The squat may be the most under appreciated exercise for guys. Most of us want to score ripped abs to impress the ladies or massive arms like Thor to intimidate any guys who dare to challenge us. You’ll rarely hear a girl confess that she likes a man with nice quads or hear a guy feel threatened in the presence of an alpha male with solid hamstrings. Still, there is a lot to take into consideration when it comes to squats.
- Hormonal balance: Your body is a machine of sorts and will all moving parts functioning well, you’re bound to be your most effective. That being said, you should definitely be including squats in your routine – even if you’re looking for growth in your upper body.
- Stability: Your legs are your tree trunks. You walk on them all day and put pressure on your knees and ankles. By strengthening your legs, you’ll be strengthening your “trunk” and supporting those joints with muscle.
- Glutes: Besides the ladies confessing their love for a guy with nice glutes, strong glutes are a huge factor in maximizing your efforts with other workouts such as the military press. That means you’ll be getting the attention of more girls and will be improving performance when it comes to working out the more vain muscles – need we say more?
Standard Technique
Load up the plates on a squat rack with the bar sitting at shoulder height. Position yourself under the bar so it rests on the backs of your traps and shoulders. Grab the bar with a wide, overhand grip, lift the bar off the rack and step back. Set your feet shoulder width apart, with your knees slightly bent and back naturally arched. Now bend from the hips as you lower yourself as though you were sitting in a chair. Stop when your thighs reach parallel then push back up. Don’t round your back.
Optimized Technique
Place the bar across your traps, with it resting as far back as is comfortably possible. Take a grip on the bar that is closer than a conventional grip – about half the width of a bench press grip is ideal (this will help keep your traps bunched up and your back more upright). With your chest out and back arched, squeeze your shoulder blades together and tighten your abs. Your head and eyes should point upwards (focus on a spot above you) and your feet should be shoulder width apart with your toes pointing slightly outward. Now slowly lower yourself, focusing on bending from the hips rather than the knees. You will be going slightly back and down to a parallel position in which your lower legs are almost vertical to the floor. From the bottom position explode back up, making sure that the power of the drive is coming from the quads rather than the knees (you definitely don’t want your knees to either splay out or pinch inward). To achieve this, consciously initiate the upward drive from your heels rather than your toes (think of driving your heels through the gym floor). Do not lock out at the top but move smoothly into the next rep.
6 Things You Should Never Do Under the Rack
Use A Heel Block: Just like platform shoes, heel blocks belong to the 70’s. A block placed under your heels will not make the movement safer nor allow you to handle more poundage. What it will do is cause you to lean over slightly, and in the process round your back, placing more pressure on the knees and lower back. So get that block outta here.- Squat without Shoes: The opposite extreme to heel block squatting is squatting with no shoes and, therefore, no heel arch at all. But it always pays to avoid extremes. In this case, completely flat footed (i.e. shoeless) squatting will place more of a workload on the glutes than the quads and will make you more prone to a foot slippage which could end your squatting (not to mention your walking) days forever.
- Look Down: Try looking down at your toes right now. Notice what has happened to your lower back? It’s become rounded – enough said.
- Hunch Over: Ok, so we’re laboring the point here – but going by the number of guys we see day in and day out squatting themselves right into a mobility scooter, it’s a point that we think needs laboring. Not only does hunching over and leaning forward dramatically increase your risk of lower back injury, it also defeats the prime purpose of the exercise. At the end of the day the squat is a quadriceps exercise. Leaning forward robs the quads of much of the effect, placing undue stress on the trunk extensors (hamstrings, glutes and spinal erectors). Bottom line here is to keep your ego in check and never sacrifice good form (back arched) for heavy weight.
- Go Spotterless: No other exercise puts you in as vulnerable a position as the squat. If you’re going heavy and you get stuck during the upward drive, you don’t have too many options. If you don’t have at least one well trained spotter, there’s a good likelihood that some sort of injury is going to result.
- Squat on a Smith Machine: The forced line of movement that the Smith Machine locks you into puts you in a more likely position to round your back as you began your upward thrust, which makes the Smith Machine a bad squatting choice.
