I am now waffling on what is the correct barbell squat stance. For a few months, I have been following the technique laid out by Mark Rippetoe: wider stance, feet angled out at 45 degrees, and pushing from the heels. Yet in the Egoscue method, it is emphasized to have everything in alignment, and for the squat I'm wondering if this means the feet should be parallel to each other facing directly forward.
I experimented with some various squat stances at the gym today. Whenever I pointed my feet directly forward, It became much tougher to get any real depth on the squat. However, this just could be do to a lack of hip flexibility on my part.
I would imagine that many people have inflexible hips from all the sitting in modern society. It could be that for a person with tight hip muscles, pointing the feet outward allows for a better squat depth. But this doesn't make it correct. It may turn out that pointing the feet out causes other problems. If this is the case, then correcting the original problem, hip flexibility, may allow for the natural stance of feet facing forward and better biomechanics for the squat.
