Messing around with the form

Disclaimer* you probably don't want to read this, I'm just putting it somewhere I won't lose it.

Felt pretty good today, overall the volume has been quite a bit to handle. The last few months, anything over 405 has felt pretty hard, and I've trained really hard the last few years, but doing so much volume, right where it gets hard is pretty rough. Not something I've really understood before now, I think it's been good for technique, Low bar feels the stongest, but I can't make it work well enough to get consistent depth calls, high bar is good, my squat looks pretty, but just too hard on heavier weights, moderate bar, has worked the best to just get good quads out of the hole, solid depth, and a high sticking point I feel I'll be able to handle in competition provided I can hold form.

I've had descent problems lately, where I've been trying to hold my back position too hard from the start, as I'd been leading with my knees, lately I've just been sitting between my legs, then arching harder the lower I go so I'm arching the hardest during my rebound out of the hole. Before, I was so rigid I had a tough time getting into position as I descended, rushing most of my reps with torso position where I'd be almost too upright for the depth I was trying to get, so my torso would get a little push into the right position from the rebound, and just making the squat feel uncomfortable.

Today I set up in an annoying rack, where there's a bit of a tilt, and just decided to not focus on it, things did feel just a little off and I still felt a slight twist in the hole, most likely as I'm just mistiming my quad to hip position, I've felt out of allignment there a bit lately, but I think I can adjust it right now witch a conscious effort rather than worry too much about it.

I've been paranoid about losing reps forward for a while, and it was just from messing around with double ply, and sitting back into a squat too much, where in double ply you just have to go high bar, and I generally prefer a lower bar position for powerlifting. It was more the technique I was using at the time, my torso should be more than strong enough, though planks have seemed to help a fair bit. I still feel a lot more comfortable doing gh sit ups and side bends, both I think I've learned a better technique on so that they help a lot more. I think working on those, as well as just getting my left shoulder more externally rotated, should make all of this a lot easier, and I'll be a lot less injury prone, I've made pretty decent strides already. I feel the only thing that may hold me back at this meet on my max attempts will only be my form, lately however I've been able to stay more focused at meets, whereas before I just blocked everything out and tried to not think at all. I don't want to get crazy about it though, as that will just turn into another problem altogether.

Before, I also noticed where I'd hit the hole, and my body would shift forward, I did understand that before, and chalked it up to my torso, where I feel it was just not loading my quads enough, and now when I go past parallel, I try to push my knee forward as hard as I can while arching as hard as I can, then swicthing to pushing through the floor as fast as I can, I felt before my knees should come in more, but they come in very slightly and stay out for most of the movement, I'm not realy sure my that happens, looking forward to figuring it out. Sitting between my legs is the smoothest way to do this so far, leading with my knees does get me out of the hole well, but it's uncomfortable, and I don't make it work.

Mark told me Brandon Sommers put 70lbs on his squat using this program, he also gained a weight class, I've let myself gain 8 lbs, so we'll have to see how that affects things. My only problem is I had to start late, and I'm running out of time before the meet, so I'm worried about my peak, just doing my best to try to remember I recently went from weeks of 405 for singles, to getting 500 on my back the next week, and I do feel my technique has improved a lot, just hoping it shows in time for the meet.