FitNotes Workout - Thursday 30th October 2014
 ** Barbell Squat **
- 45.0 lbs x 5 reps
- 135.0 lbs x 5 reps
- 185.0 lbs x 5 reps
- 225.0 lbs x 5 reps
- 265.0 lbs x 5 reps
- 265.0 lbs x 5 reps
- 265.0 lbs x 5 reps

 ** Flat Barbell Bench Press **
- 45.0 lbs x 5 reps
- 135.0 lbs x 5 reps
- 170.0 lbs x 5 reps
- 170.0 lbs x 5 reps
- 170.0 lbs x 5 reps

After this I did A LOT of squatting sets with 135 to work on form.  I thought I had figured out the problem and why my knees were coming forward more the past few days compared to when I did 255 and I think now I REALLY did find the underlying reason.  It's simply because my stance width was narrower.  My natural stance tends to be just outside of shoulder width, but when I did 255 and was very happy with it, I was going with a 150% shoulder width wide stance.  It finally dawned on me that my problem was that my stance was a few inches narrower so my knees were tracking forward more.  The benefit of the narrower stance was that it puts less strain on the adductors and my depth is lower, so there's no question about being well below parallel.  I'm actually surprised I had no impingement issues with it anyhow.  In the future if I go back to this stance, I think I'm going to follow Jay Nera's cues of relaxing the glutes and letting the hips drift back slightly (and naturally) before squatting straight down.  This allows me to be much more upright and achieve depth really easily.  Also allows for a quicker descent.  However, next squat session I'm going to go back to the wider stance and see how it feels.

Initially I went to wide stance because going significantly below parallel was causing hip impingement issues, and then later on, with more research, I found primary articles doing EMG studies which found that a wide stance squat (150% shoulder width) activates the quads the same as a narrower stance, but significantly increases glute activation, which is a huge factor since the glutes are an incredibly strong muscle.  I do need to keep increasing my flexibility to make sure my knees can be pushed over the toes during the wider stance tho.  Also, will try to do a purposeful bounce at the bottom to 1) benefit from a rebound effect and 2) ensure that the hip crease goes below parallel during the bounce.