Movement Mastery – How to Squat

Image: Maryland AAU

Quick . . . what’s the single best exercise in the world?  You’d be right if you responded that it takes a variety of exercises to build a balanced physique, but if there was only one that you could do for the rest of your life, it’s an easy choice.  Squats are the ‘king of exercises’ for a variety of reasons.  First off, they work your entire body, from the upper back all the way down to your calves.  It also elicits a hormonal response that causes total body growth like nothing else.  It’s a scientific fact that even if you did no upper body exercises, your arms would grow from squatting (*don’t be dumb – use a variety of exercises to balance your strength and musculature).

Since we know that squats are required for any serious strength training regimen, it’s critical that we learn how to do them correctly.  Luckily, once you know how to do it, you will have established a foundation upon which an entire lifetime of strength can be built upon, so let’s take a look at the key points:

1. Set the hooks in a power rack such that the bar lines up at mid-chest height (at the nipples or close is best).  This height will also be correct when you move into overhead presses, so take note.
2. Unrack the bar by stepping under it, retracting the shoulder blades and grabbing it with your thumbs over the top, rather than around the bar.  Here are the keys to ensuring proper bar positioning:

• Always center your back on the bar.  The middle of most bars have knurling (the rough, grippy stuff), so you can align your sternum to the knurling and then duck under to get there.  As for the hands, grab at equal width with the thumbs over the top and hold them when you duck and step under the bar.  You can use the rings between the sections of knurling as a handy way to ensure equal spacing.  Keep your wrists straight as you step through.  The wrists must remain straight throughout the set.
• Tighten the shoulder blades and push your chest up.  This provides a solid platform for the bar to rest upon and will allow your muscles to grow in a way that naturally facilitates excellent posture.
• Allow the bar to rest low on the shoulders.  This might feel strange at first, especially if you’ve been squatting with a high bar position, but the benefits will become clear when you . . .
• Push your elbows back with the wrists straight.  This will ‘lock’ the bar into position under your hands and on top of a sort of ‘shelf’ created by the rear deltoids and retracted shoulder blades.
• Take a shoulder-width stance with your weight on your heels.  Notice that you’ll be in a partial squat to start.  We prefer this because at the end of sets, you’ll be tired and it’s far safer and easier to walk the bar forward and set it down in the hooks than trying to tip-toe back.
• Keep your head and neck at a neutral angle, but push the chin back slightly and look at the ground.  Pushing the chin in further solidifies the shoulder ‘rack’ and will encourage great posture.  This tip is especially useful for computer workers, who tend to crane forward many hours a day and carry this cro-magnon look out into their daily lives.  Think of holding a tennis ball between the chin and chest by simultaneously pushing the chest up and pushing the chin backwards.
• Stand up straight with your weight on your heels and take one small step backwards.  Look down to ensure that you have an evenly-placed shoulder-width stance with toes pointed slightly outward, then assume a static gaze about six feet in front.  Looking down whilst keeping the head and relatively neutral helps to encourage hip drive, which is the key to strong squatting.
• Keep everything tight and get ready to squat:

1. Take a deep breath from the belly and hold it.  Sit back as though you were squatting to a toilet or bench, pushing the knees out so that they track with the hips and toes.  The knees must stay in a line with the toes and hips.  THE KNEES MUST NOT BEND INWARD!  If your knees bend in, you’re putting yourself at an unreasonable risk for injury, not utilizing all of the available muscles to power the movement and are probably using too much weight.
2. Keep everything tight and move down until the hip joint is just below a point where it’s parallel to the top of the knee.
3. Drive the hips up, keeping the back tight.  About halfway up, you can breathe out forcefully, grunt or scream to help push the weight.  If you work out at a gym that discourages this kind of ‘intimidating’ behaviour, consider finding a new place to train that will actually let you do what’s necessary to get strong.

So that’s the basic form for low bar squatting.  We prefer low bar position to high bar because it is better for developing the entire posteriour chain, including the upper, mid and lower back, plus the glutes, hamstrings, hip flexors and calves.  The high bar squat focuses more on the quadriceps, but the low bar hits them, plus everything I mentioned above.  Check back with HOPEisSTRENGTH for more on troubleshooting, advanced techniques and everything else that will make you uncommonly strong.