Are Long Femurs a Good Excuse for Poor Back Squat?
It’s interesting that the men (yes, it’s always men it seems) in fitness forums who slam posters who insist their long femurs get in the way of their back squats, don’t have long femurs themselves — though they often think they do. I’m a certified personal trainer, and all I need is an acquaintance with Physics 101 to know what’s going on here.
Whenever someone posts in a forum that their long femurs give them problems with the back squat, someone (or two or three) invariably posts that HE, too, has bloody long femurs (a la “I’m 6-3!”) but can go ATG without a problem.
When it comes to the back squat, the “long femur” refers to the length of the thigh RELATIVE to the torso. This comes in three forms:
1)Normal femur relative to length of entire leg, but the short torso is shorter than the femur
2)Long femur relative to length of entire leg, but medium torso is not as long as the femur
3)Long femur relative to length of entire leg, plus short torso
In any case, the trainee has a biomechanical disadvantage. Oddly, a lot of muscle builders and other athletes believe that everybody is built the same.
So why is it, then, we are all built the same when it comes to the back squat, but when it comes to being fitted for a suit, or when it comes to adjusting the car seat angle and its proximity to the pedals plus its height, we are NOT the same? Hmmm. Let’s see the critics try to squirm their way out of this one!
These same critics tend to agree that long, “ape-like” arms are a big disadvantage in the bench press, and that relatively short arms to body height create an advantage.
The difference though, in bench press and back squat body proportions, is that no matter how “disadvantaged” the gorilla-armed trainee is compared to the T-rex armed person, that trainee can STILL actually do a bench press (or deadlift) and with good form as well.
In the case of long femurs to regular torso, or regular femurs to short torso, and especially long femurs to short torso, these proportions interfere with the ability to actually perform an efficient back squat. These proportions force the trainee into a very bent-forward position.
The trainee must fight to keep his back in decent position, battling to keep it from rounding; there is ongoing tension in the entire vertebral column due to the awkward positioning of having to lean so far over yet maintain the crucial arch in the lower back.
What amazes me is that there are online sites by fitness professionals who totally overlook this simple element of body proportions.
The critics will point out that the issue of femurs longer than the torso can be overcome by developing more ankle and hip flexibility.
But there are limits to how far a person can drive their knees over their ankles (unless they’ve undergone the same training regimen since youth that the Chinese Olympic lifters undergo).
Hips can only get sunk so far, too. These fine-tuning adjustments do make a difference, but the trainee is still in an inefficient position.
Even if someone developed abnormal flexibility in the ankle, this fails to solve the tainted biomechanics of longer femur to torso proportion, because extreme angling forward of the knees (due to extreme ankle flexibility) is nearly the equivalent of doing the back squat with one’s heels on a three-inch platform! That’s a lot of tension on the patellar tendon!
If this is difficult to understand, then imagine an extreme example of this: Imagine performing back squats while on the balls of your feet. Forget the balance issue for a moment here. Instead, just imagine how your knees would feel, going up and down this way with a heavy load across your back.
If your femurs are longer than your torso, you have a legitimate concern with the back squat, especially ATG (“ass to grass”). Don’t fight it if your back keeps rounding. See what some adjustments can do for you:
1)Widen the stance
2)Slightly point feet outward
3)Wear a one-inch heel insert
4)Have the bar higher up on the back (high bar back squat)
If these adjustments fail to work with practice, the back squat just isn’t your bag; focus on other leg exercises (split squats, front squats, dumbbell squats, box squats). Those with long femurs should excel at the leg extension and hamstring curl movements.
Bodybuilder Toney Freeman, who has quads like a beast, includes a significant number of leg extension and hamstring curl sets in his training regimen. So if you have the femur length to torso length problem, never underestimate what these isolation exercises can do for you.
