How To Barbell Squat Correctly
How difficult can squatting be?
After all, you squat every time you take a seat to sit down. In fact, you’ve been squatting since you were a baby, as it’s the first thing you had to learn how to do before you could stand or walk.
However, as simple as squatting appears to be, it’s actually quite technical and easy to mess up, especially when the movement pattern is performed as exercise in its most popular variation, which is the barbell back squat. Just go to any gym in any city in any country at any time on any day and you’re sure to find people butchering the exercise in any number of ways and then complaining about some kind of pain or not seeing the results they want. That’s to be expected because the risk of injury is increased and the benefits are reduced when barbell squats are performed how most people perform them. But when done correctly, the barbell squat is safe and one of the best exercises for building strength and size.
Barbell squats are great for getting stronger and putting on muscle but that’s not only in the glutes, quads, and hamstrings. Nope, those benefits extend to the entire body as well. That’s because squats are a compound movement that require other body parts to perform it, such as the back, core, and obliques to stabilize the weight and the delts and traps to hold the barbell in place. All of those areas will develop in addition to the muscle groups in the lower body just by doing squats. But that’s only by doing them correctly!
INSTRUCTIONS
1). Set a barbell in a squat or power rack so it’s not so high that you have to get on your tippy toes to unrack it.1Typically, proper bar height is somewhere between the nipples and shoulders.
2). Step underneath the barbell, brace your core as if someone were about to punch you in the stomach, unrack the barbell, and take one to two steps backwards with the barbell across your shoulders.
3). Position your feet hip-width apart, tuck your chin as if you were holding an egg under it, and grip the floor with your feet.
4). While pretending to bend the bar over your shoulders to create tension in your lats and upper back, inhale as you bend your knees and lower your body until your hips are at least parallel to, if not just below, the knees if you can’t comfortably squat ass-to-grass while keeping your heels flat on the ground.2To further engage the lats, push your elbows forward before starting the lift. This will not only help provide more stabilization but also help prevent your shoulders from internally rotating, as well as make it easier for the spine to maintain an upright posture.3Ass-to-grass, or ATG, is when the glutes come in contact with the calves.
5). Pause for 1-2 seconds in the “hole”, or bottom of the squat, before exhaling as you stand up and return to the starting position, making sure to keep a soft bend in the knees rather than locking them out at the top.4When ascending from the hole, your knees shouldn’t cave in excessively. There are a number of cues that can help with this. One way to stop the knees from collapsing is to pretend that you’re showing off your crotch. In that case, you’ll force your knees out. However, in some instances, that results in people overdoing the motion and rolling onto the outside of their shoes too much. So another cue is to think about ripping the floor apart with your legs, which should cause you to feel equal pressure between your heel, big toe, and pinky toe and outward rotation of your knees and femurs.
6). Pause for 1-2 seconds then repeat.
NOTE (1): To keep your spine from bending too far forward and transferring the load to your lower back, your chest should remain up throughout the entire movement. A cue to remember to keep your chest up is to pretend that you just got a new boob job. And what do you do when you just get new tits? That’s right, you show them off!!!
NOTE (2): Although your chin should be tucked slightly throughout the lift, that doesn’t mean you should be looking down at the ground, which can encourage you to drop your chin and lean forward. Instead, your gaze should be straight ahead. A common suggestion to achieve this is to pick a point on the wall in front of you and focus on it as you lower and drive yourself up.
NOTE (3): Imagine that your feet are in cement if you have happy feet.5i.e. you keep moving them around during the lift.
For a workout routine that possibly includes barbell squats, as well as other exercises geared specifically to your goals, training experience, injury history, and available equipment, then find out more HERE
Glossary: barbell, chest, exercise, glutes, goal, gym, lats, muscle, muscle group, results, routine, squat, squat rack, squats, traps
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