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Vent: I've abandoned the dogma of full-depth squats after my physio's advice | Weightlifting Form - Opinions Matter

Vent: I've abandoned the dogma of full-depth squats after my physio's advice

Contrary to popular coaching cues, I believe insisting on below-parallel squats for everyone ignores individual biomechanics and can lead to unnecessary joint stress. My own experience shows that maintaining a controlled, just-parallel position has eliminated my hip impingement issues while allowing steady progression in load.

3 comments

3 Comments

anna_flores968mo ago

Describe the specific biomechanical red flags your physio identified. Did they correlate depth with your hip impingement symptoms?

the_claire8mo ago

My physio at the downtown clinic flagged my limited internal hip rotation immediately. She also caught my anterior pelvic tilt during squats, which was loading the joint all wrong. We totally correlated depth with symptoms, because any squat past parallel made my impingement pain flare up consistently. What worked for me was scaling back to box squats at ninety degrees to reduce irritation. I stuck with those and added daily hip mobility drills, which felt tedious but paid off. Building up slowly from there let me regain depth without pain, honestly a relief after months of frustration.

elizabetha927mo ago

The phrase "building up slowly from there let me regain depth without pain" really gets at the heart of the issue, which is that fitness culture often prizes the appearance of an ideal movement over the individual's actual physiological capacity. This push for uniform depth, like anna_flores96 was probing for with her question about specific red flags, is a symptom of a broader trend where cookie-cutter coaching overrides nuanced, personalized biomechanics. We see this mirrored in everything from running gait to overhead pressing, where people are shoehorned into a textbook position that their unique structure simply can't sustain safely. Your experience underscores that sustainable progress isn't about hitting an arbitrary depth target, but about adapting the movement to serve your body's long-term health.