Get a Bigger Squat Now with 3 Simple Tips
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Let’s cover three ways to immediately improve your squat.
Tip #1: Focal Point
First, have a focal point - don’t allow your eyes to wander during the rep or even between reps. Second, for the location of your focal point, pick a point on the floor roughly 4-6 feet in front of you and stare at it throughout the entire set.
This is useful for balance, and it also encourages you to lean over as you start your descent and stay leaned over as you initiate your hip drive coming up out of the hole.
Tip #2: Knees Out
As you start your descent, shove your knees out. Specifically, shove them in the direction of your toes, and since you’re going to take a shoulder-width stance with your toes pointed out at roughly 30 degrees, this means your knees should travel both forward and out (i.e., forward and apart). With that said, focus on the “out” or the “apart” aspect of this movement.
Rob shoves his knees apart so his femurs track in line with his toes, and addy approves.
Shoving your knees apart makes it easier to hit depth in the squat and also makes for a stronger, more efficient squat as it helps involve your adductors more in the movement.
As a side note, it is possible - though less common - to shove your knees too far out. In this case, your femurs are tracking outside of your toes, and we don’t want this either, so simply point your knees in the direction your shoes are pointing, and you’ll quite literally be headed in the right direction.
Tip #3: Your Lean
This is the most counterintuitive of the tips presented in this article, but it contributes mightily to the effectiveness and efficiency of your squat.
Lean over as you start your descent, and stay leaned over as you come up out of the hole on the ascent.
In other words, as you begin the squat, reach back with your hips and point your chest at the floor. As you initiate your hip drive coming out of the bottom of the squat, stay leaned over longer than you think you should. This will put you in a better, stronger position for squatting.
Yes, your back angle becomes vertical eventually (after all, you finish the squat in an upright position), but it should not become vertical right away, and to try to make your torso vertical right away makes for a weaker, disadvantaged squat. With all of this in mind, get leaned over, and then stay leaned over.
As always, we hope this helps you get stronger and live better.
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Starting Strength Squat/Low Bar Squat | Fix Your STANCE!
/Is your crazy stance ruining your squat? Too narrow? Too wide? In this video - our 5th in a series of Saturday Shorts on fixing the squat - Phil and Mike quickly discuss and demonstrate how to solve this problem.
(A Blast from the Past video originally published on 08/27/22)
At Testify, we offer small group training, private coaching (in-person or remotely via Zoom), online coaching, and form checks. Interested in getting stronger, looking better, and having more energy?
The Squat: Don't Be a Moron
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(A Blast from the Past article originally posted on 10/28/22)
A lot of good advice in life can be summed up with the phrase, “Don’t be a moron,” and racking the squat is certainly no exception.
Listen, in the time it took you to squat your work set, the hooks (you know - the things the bar rests upon in the rack) didn’t go anywhere, so when you rack the bar, quit looking for them. Some lifters are either under the impression that their hooks have the ability to wander off while they squat, or they think they have incredibly cruel training partners who will steal their hooks while they squat.
You, however, are not one of these lifters. When finished with your set of squats, you just keep looking at your focal point (the same one you stared at while squatting) or you look straight ahead, and you then simply walk the barbell forward until it hits the uprights, whereupon you set it down - magically - on the hooks. You know that if you stay nice and tall as you walk back to the rack, hitting the uprights guarantees the bar will be over the hooks.
You also know that if you develop the silly-looking habit of craning your neck to look for the hooks, you’ll tend to walk the bar back to the rack in a rather cattywampus fashion, and one day, you’ll eventually miss one of the hooks (i.e., the one you’re not looking at). This makes for a wonderful YouTube video but a rather disastrous training experience. Fortunately, you don’t do this.
But . . . perhaps your friend does this. In this case, be sure to tell him, “Hey - don’t be a moron.”
As always, we hope this helps you get stronger and live better.
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