3x12 like we were, I may be able to do a little more weight if I stay at parallel or just below. I was up to 65 pounds at 3x12 parallel, but had to use the curl bar loaded at 35 pounds to do 5x5 of all the way to the ground the other day. We're squatting tomorrow, so I may try just doing parallel and see how much weight I can do with the 5x5.
HappyBouncy, I'm also 5'7 and I'm down from 312 pounds.0 -
Yes foot placement might help
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1185582-why-people-have-to-squat-differently
here is an article about it.
I agree with getting parallel...no worries on ATG..if the gym has a "box" that is useful to use when ensuring you are getting "just" low enough. If I don't go ATG I can squat 180...ATG 130 was tough tonight.
As well you might just need to give it time, no pressure to go up in weight if you are worried about form etc.0 -
@Stef - thanks for posting that article! I was wondering about ATG squats, too...
@casey - I can do parallel and a bit below parallel no problem, but ATG squats are just too much for me. Even just doing them with my own body weight (practicing in my bedroom lol), they hurt my knees. As for foot and hip placement, going wider with toes pointed more outward I can get a good squat that I feel solidly in my glutes (vs. the burn being all in my quads). The more narrow I go, the more it hurts my knees, the less my glutes are activated and I can barely hit parallel.0 -
Yes foot placement might help
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1185582-why-people-have-to-squat-differently
here is an article about it.
I agree with getting parallel...no worries on ATG..if the gym has a "box" that is useful to use when ensuring you are getting "just" low enough. If I don't go ATG I can squat 180...ATG 130 was tough tonight.
As well you might just need to give it time, no pressure to go up in weight if you are worried about form etc.
Thanks for the link, I'll check it out. I just tried and I can actually do a body weight squat with my knees right together now without pain, which is an amazing improvement. For a while there I didn't think my knees would ever stop hurting. I used to have to kind of psyche myself up before starting my squats because of my knees. I still prefer the wider stance, though.
I usually use one the benches as a guide for parallel. It works pretty well for me, but it's too high for my husband to get parallel even though he's only a couple of inches taller than me. We lift in his boss's basement - he has a great setup, much better than the only gym in our small town, which doesn't even have a squat or power rack, just a couple of Smith machines.
katro, I feel it all in my quads when I do ATG, almost nothing in my glutes. My quads still hurt on Monday after doing ATG squats on Thursday last week, which is unusual for me. I never stay sore that long. I guess it's just because my glutes were too weak to get me back up and I was dependent on my quads to do it? Plus, I'm sure my form was terrible.0 -
Off topic, but I love the GSD in your ticker! I also have a GSD; they're the best! Nope... not biased at all... 0
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Oh, cool! That's Jerry. He's a rescue and my first GSD and I'll never have another breed now. Such amazing dogs. He's also my running buddy, although I'm so slow that he's usually just slowly trotting along and still has plenty of energy at the end of two or three miles.0
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My first attempt at squats was rather pathetic & I stomped off crying like a little girl because I just couldn't keep my heels down and balance, not alone add weight to the bar. I am up to 110 now.
I improvised a bit, and widened my stance, curled my toes, and put a 5 gallon bucket square behind my *kitten*, so if I fell, it would be just like sitting on a bucket. It took about 3-4 workouts for my confidence to hit, and then I started squatting without the bucket. I also do 150-200 glute bridges 2-3x a week. I am still what I would consider a newbie to lifting and SL, but it seems to me if you feel your lacking in strength in the glute area, doing some bridges as accessory work may help. They have done wonders for my butt and I had been doing those for a good month before I ever decided to do SL. I am43, 5'8" and weigh in at 225
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amethyst, I'll have to try the glute bridges. I've read about them, but have never done them. I'll try anything that works glutes. I think half the weight I've lost has come off my chest, so I gotta keep my butt!
I just did the bar last night, but I took my shoes off and really paid attention to my form. I also had the guys watch me and tell me when to stop - just slightly below parallel. I found that I struggled with stopping there and ending up going a little lower and had to bounce a little to get back up, so I've got to work on that. I feel it in both my glutes and quads today, so I'm happy about that.
Sometimes it's hard working out with just guys, when they're squatting as much as they deadlift (although I think they're cheating themselves and could be deadlifting more) and I'm squatting 110 pounds less than I deadlift. I just have to remind myself not to compare myself to them because they're men and have been lifting much longer. Of course, my 15 year old daughter can squat 135 for 12 reps and she also benches more than me and she's only lifted a few times in gym class, but oh well.0 -
Yes foot placement might help
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1185582-why-people-have-to-squat-differently
here is an article about it.
I agree with getting parallel...no worries on ATG..if the gym has a "box" that is useful to use when ensuring you are getting "just" low enough. If I don't go ATG I can squat 180...ATG 130 was tough tonight.
As well you might just need to give it time, no pressure to go up in weight if you are worried about form etc.
that's a really good article but for some reason the pics aren't showing on my browser... i'd love to see them because variation in femur shape is quite a big topic in human evolution and I'd love to see if any of those femur pics are more archaic - although I'm pretty sure they all look like the femurs of a biped...
also it doesn't mention the ratio of femur to tibia... because this also affects how you squat. Relatively long femurs push the centre of gravity back too far compared to where the feet are - to stay balanced the centre of gravity has to stay over the base (the feet) - a wider stance means the centre of gravity doesn't go back so far (the femurs are at an angle rather than going directly backwards). Raising the heels also corrects this as it pushes the knees forward (i.e. similar to making the shin bone longer) which also helps to keep the centre of gravity over the base (feet).
I reaslied i had a biomechanics problem not a balance problem with pistol squats when i still couldn't do them without falling over while gripping onto a chair with both hands... bear in mind that I used to play league ice hockey and even had try-outs for great Britain a couple of times, and I was an aggressive player and have even submarined men a foot and a half taller than me (playing rec with the men, obviously not in women's league games lol, well I have submarined women but they're not so tall) and I can even do 3-jumps and cherry flips in full ice hockey kit........ point is that I have very good balance, so me not being able to balance in a pistol squat position isn't from a lack of ability to balance. In fact I hurt both my knee and ankle trying to force my centre of gravity to stay over my foot while using a chair to do a pistol squat (thankfully not seriously, but it did hurt) - then when I followed someone's suggestion to try pistol squats with a raised heel I could do them very very easily on either foot. And there's nothing wrong with my ankle mobility either... comparing myself with my ankle flexed to the max, it's actually more flexed than the ankles of pretty much every picture I've seen of anyone else balancing in a pistol squat postion, and they also have more even length of femur and shin than I do.
I also didn't know that my squat stance was particularly wide, I could always squat ATG and never really noticed, but for pistol squats you have to have your foot directly under you.
So anyway it's very important to understand stuff like this because you can't change the relative position of the joints in your body, and your bones have a fixed length that can't change. While poor mobility can result in not being able to do ATG squats it's certainly the case that individual anatomical differences mean that what's good form for one person is a little different from what's good form for another person.0 -
I was so glad to see this article and to understand a little why I have to be in a certain stance to keep my knees from caving in when I try to squat higher weights. I thought it was because of poor hip and/or knee flexibility and have been doing stretches to try and correct it. Have had a little success but I still notice my knees trying to come in. So if I take a little narrower stance, I have very little knee cave, can still get below parallel, and don't have any knee soreness afterward.
In my case I wonder if it's because of how my legs were twisted when I was born? I was super pigeon-toed so had to wear those big metal braces on my legs for a couple of years (as in Forrest Gump...."Run Forrest, Run" Yep, that was me!). They essentially rotated all the bones in the legs outward to get the feet to face forward normally. So what feels "right" to me when I squat, is generally not what all the instructional videos and books advocate as correct form.
Either way, I might start throwing some glute bridges and accessory work in too. Squats have been a little difficult to progress steadily on for me, so maybe those will help. Thanks for the info on those!0 -
Stef: thanks for sharing that link. It was a great read!
I share an other one:
http://www.schwarzenegger.com/fitness/post/picking-the-squat-thats-rght-for-you
This talks about squat relationship with your femur length relatively to your torso an other body part.0 -
that is really interesting... my femurs seem to be about 30% of my total height...... I worked out what length they should be (if they were average) and it's 7cm shorter.... as in my knee should be 7cm higher up my leg... which seems mega weird to me :laugh:
well it's nice to know that I'm not imagining these things.....0 -
on a slightly more serious note.... the advice from the article (the one redheadmommy posted) based on the problems I have with squats (can't stay balanced in a narrow stance because my centre of gravity goes too far back - have issues stopping my knees caving in with a wide stance) seems to be that raising my heels would be the answer. Given how pistol squats go from being impossible to being very easy just by raising my heels I can see where that advice is coming from.....
what's best for long term strength development though? Shouldn't I be trying to strengthen whatever muscles it is that keep the knees from caving in?
It's kind of frustrating because I can squat quite a lot more weight than I've been doing lately, except that my knees cave in.
also, how does this work with competitive powerlifting? as in are there restrictions on stuff like this? I'm too much of a noob to compete (YET) but it's something I'd like to try in the future.
also I can't walk in heels, not competently anyway. but then I suppose I don't have to walk in them, just do barbell squats :laugh:0 -
I squat with a wide stance and toes pointed more outward and have competed in power lifting and it was not a problem!
My squat and deadlift are pretty darn close....the max I've attempted on squat is 240 but I'm certain I can do more and my deadlift max is 300. My guess is, since your deadlift is so much higher that you need to paly around with your squat stance for sure and just keep at it and don't give up! I remember having difficulty just squatting the bar at the beginning as well!0
