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While experimenting trying to get the bar over midfoot I chanced upon doing bodyweight squats ON my toes (with heels off the ground maybe about 2-4"). In this way I can maintain a bar path over midfoot. And also it makes my knees point horizontally rather than at the sky (see pictures below). This suggests having a wedge under my heel might help a lot. But weighlifting shoes will only have a 0.75" heel. That might not be enough? I may need much more heel elevation than that to get horizontal  facing quads which will make my torso more upright. The best way to picture this is to look at Tommy Kono's graphic below.



Knees point ahead, the ideal position for an athletic squat, it means the brunt of the load is borne by the legs.

I use flat shoes to do the following squats. Pictured below is bar position at the bottom of both squats.



 As you can see the bar is over my toes instead of over midfoot. It's too far forward. What i'm trying to understand is WHY? It causes me all manner of problem manifesting in squatmorning my lifts with too much forward lean. I would like to be more upright.

In FS I sit down btw my legs, not thinking about bar path.

In BS I break first at knees to create space for my legs to fill so that my shins aren't vertical at the bottom of the squat. I don't have a problem with ankle mobility, as far as I know. So if it's a mobility issue preventing the bar being over midfoot id welcome suggestions as to what part of my body needs more moblity. I don't believe it's ankles because my knees are plenty forward I think.

All I want is a more upright torso. I think that would solve all my squat problems at once. Welcome any ideas or theories.

I use 5lb little plates under the heels, makes the squat feel much more natural. I saw it on a Youtube vid about Arnold, he was using a 2x4. Just my .02

Thanks. My 2.5kg plates are 1" high. I used them yesterday to get my knees lower. Seemed to help. To get 1" i'd need to add 0.25" heel inserts to my new 0.75" heeled weightlifting shoes when they arrive in 10 days. But I was thinking about this, going from flats to 0.75" might be a good start. And I work hard on my ankle dorsiflexion and add a couple of degrees that way. So both things might help get my knees lower. Will it be enough? Maybe, maybe not, but it will be an improvement from the current situation.

So i'll stretch my ankles daily. Have read that it takes 2 minutes to cause tissue change. Could be some brosfit science but i'll try it anyway.

TLDR: more ankle ROM + WL heel wedge --> knees down and forward + more upright squat.

^Will do on both things. Thank you.

This thread has made me re-think the idea of 'depth' when it comes to the squat. It's not just hip crease and knee joint angle as per PL. That works for PL sure, but it's not the best definition. It's not about hip at all. I have observed legitimate Olympic (as in WL who perform at THE OLYMPICS) lifters who have perfectly horizontal quads. Squat depth is instead about knee height from the ground. Depth is determined by how low (or high for that matter) your knee is from the ground.

So take my front squat for example. I could say I do them ATG BRAH. But that's not the point, it's not about the angle my hip crease makes with my knee, my squat isn't deep in the meaningful way just because my ass is almost touching the ground and/or bouncing off my calves. Rather my squat is HIGH because my knee isn't low enough. It's a subtle enough point but it's important. Because it means you can do squats that are not considered 'deep' and yet for the purposes for athleticism they're sufficient if not ideal. And you can do ATG squats that are in fact not deep enough because of high knees.

This is a bit of a rant but it annoys me when people say 'WL shoes help squat deeper'. NO, it's not the point of WL shoes when you're talking about 'depth' as being the hip crease angle! But they surely do help depth if you're looking at knee height, that depth surely does increase. And that's the depth that matters, not the stupid hip crease one which is completely irrelevant. The heel wedge increases depth but without necessarily affecting the angle btw hips and knees. DUH!

I'll edit in some photographs to illustrate my point later.

I'd rather say depth is actually the distance from your hip to your ankle.

On further reflection I've decided the romaloes are pointless. The heel height of 3/4'" is insufficient. I have realised this sport is for small guys with small legs and feet. What heel works  for someone with a size 8 foot won't be enough for me. Maybe they do in fact scale heel height up a little with shoe length but its unlikely to be enough.  Because leg length is an additional factor. I need probably around 1.5-1.75" heel to get the same benefit as a smaller dude.

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edit, check out this chinese Olympian who has the same Romaloes 2 shoe but with a twist

Why would you settle for anything less than the shoes I have, the AdiPowers?

Internet says the AdiPowers if you have a narrower foot and Romaleos if you have a wider foot. Not that Romaleos are wide (D) but they're wider than than the Adidas. I don't have narrow feet so I went with Nike.

I think partly the reason this change from a high heel to a low heel has taken place is because there are a majority of people who use these shoes to do unathletic squats which don't require a big heel. They don't care about being upright, they avoid a bigger heel because it actually leans them over TOO much (because they squat by sitting way back). For this reason there has been an internet marketing trend towards smaller heels. One very vocal internet coach suggests 0.5" as the ideal heel height which has no doubt fuelled the trend towards small heels where even 0.75" is considered "too high". Another reason is the widespread brosfit theory that barefoot training is ideal, and since they want to be as paleo as possible, shy away from high heeled shoes from a misguided sense of what they consider natural. These are the same fools who tell people to lift in vibrams or worse, barefoot. This unfortunate convergence of brosfit preference and unathletic squatting has dried up the market of proper high heeled weightlifting shoes.

A few years ago 1.25" was a minimum standard for a WL shoe and there were shoes with even bigger heels. Gwen suggests 1.25" actually becomes say 1.75" for someone with very long feet in the Ristos which makes sense since the longer a foot, the more heel height is required to make up the same inclination as someone with a smaller foot.

I think the oly guys since the majority of them tend to be self selected for the sport, have proportions which don't suffer too much from a small sized heel of 3/4". They might have on average a shoe size of 8 and small leg segments. And for them a 3/4" heel is not bad given the  length of their shoes. They might benefit from an extra half inch of height too, but they can definitely work with 3/4. The rest of us though, who are not build like them get very little out of a small heel of 3/4". We need at a minimum 1.25 going on to 1.75 (imho).

But even among oly guys there is a widespread practice of using heel inserts to make up the height of modern shoes. If you're starting out with 0.75" and you have a longer foot and longer legs, you need 1/2" of extra heel. So guys use vinyl inserts to make up that gap. Or they get their WL shoe modified at cost if they happen to have a wooden heel wedge from a cobbler.

Very good read man. All he says in there goes right along with what feels natural for me when lifting.

Welcome. It's a she btw, haha. A down to earth MIT PhD rocket scientist with great insight on the physics of lifting. I find myself agreeing with her a lot.

I should thank you too for the tip on using 5lb plates. Today I first tried using a block under my heels and that shit is impossibly tricky for some reason, I felt so awkward and unstable. It maybe because the weight was too heavy (120kg front squat) but then later I tried with 2.5kg plates and they're a lot easier to balance on compared to the block, albeit with a lighter weight. With the block i was unsure whether to put the weight on my heels in which case toes go up! Or on the toes in which case it just didn't feel right.

But even with the heel I can't get close to midfoot. I am quite lost for ideas now. It's frustrating me. I'm not even looking at the concentric, just the first half of the movement on the way down. Without midfoot alignment I'm a hopeless backsquatter. And an ugly front squatter. I might need a 2" heel to bring my hips closer under the bar as per Tommy Kono above.

So i think I have some thoughts on what to experiment with next time. I have to jettison the knee break first on HBBS. Sure it gives me a bounce at the bottom (hamstring?), it brings my knees forward and gives my legs some room to sit into. Those are the good things. The bad thigns are it takes me forward of midfoot. Causing a great deal of inclination of the chest, shooting hips back and making it a low quality unathletic exercise that puts too much stress on the low back. That's why it has to go.

INSTEAD I have to concentrate on holding bar position from the top and driving hips down hard in a straight vertical line. This will ensure at least in theory a midfoot bar path. Hopefully it will automatically put my legs etc in the position they need to be too. Now, what i've found in the past doing this is that it makes my shins vertical unless i knee break first. But i'll have to find a way to get that ankle angle smaller (maybe the heel will do that for me?). And this is about backsquat. On FS i have no fkn clue since I don't do the knee break thing at all. Perhaps just need a bigger heel i dont know.

Oh and ankle mobility is veryyyyy good right now. I went into FS warmups with great ankle flexiblity so i'm happy with the improvement i've made in that area.

 a big total heel (> 1.75") is a bit crazy. and the scary thing is unless you groove the movement in a very upright manner, a bigger heel will actually force you even further of midfoot because any inclination that occurs naturally gets amplified with a heel UNLESS you consciously work on being more upright in which case it facilitates it. Kind of like alcohol and being horny in the porter scene of macbeth.