Building a better squat

The Back Squat is one of the most common movements you’ll see in any gym, when done correctly it is a great movement for increasing lower body strength, building bigger quads and glutes, has great crossover to most athletic endeavours, and once you are proficient you can move quite a lot of weight! Unfortunately, it is also an exercise a lot of people perform incorrectly, so today lets run through a few ways you can build a better squat. We will touch on setting up, executing the lift and a few of the most common mistakes I see people doing.

Should YOU barbell back squat?

Now before we jump into doing the barbell back squat, its important to take an honest look at your training experience and goals. Many people may say you NEED to include squats with a barbell to make good progress in the gym, which is dumb, no one exercise is required to make progress. Any exercise can be regressed for certain people depending on their goals and/or training level.

If you have never really trained before, rather than throwing a 20kg bar on your back and trying to learn to squat, you may be better off regressing to something “easier” which you can still progress on. Think a goblet squat, hack squat, leg press, with the intention of eventually working up to a regular barbell back squat. Now, exactly what you should start with is a conversation you should have with your coach, but if you’re not confident performing the exercise I would suggest moving down a level until you find something you are comfortable with. The skills you develop with these exercises will carryover when you eventually do barbell back squat.

As a simple “tester” exercise, if you can goblet squat with a 20-30kg dumbbell with good technique then you can likely have a barbell on your back and be skilled enough to properly execute the movement!

Warming up

Like with any prime lift we want to get our body prepped to move some weight, as this is only a general guide we won’t go into detail on any activation/rehab movements you may need, as these can vary greatly person to person. You are much better of seeking advice from a specific coach/health professional for that. For most healthy individuals, simply warming up by doing lighter variations of the exercise is sufficient.

I like to begin with just the unloaded bar, the standard bar weight in most gyms is 20kg, but it should be shown on the bar somewhere. If you are new to squatting and aren’t moving a lot of weight yet, you can start with a goblet squat using a lighter dumbbell. Incrementally add weight to the bar as you move towards your working weight, I would perform at least 3 warm up sets before starting your first working set. For example, if 100kg for 8 is your working weight, perform a set of the bar (20kg) for 8, 60kg for 8, 80kg for 6, then if needed 100kg for 3-4 reps just to get a feel of your working weight.

Don’t push yourself too hard on your warmups, the point of a warmup is to activate, not annihilate your working muscles. You don’t want to miss reps on your working sets because you didn’t take it easy on your warmups. With this being said still treat your warmups with respect, we want to move the same way we would if we were moving our max weights.

Setting up the lift

Before we move some weight, we want to make sure we put ourselves into a solid starting position. A solid starting position will allow us to maintain tension throughout the lift and be consistent rep to rep. With any exercise (but especially big compound movements) we want to be consistent with our set up, this means setting up the same way every week, this allows us our body to get proficient with the lift.

Grip width

The most commonly used cue for grip width is “as close as your mobility allows”, this means that we want to grip the bar as close as possible without it becoming painful or ridiculously uncomfortable. This will be slightly different for everyone, but when in this position the bar should feel tight on your back and your arms shouldn’t be loose. So if you are a bigger guy with broad shoulders, your grip will likely be wider than a smaller lady with a more petite frame.

We do this so that the bar stays stable throughout the lift, it may not be as noticeable with lighter loads, but we don’t want 100+kg on our backs and it not be stable. Having the bar tight on our backs will also make it easier to create tension when we breath and brace before the lift. If you don’t have great shoulder mobility then just grip the bar as close as you can without pain, but make sure to work on your shoulder mobility in the meantime!

Foot stance

Your foot stance will be the base of support in the squat and is where the load will transfer into the ground. So it’s important that you get the foot position correct in order to maximize strength and reduce the likelihood of injury. Generally speaking, you will want to take a stance that is slightly outside of shoulder-width and point your toes outward at an angle of 15-30 degrees. Of course, everyone is built with different limb lengths, joint angles, and mobility, which makes the answer a bit more nuanced.

For most people, this foot position should allow you to maintain good balance throughout the movement and allow you to squat deeper. However, it is still best to experiment with a few different foot widths and find what feels best for you. A simple test is to do a bodyweight squat with a variety of foot widths/angles and find one that allows you to squat comfortably without your feet moving, knees tracking straight and maintaining your heels on the ground.

Bar position

You may have heard the terms ‘High-Bar’ and ‘Low-Bar’ squatting before, this refers to the bars position on your back, and where we place the bar will have an effect on how much certain muscles are used throughout the lift.

High Bar – For a high bar squat the bar will sit on the upper trap muscles, somewhere above the rear deltoid. You’ll want to avoid resting the bar on your neck bones though. A high bar squat position will keep you more upright throughout the movement, meaning that your quads will be emphasised more. You’ll also need good ankle mobility as our knees bend forward more throughout this version of the lift as opposed to a low bar position.

Low Bar – For a low bar squat, the bar will sit somewhere between the middle and top of the rear delt. This position will require more of a hinge through the hips, meaning you will be more bent over than a high bar position. This position will shift more focus to your glutes and posterior chain, your quads will still be working, they just wont be doing as much of the work.

The lift

Now we should have a nice strong set up, so let’s begin the lift!

It’s always best to unrack the weight and walk backwards to begin the lift, this way once we are finished, we can walk forwards to place the weight back. Once we are fatigued from a heavy set we don’t want to also have to deal with walking backwards, it’s just a very unnecessary risk.

If you have set up correctly the execution of the squat itself is quite simple, however on an individual basis there are a few cues I like to use to use with my clients to help them perform the exercise to the best of their ability. Let’s run through a few here:

Maintain Midfoot Pressure: We want to maintain pressure throughout our entire foot. As mentioned above, our feet are what connect us to the ground and where we generate force, so we want to maintain a strong base of support. I often see people leaning too hard into their toes, which can place excessive pressure on the knees and knock us off balance. On the flip side people aware of this often overcompensate and lean to hard into their heals, which has the same problem of keeping us off balance. It’s better to focus on keeping pressure in our midfoot, meaning both our toes and hell feel solid into the ground and we can drive as much force as possible. 

Push back into hips/embrace the lean: A good squat has the quads and glutes working together to execute the lift. While we don’t want to completely forget about driving our knees forward, I usually see people not utilizing their glutes/hips in the squat which can leave a lot of potential progress on the table and affect your ability to hit depth. This is especially important for low bar which is designed to place extra emphasis on the hips. With this in mind it’s important to allow yourself to lean forward in the squat. I often see people trying to remain too upright through fear of rounding forward, but again, this is an overcorrection and can cause issues for your lower back, trouble balancing and problems hitting depth.

Squeeze the bar into you on the ascent: Pulling the bar into you as you ascend out of the bottom of the squat will help stop your hips from rising too fast. We want our hips and chest to rise mostly in sync, this will keep the tension in our legs for the most part. If our hips rise to quickly and our butt kicks up, we will be placing unnecessary pressure on our backs to do the work to finish off the lift, this can lead to injury in the long term. The bar should always remain tight on your back, but giving it some extra attention as you ascend will help keep everything where it is supposed to be.

Brace Ribs Down: We want to create a stacked core to support us throughout the lift. Having a solid brace will allow us to produce more force throughout the lift, move more weight, protect our lower back, and keep us balanced. To do this we want to take a breath in before we descend and imagine pushing that air down into our obliques, while also pushing our ribs down. This will help create that stacked position.

Common Issues

For the most part, issues related to the squat usually arise from either using more weight than your technique can handle, or not having the mobility to perform the movement properly. If you are performing the above cues and still feel like you aren’t moving properly then there are a few common issues I see pop up regularly when it comes to squatting:

Trying to stay too upright: We touched on this earlier, but its worth re-visiting. Almost always when I have a beginner perform a barbell squat, they try to remain completely straight in an upright position, likely due to either being scared of falling forward or fear of rounding their back. However, staying too upright will put you off balance and negatively impact how much drive you can get out of your glutes. Simply allowing yourself to lean slightly forward will often make the squat feel much more comfortable.

Poor Ankle/Hip Mobility: If you find yourself losing control of your squat once you get past the first third of the movement, you might have insufficient mobility to get any lower. Now, there are plenty of individual things that may need addressing, but usually strengthening the muscles performing the movement will go a long way to helping your mobility. So for a time you may want to strengthen your quads, glutes, hamstrings and core through other exercises that take you through similar ranges of motion. An anterior loaded exercise like a goblet squat, or fixed machine like a hack squat/leg press can be a good substitute while keeping you performing the squat pattern. You’ll also likely benefit from some deadlift variations such as a regular deadlifts/trap bar/ Romanian to strengthen your glutes/hamstrings.

Uneven foot pressure: This issue usually falls one of too ways, either leaning to far into your toes or leaning to far back into your heel, and often one causes an overcorrection into the other! Leaning to hard into your toes is often caused by poor ankle mobility, as we get lower into the squat our ankles aren’t mobile enough and we are forced to raise our heels. Alternatively, it can also be caused simply by us not having enough control/balance in our squat that we sway into our toes and move forward as we squat down. This places excess pressure on the knees (which is why your knees might often feel really sore during/after squats) and reduces our ability to produce force through the ground. I commonly see this in beginners while they learn to control their bodies during the movement.

However, as this is a pretty commonly known issue, it has caused a lot of people to overcorrect by simply pressing hard into their heels when they squat. While this technically fixes the problem of leaning to hard into the toes, it still doesn’t completely fix our squat as now we are thrown off balance in the other direction. If we want to create the most force possible through the ground, we want to try and maintain even foot pressure throughout the whole lift. Focussing on staying in your midfoot is your best bet!

What to take away

So how do we apply all this next time we squat? Depending on how many issues you need to clean up I would just try and focus on 1-2 things at a time. From a programming perspective you may want to increase your squat volume so you can practice the movement more. For most people squatting twice per week is perfectly fine, especially if one of your sessions is more of a secondary day where you dial the weight back a little and focus on form. Slowing down your reps or utilizing pauses is also a good option as it will allow you to better feel how your body moves under load and will allow you to make adjustments. For example, having a primary squat day where you low bar squat at a higher intensity (RPE 7+) and a secondary day where you use pause squats/regular squats at a lower intensity (RPE 5-6).

From an actual exercise execution standpoint, recording your lifts so you can identify where your technique breaks down can be a huge help. No matter your skill level it can be hard to know exactly what’s breaking down while you are performing the exercise, especially at higher loads. Don’t try and change 6 things at once, pick a couple of cues to focus on each session and over time they will become second nature and you will be able to move onto other things, while maintaining the skill you’ve just developed. When working on technique, pick a weight that’s somewhat challenging but not too close to your max, you want to make sure your technique holds up under a heavy load, but not so heavy that all you can think about is getting the weight back up.