Probably you will benefit just as much by doing certain things besides the actual squatting itself.
It seems like you defenitely need to work on mobility and ROM. Probably lower back, hip flexor, and ham stretching after your workout will help as far as lengthening the muslces and maybe some dynamic stretching before you workout. The good thing about dynamic stretching is it can get the muscle a little more pliable but also it is in the realm of mobility work so it can loosen up any tight joints like the ankles.
Also, I don't know if you are doing this or if it is just the way you are, but don't overexagerate the lower back arch. Go for a neutrual or "natural" back. In other words tighten up the arch you already have. Engage the glutes during this.
Are you using the valsalva technique?
Now for the actual squats you are breaking parallel consistently. But you tend to drop you shoulders down at the end. Some of the time you are practically folded in half! That must be tough to get out of. I can't tell for sure why you are doing this. My gut is that you are trying to compensate for the feeling of not going deep enough so you bring your shoulders down to get this illusion of depth. (I used to do that so I know what I'm talking about). What matters is where you butt is. You need to concentrate on keeping your upper back and shoulders back. I could be wrong about the reason you are doing that. It could be a correction for the bar being out of line. I can't tell. The bar should basically stay on a line with the midline (give or take) of your feet.
I think perhaps you may benefit from box squatting 3 or 4 inches below parallel so you can work on that while also keeping the lower back from rounding under. You can do speed work with that, btw, but I would recommend getting used to the box squatting before you try to do it fast.
Also some work with the load in the front may help you learn to stay a bit more upright. I like to do front loaded plate squats...you squat with a plate held out in front of you (high reps).
For the rest of it read this:
http://www.bodybuilding.net/44452-132-post.html
Besides flexibility, working at it, and general strenght and stabibility...the secret to your squat "problems" are all in the glutes. On your squat vid I noticed that your lower back rounded out at the bottom a bit and that you just said you are not going as deep. Also that you are working on keeping your knees out..which I take to mean keeping them from caving in rather than having them stick out
Try these two tests if you can. Get down into a squat position, bw only, and take care to really try to tighten up and engage the glutes. If you can really get them firing what you will notice, in the bottom position, is that as you tighthen them your knees pull outwards. All the bullshit little methods people prescribe, like putting a ball between your knees and all that, are just that...bullshit. It's all in the glutes, baby!
Same thing for the back rounding out. For that try this exercise/stretch for working on depth without the butt-wink (I really shouldn't be giving this secret away
).Stand in front of your rack upright so you can hold on to it. Grab onto it at around waist height or so. Get yourself into a position for squatting. Now what you want to do, rather than just sitting back and dropping into a squat is to PULL yourself down into a squat using the hip flexors. I'll expand on that.
Just like that little relationship between the knees and the glutes there is a relationship between the hip flexors and glutes. What you shoud notice is that when you tighten and engage the hip flexors (and quads) the glutes should fire and tighten up also. If they don't, then you have discovered a fundamental problem...your glutes ain't cominng to work so you would have to address that.
So, after establishing a good tight, neutral spine, you pull youself down into a squat using your hip flexors. Like pretending they are rubber bands. As you do that your glutes will engage and feel very tight and active along with your hams to some extent. As you get into the bottom position you want to keep the glutes firing. Then you can try to establish more depth. Sort of push down and wiggle into it. All with the glutes working. Here is the other little magical relationship you should notice. When your glutes are really working in the bottom position like that, your lower back won't cave under. It can't. As soon as you relax that relationship while trying to get deeper, the back will begin rounding out more.
That is the secret to it. It doesn't mean that it won't take work to get this going while you are actually squatting. But it gives you something to go far that is a lot less nebulous than this whole working on it though will alone. If you do try box squats this is something you need to be aware of. Most people actually completely relax their lower spine when they sit down on the box.
Things to engage the glutes more wouldn't hurt. Glute bridges. I find pullthroughs to be fantastic for that also.
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First off, on the plate squats the biggest place you will feel them is in the abs. You hold the plate straight out in front of you so you can see why that would be. It's a an intense isometric ab contraction...and that's a good thing. The best way in your circumstance to use them is as part of ab strength/stabibility training. So treat them like an ab thing. Do higher reps. That way you use them as a accessory and activation thing and not as something that will be of detriment to squatting. But yeah, they help you with "uprightness" and the only other thing I can say is to really pay attention to you glutes. Actually tighten them up a bit while descending. Forget the "quad dominant" and "ham dominant" stuff...think ass dominant. That will make all the difference when it comes to squatting.
Front squats and goblet squats are obviously a similar thing but this puts the weight much further out so you don't have the need of a heavy weight to get the effect you want plus at the same time there is no appreciable leg fatigue in it.
Unless you actually feel that your glutes are tight I doubt you will need to stretch them. Just the opposite, actually. Looking at you, although I can't tell for sure, it looks like you need the common combination of hams, lower back and hip flexor stretching. I would also highly recommend some hip adductor (inner thigh/groin) and some piriformis and ITB band stretching.
Yes I look at the floor six to ten feet ahead. Try not to lead with your head. Instead think in terms of the shoulders. I don't know who coined this, I'm pretty sure it was Rippetoe: Relate to the bar, not to the floor. You are not trying to push the floor down, after all, but the bar up. It's seems like a weird distinction because instinct makes you wants to just drive down with your legs. And of course there is going to be tons of leg drive involved.
But one of the biggest revelations you will make is that squats are about the hips not the quads or hams or any one leg muscle. Try to push the shoulders into the bar to initiate the lift. This is something that box squatting really allows good practice of.
If you begin box squatting you should definitely post a vid because there are some common errors that most people make on that.
I take breaths at the top when needed and I take may big breath at the top before descending, control the exhalation until past the 'sticking point' and then let the rest go quickly.
You can do lots of different things for dynamic stretching but I find the best thing is to do something that is actually hip dominant and multi-joint. If you are careful you can use that excercise I gave in the link to Hop's journal but you do it in a dynamic fashion where you drop down into a squat position in a controlled but dynamic way while increasing the depth each time you go down a little bit at a time.
Another good thing is to do bodyweight dynamic lunges (regular lunges) or reverse lunges where you concentrate on the stretch in the hams and the increasing range of motion. This gives more stretch than a squatting technigue would so in cases where you need to work on loosening up it's good. I wouldn't recommend any dynamic stretching of the lower back muscles.
Now you will probably get to a point where you don't need to do anything but drop into some dynamic squats to loosen up if anything. The dynamic stretching, however, helps as a warmup so it's not any skin off your nose to do a little here and there.
And yes goblet squats with the same type of deal.
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I didn't notice your hips rising first in the vid, at least.
One thing I think I saw, but it's hard to tell, is the bar position changing. It looked like during the warm-up you had the bar about as low as it could possibly and then I noticed later it seemed to be set a little higher in more of a neutral position (not that high or low). I'm also going by the fact that you started out with more of a forward torso position in the beginning set and you were more upright in the later ones. I attribute that to changes in bar position. Subtle changes in bar position have a big effect so if you notice this to actually be true make sure you pick on position and stick with it. Lower bar will mean more forward torso.
For the caving over, it may also help to get your hands in as close to the bar as possible. I can see that you are not doing that extremely wide hand placement but at the same time the more you can get your hands in and the elbows more forward the easier it is to keep the chest up (also, of course, stick the chest up in the first place). Do what you can with that advice I don't expect you to do things with your hands that are just not possible for you.
Also, and I seem to mention this to everyone, try to control the descent just a bit more. When you get to the heavy stuff, if you drop to fast, you are expending more effort decelerating the bar which makes it extremely difficult to work on anything else.
Lastly, your set-up is a little bit akward. You're doing widestance but that doesn't mean you need to get up under the bar initially this way. Can be a bit iffy for the knees to actually walk the bar back in that position and I don't like the look of your feet not being underneat you more when you unrack the bar. Try to get the bar up with a more neutral stance and then step back into your working stance in as few movements as possible.
P.S. this was all meant for Marv. I somehow didn't realize it was Hit who made the comment.
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