Patience is KEY in Powerlifting 

I'm still pretty new to lifting, been doing it for about 7 months and a couple of weeks ago I found you guys. You are a major resource, at least for someone still new like me. Your stuff is properly one of the main reasons this skinny dude got a new PR in sumo deadlift last week. So thank you Bryce and Dylan, cheers from Denmark!

Feels great to have a weight fairy taking over form check Friday

Hey it's Bartek! Thank you for checking my video, all the feedback and advice!

Binging all your videos. Thanks for the effort that you put into your content!

My main criticism of the lucky lifter is not to breathe in such a way that his shoulders and chest rise up, but that the tightness is created in the abdominal region all around (the core) using proper valsalva maneuver. Also, it may be a good cue to contract the glutes before descending, which also helps with tightness and a descent directly down instead of back. Feet do cave in a little bit. Focus on planting those three points of contact down hard. And don't kick imaginary dogs before finding your ideal foot placement :)

Why doesn't this channel have 1m subs? What's wrong with everyone! 🤦‍♂️

Patience is definitely something I need. It’s more that I get frustrated with myself for setbacks and then I can let that get me down and keep me from progressing. As always, you put things in perspective.

Last lift - First of all, solid squat. Good depth. His narrower stance is also fine if that's where he's comfortable and feel his strongest. There's one thing though that I see with bracing his core that might need work. With a loose core, that causes the hips to rise up out of the hole to lift the weight, and causes the weight to dip forward. That gets progressively more dominant as the fatigue sets in with the later reps. I had that problem, and what helped me was bracing my core right after taking a deep breath. Squeezing my abs (like what you'd do before a punch to the gut), & while having a big breath of air, my torso was tight enough to lift with together with my hips as one solid unit, evenly distributing the weight. This stopped the weight from shifting forward for me. In my opinion, would tell him to focus on his core. It's more than just taking deep breathes like he has been doing, but also making sure his core is braced for each rep.

Last lift: Losing tightness in lower back before hitting the hole. Also seems to drop a smudge forward over toes. I suggest locking rib cage down while pinning elbows to the side as well as slowing down the decent a touch. Cue balance spread over the three points (big toe, small tie, heel). Tempo squats(3-0-0)should help. Overall a good squat that needs some tidy Ness mixed with patience. Nice!

On the last squat, the biggest things I see are: 1. He seems kinda loose in his upper back (I wouldn't reccomend low bar squatting with extended wrists , I'd say keeping them in a neutral position allows for more upper torso tightness) 2. His stance is way to narrow IMO. Maybe he could benefit from a wider stance in being able to transfer force more effectively. Nothing major. Still a pretty solid squat.

I saw your collaboration with Omar and came to check you out. I really like your form check videos. I'm getting further into intermediate lifting territory and these little details help a lot in reviewing my own form. Keep it up.

I love your production values

Nice. Liking the new form check format. Bartek has some good tightness in his back.I think he would benefit more from a slightly wider stance. Also seems like his knees cave in a bit especially towards the end of his set.

Thankyou for the form check on my bench, id have to say my ego definitely took a bit but in a way I am happy there are a lot of things i can improve on, it means i can improve my bench a lot :):)

Last lift - when "bartek?" is trying to brace he is only getting a deep breath into his chest, that is why his shoulders are raising so much. His form is actually really good except for his inability to brace properly. Suggestions: he should focus on filling his belly, obliques and lower back up with air, maybe he could loosen his belt a bit so he has room to practice expanding 360 degrees instead of just up into the bar and making it rise. Maybe practice bracing over and over with the bar or a little weight and do it until he can brace without the bar moving up and down but staying steady. Other suggestion would be to make sure his upper back is already set when unracking the bar it is simply too loose and that's why all his air is going there. Other than that he has great form and really should not change anything else.

Last squat looks very good, tightening up the torso may make it even better. Paused squats seem to be beneficial for many issues.

Regarding the last squat... Definitely not a bad squat. What jumped out to me was: 1. His stance seems like a super close oly stance. Heels are super close and his knee moment is huge, which isn't really optimum for maximum loads. Moving those feet out and getting more into the hips and less into the knees would probably make for a stronger skwaaaat. 2. He's getting loose at the bottom, bottoming out very low, and relying too hard on bounce/stretch reflex. At higher weights this'll definitely cause some inconsistent skwarts (I used to to this too). In conjunction with moving his stance out and sitting more into his hips and less into the knees, he should control the descent more, cut some depth, and stay TIGHT/brace hard going into and while in the hole, which will allow him to effectively and in a controlled manner drive out of the hole with the hips (hip draaaaahve @ Rippetoe) and have more consistent reps under heavier loads. tl;dr - move stance out a bit wider, sit more into hips and less into knees, stay tighter/brace harder, control descent all the way into the hole, cut some depth, drive out of bottom with hips. Happy squatting!

My two cents on my Lucky's squat. For the most part it's a pretty solid squat. Changes I would suggest is widen the stance out a bit due to his leverages and maybe try out a flatter shoe. I would also advise trying to make the set up and execution of each rep consistent. Some reps have a good bracing technique and others imo appear to be a little less tight. The other thing I note is a tendency to sit back a little too much. This may be a product of using a heeled shoes which I don't think is needed.

For the last submission, maybe the angle but, the left leg seems to have more side to side motion then the right. I notice by looking at the left heel/ ankle rolls inward on few reps, pushing the knee around. Also some reps seem like hips and knees were “breaking” at different times, meaning some reps it were hips first then knees or hips and knees at the same time. “The bracing” the weight rises up and down when your breathing in, so try getting more air into your belly rather your chest, try a slightly looser belt potion if your having trouble with forcing air down. Just make it consistent pick one fix at a time and keep up the good work.

This new FCF critique thing is really nice. For a while, I want to improve my critiques to help people if needed. Having Bryce comment back on the videos is great. Thanks for that change!

i like bartex squat .for my own preferances i would rather not flare out knees so early and just track knees inline with toes in the beginning descent BUT once bartex the lifter gets closer towards depth THEN id start flaring knees out to activate glutes and boost us out of the hold through the sticking point allot faster.

Add tempo squats, based on the first critic & maybe break it up into 8 sets of 3 to wear off fatigue & to get that volume in.

For Mr. Lucky I'd say practicing more control to rely less on the stretch reflex would be about all he needs to work on, positioning looks solid, he just seems to really rely on that bounce, and from my minimal experience than can go either way for you when it counts

For the final squat: 1. He is dumping into the bottom part of the squat, losing all tension. tempo squats maybe to fix this. 2. Needs to get tighter under the bar. Better bracing and taking time between reps will help.

The main thing I spot is a collapsing of the left knee, and i get the feeling like this might be due to his stance being too narrow.

Agree with a lot of comments especially about shoulder instability/lack of tightness and I wonder if he may be more comfortable strong and stable with a slightly wider grip and easier time keeping the elbows down (see them creeping up a bit coming up out of the bottom position). Sometimes it feels tight in the shoulders for people because they are tense not tight. Once that position is optimized it feels like less weight is pressing on the shoulders themselves but more weight is felt in other (stronger) leverage points...at least it felt like that for me when I saw this was an issue for my squats. Great footage and form though.

Last Lift- Seems like he might have muscle imbalance issue. He is shifting a bit to the left. He also should work on engaging his core more and get more tight and I think the bar might be a little to high around the vertebrate, kind of hard to tell with the angle.

Re: Bartek: I feel like he loses a little bit of tightness in the hole, maybe goes a little too low, and then has perhaps a little lack of tightness in the upper back.

On the last FC, seems like the last weeks squat. Dumping into the hole, and possibly due to fatigue, the hips are shooting up a bit fast. Try pin squats over paused squats for this because it’s not the hard to cheat pause squats in the same manner, but if you try to do that on a pin squat, you might fall forward

Solid squat form. Just a little more patience in and out of the hole. I think as he goes further into the set his hips shift up just a little bit before shifting forward. With a longer set like this you can also see his knees want to collapse in but then he corrects this. Keep working on feeling the glute out of the bottom.

Covering what else has been said pretty much, but the last guy's stance is too narrow causing him some problems in the ankle which then gives him issues further up the leg and creates some inefficiency coming out the hole. He's also tipping forward on the ascent - could brace his lats more and upper back, but I was thinking this might be related to his narrow stance not allowing his legs to work to their full potential. So maybe widen the stance, work on keeping tension in the back, feel the weight over his mid foot throughout the lift, tempo squats, squat with a pause halfway down and maybe some front squats do help with bracing the back.

Looks like Bartech? is losing tightness in the hole and having to make up a lot of ground. Could be due to losing upper back tightness, or losing tightness overall in the hole. Pin squats may help.

Just an overall lack of tightness in the torso, should brace more into the stomach than the upper torso and maintain upper back tightness

Vet few mistakes to me, only thing would be to play with stance width... possibly inch or two wider. There is some loss of tension in the bottom. Strict pause squats could help..Other than that not much else

Thankyou for the feedback! (Ryan) I might have written it wrong in the email but this was in fact a high bar squat. I had changed from low bar a few weeks ago.

Last lift is a pretty solid squat... not really a critique but more of a suggestion... Maybe he could try pointing his toes inward a bit? just a couple of degrees so he could probably use more quads in the lift but all in all still pretty solid... Sidenote: Not really sure about this but i think he's using a Hybrid squat which is more of in the middle of a low bar and high bar which is probably messing up his mechanics?

Maybe bombing a little bit out of the bottom and shrugging his shoulders before each rep, plus his knees go out too much, if he opens up his stance might help. Hope it helps someone somewhere :)

Last squat looks similar to mine especially my form from like a few months ago, I believe it is a quad dominant form. CWS talked about this and how it would result in a sticking point just out of the hole. Apparently Ed Coan had this and suggested driving your back into the bar more to help stay more upright and rigid on the hard reps.

It looks like he is breaking at the hips first. I would recommend breaking at the knees and hips simultaneously. For bracing he might want to try breathing more into his stomach instead of his chest. Also might want to play around with a wider stance if it feels any better.

Based on things you’ve said in past videos it looks like pausing in the hole could be beneficial for this guy.

I think his core is not braced enough and it’s resulting in instability out of the hole. The rest looks fine. Pause squats would help resolve this.

Getting pulled forward out of bottom. Maybe try lowering bar position and or setting knees forward and keeping them there. More bracing and controlled descent

Guys squat at the end looked overall very good..I think he's chest heaving a bit too much getting breath into his chest versus some diaphragmatic breathing and it's causing the bar to jump up and back down. Additionally for powerlifting purposes he's bottoming out the squats just a tiny bit too much and loosing tightness in the hole

Love the work you do :)

I'd say overall not a bad squat. I'd widen out the stance a little bit, feels like the knees are out way too much in comparison to the feet I'd also recommend turning feet in a little bit (angle wise) When he braces, the weight shifts up a bit too much, so he's probably not using bracing well enough, he should try and breathe into belly more. But overall pretty solid, I dont think that the hips coming out of the hole are too much of an issue

Squat form isn't too bad, but he's shooting his hips up too quickly, and it get's worse with every rep. As a result, it looks like the bar isn't travelling in a straight path which is making the entire movement imbalanced. I think he could benefit from some pause squats: looks like it's falling apart once he hits the hole and starts the concentric. Learning to stay tight in the hole should help.

His squats look good but I think he is bit fast in eccentric phase and need some more controlled decent into the hole hence the knees tend to adjust during the bounce out of the hole. Apart from that very solid squat.

The squat looks very good. I think overall there are 2 minor issues. 1- core tightness at the bottom portion. Focus on maintaining a rigid core at the bottom of the squat instead on focusing on relying too much on a stretch reflex. 2- (may not apply, could be a perceived problem due to the camera angle) perhaps going deeper than you need to. Alongside with issue #1, it may be contributing to the butt-wink that's evident in this squat. If you consider stopping about 2 or 3 inches above where you are currently squatting, you may see this butt-wink disappear. :)

Overall, great squat. But needs to slow down a little bit on the descent so he can maintain tightness coming out of the hole on the way back; seems like the speed of the eccentric is what is causing him to lose tightness/control. Tempo squats fi fix it.

Tighter core, tighter shoulder blades, maybe thumb over grip, wider stance

The main thing i see is he might need a wider stance seems like his knees are shooting out almost bowing as the he presses out of the whole wider stance

He bombs the bottom portion which causes the knees to shoot back

id recommend bartech tries a moderately wider stance, with his feet just slightly more straight, because to me it looks like he's leaning a little bit too far forward, so opening up those hips a little more should make it easier to hit depth without falling forward coming out of the hole

Bryce when you do highbar squats you close your stance or set up like in comp

A good squat overall i think he is breaking at the hips just before he breaks at the knees

Squats not bad. I think he could maybe widen his stance a little bit. Breathe into his gut more and seems to be divebombing the hole and losing postion forward. Maybe work on maintaining tightness in the bottom and slow down the descent a little and maybe cue him to keep his knees forward a little longer and work on driving the upper back into the bar on the way up. Also both incorporating pause and tempo squats

his squats are pretty damn good.I fell like at the first portion of the descent he tries to hard to stay upright and as he dips into the hole he is losing posisiong a little bit on the way up (it doesn't look like a big isue however). Maybe work on controling the descent and pushing his hips str8 up on the way up.Another cue would be to keep his knees forward.Finally i would advice him to widen a bit his stance

CRITIQUE: IMO, solid squat. Good Valsava before initiating the squat. Everything seems tight. Altought, I think you're loosing a bit of thightness at the bottom. I think that it is what makes the bar go foward. If you look at the bar near the blindfolds, you see the bar going down properly and as soon as you go up, the bar moves foward. Make sure you keep the chest and hips in the same angle throughout the concentric phase (up). Otherwise, solid squat!

on the last lift: upper body says low bar、lower body says oly squat :D

Idk if you've covered this but what kind of belt do use? I've been using a velcro belt for a while but am ready to made a larger investment and get a good belt

Hey Bryce. Can you make another 8-16 program since you reached 30K?

In regards to the video at the end, slow it down a hair and cut a half an inch off of your depth. Apparently you’re breaking at the hips more, initially, than at the knees-so I would recommend breaking your hips and knees at the exact same time and allowing your knees to come forward and out sooner, WITHOUT letting them shift back during the ascent. Also side note brace very fucking hard, even harder on the way down and up and this should fix the loss of tightness/pronation of your feet. So slow down, squat a half inch higher, knees and hips break simultaneously, knees stay forward and out in the ascent, and bryce krwacyzk harder.

Why would the 2nd to last guy have SBD sleeves and romaleos when he doesn't even have calves, and isn't even squatting 2 plates.

I see his ankles collapsing in the bottom. Pointing his feet more forward may help with stability.

the guy at 9:00 - "i don't feel so good"

#fcf I think his squats look good, but I think he can improve his squat in some ways. First of all he is a little fast on the eccentric of the movement. He need to slow down to get rid of the instability at the bottom. I would recommend tempo (maybe + paused) squats to control the squat better. A resultant problem is his collapsing vaults. Because of the high speed in the eccentric and the pretty outwards rotated feet his legs come in a little. I would try to get the feet a little more parallel and concentrate more to bring the knees forward and your glutes backward (squat more in the sagittal plane - not in the frontal plane). The last little problem is his dipping forward at the begin of the concentric. As before I would try to create a little more forward lean (feet more parallel + maybe a little narrower stand) so involve more hamstrings/glutes in the movement. Overall a nice squat!

His stance seems too narrow in my opinion, because of how far he is pushing his knees out. I think he should widen his stance a bit to accommodate his knee angle. OR he should push his knees out less and try to squat with knees more forward, he may not have the mobility in his hips for such a knee angle. Also, he seems to be dive bombing the last bit of the squat and relying stretch reflex to get him out of the hole. Definitely should incorporate pause squats.

For the last FC, I'd say, just like last week, not to rush it and better bracing. Seems like he's dive bombing in the hole and losing a bit of pelvic positioning. And learn to brace better and maintaining a rigid core. He raises his shoulders when he takes his breath, I don't get it why some lifters (even elite lifters) do this ! I remember Omar Isuf did a video on this with Jeremy Hamilton and Jeremy nailed it, it's counterproductive. When there's enough weight on the bar to make it bend, the whip itself is a pain in the ass to control but imagine if you were raising your shoulder to take your breath in, the bar would be impossible to control.

Keep up the Stranger Things intro and I am going to subb!

Great squat mechanics, not much to correct honesty in terms of mechanics and how he performs the squat itself. It does look like he loses a little bit of tension in the bottom, which you see because it looks like he is wobbling a little out of the hole in some of the reps. Then I notice he rise his shoulders very much when taking in a big breath, which might be ok for some people, but that is if they still correctly brace their stomach and especially the abdominal walls, which in this guys' case it looks like because of the unstable kind of wobbling bottom position, he might not be 100% in that area. Great looking squat though, technique looks great and it most certainly looks like he has a good grasp of how a squat should look and feel like :)

I'd say depth too much and wider foot stance,knees coming out too much

Hi

His hip is rising early, he could try less weight or being more patient & staying tight coming out of the hole.

Dude has to widen his stance

Why tho? So that the person can read hundred form advice and then barely learn what to focus on..?