5 Tips To Fix Your Squat

Today I’m going to share with you my five best tips that will help you work on your squat depth as well as your mobility and flexibility as well. If you’re not squatting to AT LEAST parallel, you’re leaving a lot of gains on the table.

Tip #1: Barbell Placement

Believe it or not, a lot of you will have trouble squatting to depth because your squat is flawed right from the beginning. What I see happen a lot is when people move their head under the bar to place it on their back, is they drive it into their neck and onto their upper traps. In this position your elbows end up really far back and the bar is a little too high. From here, as you start to squat, you push yourself forward because of how tight you are.

Proper placement for the bar is right across your traps and across your shoulders. In this position you have more mobility with your elbows and while there might still be some tightness, it won’t be as much as before. From this position you’re able to pull the barbell down and also, your elbows are more pointed down meaning you’re not going to fall forward as much as before either.

One last thing in regards to bar placement is for those of you who might be using a bar pad. Even if you’re using a bar pad which has support for your neck, you’re still making the bar sit about an inch and a half higher than if you were to use no pad at all. So whether you’re using a bar pad or not, don’t let the bar sit on your neck, it should still be placed across your traps and shoulders. Also try your best to ween yourself off of using a bar pad. If you’re doing 4 sets for example, try the first two without the bar pad, then the last two with it and try to use it less and less over time.

Tip #2: Foot Positioning

As you’re descending, if you don’t have the proper foot placement, you’re not going to be able to fully descend and go as low as you can. Now you don’t necessarily have to go ass to grass like me, but you want to try to just break parallel if you can. Most of us when we squat will come under the bar, un-rack it and then try to figure out our foot position, but by then it’s too late and you don’t really have time to fix it.

What you can do instead is grab light, light weight, or just use your body weight and descend into the bottom position of your squat and move your feet and heels around. Figure out where you can sit and be in a comfortable position to go all the way up and come all the way down. Once you find the perfect position, look down and memorize where your feet are, this way once you get under the bar with your working weight, you know exactly where you’re going and what position you’re going to be in once you un-rack the bar.

Tip #3: Bracing & Weightlifting Belts

If you don’t know how to brace your core without using a belt, then a belt is pretty much useless because you’re not using it to its fullest potential to help you lift more weight. Bracing your core is actually relatively easy, all you have to do is take in a breath and then hold that air in your diaphragm and flex your entire core. You should be flexing hard and squeezing against your diaphragm to create a solid block and that’s going to prevent you from going into spinal flexion.

One other thing is you should not breath out as you descend, because if you breath out you lose all that tension you’ve created by taking in and holding that breath. If you do breath out, you go into spinal flexion and all that weight that is supposed to be on your legs goes onto your lower back and you don’t want that! So before you do your first rep, once you have the bar on your back, take in a breath and flex your core, then maintain that tightness as you go down and as you come up, before resetting your breath at the top of your rep. If you find that you have taken in a little too much air, just do a little release to relieve some pressure so you don’t pass out.

Now when it comes to using a belt, you have to make sure you’re using it correctly. It shouldn’t be too loose or too tight, you should be able to fit about four fingers under your belt up to your knuckles, but not your entire hand. The same rules apply with bracing your core here, so you take in a breath and flex your core, but this time you’re trying to push your core into your belt.

Tip #4: Stretching & Warm-Up

If you still can’t get quite as low are you want to after using all of the other techniques so far, it might mean you’re a little tight and need to work on some things. For most of you this is going to be about opening up your hips and working on ankle mobility. Most people will obviously look forward when they squat and of course from there, you can’t tell if your shins are moving forward or not. If your shins don’t move forward so that your knees can track over your toes, you need to loosen that up as much as possible.

You should be working on your plantar-flexion and dorsi-flexion. To work on dorsi-flexion, place your heel on the ground and your toes up high onto a bar or structure of some sort and then pull yourself forward. You should feel your calves start to stretch big time, though depending on how tight you are you might not be able to get that much of a stretch. You’re going to hold this position for 12 – 15 seconds and repeat this a few times per leg. 

For plantar-flexion, you’re going to now have your foot behind you with your toes pointed into the ground, trying to bend your knee towards the ground and holding this stretch also for 12 – 15 seconds per leg.

To work on your hip mobility, you’re going to get up close to a bar or structure (like a squat rack), get your feet into the same position they would be in for a squat and then pull yourself down and try to use your elbows to push your knees out. From here, try to rock from side to side just a little bit. Again, sit in this position for 12 – 15 seconds and do it at least 2 – 3 times. You can do these stretches either before you start squatting or in-between your sets.

Tip #5: Zercher Squats

This is more of a bonus tip. If you’re applying everything I just said but still find yourself leaning forward, it’s probably because subconsciously you’ve been doing it like that for so long and you just need to break that habit. What you can do is try zercher squats to start your workouts with, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do regular squats at all, this is just a tool to help you improve your squatting pattern. The difference between a zercher squat and a regular barbell back squat is that obviously with a back squat, the barbell is on your back whereas with a zercher squat, it’s going to be in front of your body across your elbows.

This means right from the beginning you’re going to have to brace your core and keep yourself upright or you’re just going to fall over. Once in position with the bar, you want to push your hands towards to chest in order to stabilize the bar and then as you descend, keep your chest up going all the way down and all the way up, pushing through your heels. If you don’t stay upright and you lean forward, all that weight is going to roll onto your forearms and it’s going to hurt like hell, so you should instinctively stay upright.

Conclusion

Try to start off your workout with light weight on zercher squats, doing 1 – 2 sets of 8 – 10 reps. This will get your body used to staying upright and once you’ve done these two quick sets, you can get into your working sets of regular barbell back squats.