Tips for Squats

People generally put a plank under their heels for the wrong reasons. The main reason for noobs lifting their heels is because their strength balance between quads, glutes and hams is off, and the main excuse is bad ankle flexibility which is 9/10 times nonsense. Ankle flexibility will improve with training anyway. With weak glutes you'll find yourself leaning forward to move the tension onto your lower back. If your lower back is very sore after a squat session you aren't doing it right.

Your heels will always lift when you aren't aren't getting your hips far back enough. A good squat doesn't require much ankle flexion. So leaning forward and overflexing your ankles is because you are basically lifting too heavy, or because your legs are too close together.

If you have a good stance and you're still lifting your heels when going light, then rather use a weight or plank under your heals only until you have developed a stronger squat. You will kill your knees otherwise and can injure yourself. Also do pike stretches before your squats - very good.

I was told to never stretch before any heavy lifting as the muscle warms up and is prone to injury due to stretching before hand

AlexRon wrote: I was told to never stretch before any heavy lifting as the muscle warms up and is prone to injury due to stretching before hand

Eish, kick the person that told you that in the nuts next time you see him.

Muscleaddict wrote: People generally put a plank under their heels for the wrong reasons. The main reason for noobs lifting their heels is because their strength balance between quads, glutes and hams is off, and the main excuse is bad ankle flexibility which is 9/10 times nonsense. Ankle flexibility will improve with training anyway. With weak glutes you'll find yourself leaning forward to move the tension onto your lower back. If your lower back is very sore after a squat session you aren't doing it right.

Your heels will always lift when you aren't aren't getting your hips far back enough. A good squat doesn't require much ankle flexion. So leaning forward and overflexing your ankles is because you are basically lifting too heavy, or because your legs are too close together.

If you have a good stance and you're still lifting your heels when going light, then rather use a weight or plank under your heals only until you have developed a stronger squat. You will kill your knees otherwise and can injure yourself. Also do pike stretches before your squats - very good.

Thanks so much for this.

AlexRon wrote: I was told to never stretch before any heavy lifting as the muscle warms up and is prone to injury due to stretching before hand

You are right within certain boundaries. Every physio and chiro has told me not to stretch heavily before exercise as the stretching itself does more damage than good. Some take this too far and think that it means not to stretch at all or warm up the muscle which is false. The worst is to expose an ice cold muscle to sudden heavy lifting- that´s when you tear something. Best that you can do is 5-10 mins of cardio followed by doing the exercise itself for many reps at a light weight.

Thanks for the info, seems like sound advice

At the moment im hurting big time in my left knee for some reason, last time I did legs was about a week ago, and I had no pain at all after my last work out, now I can hardly walk on it, not sure whats going on

How is the knee Alex?
Been trying to go heavier with the squats but it is the hardest workout of the week fullstop.