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My legs are quite strong. I wish my upper body was as strong as my lower half. I think it's from years of being really overweight, honestly.

But I just can't really get parallel or lower without feeling like I'm going to fall over backwards. When I do a bodyweight squat, I can go lower than parallel but my feet are pointing out towards 10 and 2 o' clock and when I push up, the weight isn't going on my heels, because I just can't center the weight there. The weight is at best evenly distributed across the whole foot, but probably tilted more towards the ball of my foot.

Am I correct in assuming this is bad form?

I am pretty concerned about this, because as a novice lifter I can easily squat 200 lbs or so, but I dont know if have the proper form to feel comfortable with doing that much.

I've heard it can be tight hamstrings, but I'm not sure how much sense that makes, since if I lift my heels off the floor doing a bodyweight squat I can go down and hit my heels with my glutes, no problem.

There's some issue here that's causing me to be unable to balance at the bottom of the squat, adn I dont know what it is, and waht I've been doing is just going down as far as i can without taking the weight off my heel, but as complicated as squats are when you''re straining to pump out the reps, it's hard to really focus on that sometimes. But as long as i do that, I can get parallel or at least very close and I feel like my form is fairly good, but if I go too low it's all over.

It could be a number of things. Since you're a novice I'll pick on most of the 'novice' things. (They're still specific to what you describe though)

Your chest should be up and you should be squatting 'between your legs' and not on top of them.

A couple of things can screw up your squat pretty good.

1)Ankle Mobility
2)Hip Mobility

First off mobility is a fancy way of saying 'able to produce a specific position'.

If your ankles aren't very mobile then you aren't capable of putting them into a position which will keep you balanced you in the bottom of a squat.

To check this try squatting with your heel raised, do this by placing something underneath your heel (something not too thick, like a 2.5lb plate), and if your squat improves you most likely need more ankle mobility.

If your hips aren't mobile then your lower back will most likely round as you descend (also called a buttwink). This is not good for your lower back or your squatting ability.

To check this you're going to want to do what is called a 'squat to stand'. If you can do it and produce a position with your chest up and back flat, your hips are doing alright. If you can't (which is most likely the case) then you need to get some more hip mobility, which can be easily done by using the squat to stand exercise or a variation of it where you grab an upright support and assume the squat stance.

Dan John does a better job than I do though, so watch this:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6529481301858251744&q=dan+john
Also, squatrx videos (on youtube) are pretty good. There are quite a few and I can't remember which one has the mobility info so you'll have to search for that on your own.

Edit: Hamstring tightness is not even remotely at play here.

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I used to be like that, and used to spread my feet quite far apart, almost the width of the rack. And still couldnt go parallel, with weight that is. Body weight squats were fine. When i recently got back into training, i started using a chair. Now i go parallel with feet shoulder width, maybe a bit wider, and toes slightly pointed out. Its just something about knowing that chair is there that helps me i guess. But i dont sit on it or bounce off of it, i just go down, feel it hit my ass, and go back up. I put the front edge of the chair a few inches back from my knees.

I just tried some bodyweight squats with plates under my heels and it worked like a charm. That unsteady feeling is still there when I get low enough, but I can hit parallel very easily and keep all my weight on my heels.

So what does this mean I need to do? Surely elevating my heels is kind of a stop gap measure, right? Should I stretch my calves or something?

Read Kane's post.

x2 ^^ nice post Kane.

Thanks Hits.

Lke Wolf said, you need to refer back to my post.

But the quick answer is yes this is a 'stop gap measure' and to solve the problem you need more ankle mobility, you DON'T need to start stretching random muscles.

I cant watch teh video as I dont have sound on the computer. My sound card flaked out on me a couple of weeks ago adn I haven't gotten around to getting a new one yet.

ALso get someone in the gym that is a trainer or looks like they know what they are doing and get them to show you. People love to help ya just gotta ask. If you are doing squats wrong you can really get yourself hurt!

go buy a new sound card then...