How To Improve Your Squat
By Jordan Janusz
If I could only choose ONE movement, to do for the rest of my life, it would be the squat.
Squats incorporate a large amount of muscles and with that have a high *metabolic demand* (burns alot of calories).
With a lot of muscles being incorporated, and multiple joints going through a range of motion, it can be tricky to initially learn/perfect your squat. Here are some tips to improve your squat today:
Space your feet out shoulder width apart.
Standing with the feet in line with the hips or narrower significantly reduces the incorporation of your glutes in a squat. Your glutes are the largest muscle group in your body, and you'll want to use them for a squat. A shoulder-width stance allows your pelvis to sink freely between your legs, which will help recruit your glutes into your squat, making it firmer and smoother.
Point the toes slightly outward, the second toe in line with your kneecap.
It's a misconception to square your feet when squatting. Doing this locks your knee joint into a more narrow stance, bringing us back to tip one, including our glutes in the squat. Turning the feet slightly outward will allow your knees to bend in an outward direction, making way for your hips to sit and allowing you to reach a suitable depth in your squat.
HIT DEPTH
Squatting is a highly beneficial movement for all your leg musculature, but it's only as good as you make it. When squatting, it's important to make sure your knees are bent enough, and creating a deep enough angle for your leg muscles to be stretched, control a load, and contract back upwards, pushing the weight up. If you are not squatting deep enough, it doesn't matter how much weight is on the bar; you won't be incorporating your legs/glutes enough to develop any strength or size from the movement. Put less worry on the weight you're moving, and focus on reaching at least 90 degrees (squatting parallel with the floor) to ensure you're working your legs for strength/size development.
Initiate at the HIPS, NOT the KNEES.
If you've heard "Knees over toes" is a bad thing, you've been lied to. Knees over toes are incredibly beneficial for stretching out your quads (front of your leg), and one of the best quad-developing machines ever (leg extension) is only a machine making you put your knee over the toe. HOWEVER, when initiating a squat, we want our knees to stay over the toes. Doing this early in a squat will knock us off balance and potentially injure us. We want to START a movement at the hips, pushing out but slightly back to "load" our glutes as we descend into a squat. Once your glutes have initiated the movement, it's safe if your knees go over the toes (all this means is more quad stretch).
Keep your heels driven into the floor.
Heels raising off the ground is common when calves are tight. This can lead to imbalance and a severely weakened squat since you can't properly use your hamstrings /glutes. Elevate your heels for the short term to help keep your heel driven into the ground. As for the long term, work on calf stretches to improve your mobility and, thus, improve your squat.
Using these five tips, you should be able to improve your squat, safely perform the movement, and see significant progress as you continue squatting!
