Mastering squats is essential for success in Olympic weightlifting, powerlifting, sports performance, and general fitness, but when you look around the gym, what do you see? In my world, I usually see a lot of people squatting with a variety of form errors that increase their chance of injury and could rob them of the huge benefits squats impart. To address this, I contacted writer and strength coach Nia Shanks, USAW certified strength coach and “Girls Gone Strong” cofounder Jen Comas, and Koko Kotani, head trainer at Rachel and Alwyn Cosgrove’s training facility Results Fitness, to get their insights on the key components of a solid squat, ways to avoid common errors that decrease results, and programming ideas to help enhance lower extremity strength and power.  

Solid form maximizes gains

“Own the movement before you add weight,” said Kotani. Squats hit all the major muscle groups of the leg, but only if you perform them correctly. The perfect squat starts by firmly planting your feet on the ground a little wider than your shoulders, with your toes slightly turning outward. Tightening your abdomen while gazing straight ahead, hinge at the hips and lower your glutes towards the floor by bending your knees. During your descent, make sure your knees are tracking over your toes and don’t let them cave inward. Squat as deeply as you can. This varies from one person to the next and depends on your flexibility, training history, and mobility. Once you are at the bottom of your squat, keep your feet firmly planted and push down into the floor from your heels while you straighten your legs and unhinge the hips. 

Performing a lift with perfect form is always the best way to decrease injury risk, but what we find with the squat is that it also plays a role in muscle activation and tension development. Megan Bryanton, a strength and conditioning coach at the Active Health Institute, published a report on the impact of squat depth and barbell load on muscular effort during squatting back in 2012 in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research.  What she found was that while increasing load did increase muscular effort, it was not the only component responsible for muscle effort. As squat depth increases, muscular effort of the knee extensors and hip extensors increases as well. Basically, your goal is to go as deep as you can when squatting while maintaining good form to maximize strength gains in the hip and knee extensors.
 
Avoiding Injury

All three trainers said the most common errors they see in the gym involve limiting the range of motion, letting the shoulders round and the chest drop, and allowing the knees to track inward. Any or all of these reduce the effectiveness of squats and pave the way for injury. “If you want to hit the quads, hamstrings, and glutes, you have to work the entire range of motion,” says Shanks. One way to ensure this is to “place a chair or box behind you and gently tap it with your glutes as you sit back in your squat,” Comas said. 

As you increase your weight and reps, you might find that you are rounding your shoulders and letting your chest drop when you squat.  While you might squeeze out a few more reps, this sets the stage for a muscle or disc injury. Keeping your torso upright throughout the movement maintains the spine’s neutral position with the compressive forces of the load pressing downward throughout its length. When you round the shoulders and let the chest drop, you alter the mechanics of the lift, and the load falls on one segment of the spine, generally the lumbar region. Like any link in a chain, the lumbar vertebrae and discs can only take so much stress before they break.  Causes for this can be as simple as “loading too heavy to fast,” says Kotani, or forgetting to tighten the abdomen when squatting. “Think about tightening the abs and pulling your ribs down towards your hips,” Comas recommends. This increases the stability of your torso, returns the spine to a neutral position, and prevents rounding your shoulders and dropping your chest.  
Finally, make sure your knees track over your toes, and “don’t let them cave in,” Kotani says. This causes the hips to internally rotate putting both your back and hips at risk. To prevent this, keep each foot firmly planted on the floor and your hips tight throughout the movement. This activates the glutes and prevents your knees from tracking inward.

Movement limitations
 
While squats work all the muscles of the lower extremities to some extent, they are still a
quad-centric exercise. We know this by looking at studies that employ electromyography (EMG) to monitor the electrical activity of the nerves responsible for muscle movements. In a recent blog post, Bret Contreras explained the value of EMG testing this way. “EMG doesn’t directly measure muscular tension,” but “is indicative of the nervous system’s attempt to produce more muscular force.”  For example, back in 1999, Glen Wright and researchers examined the electrical activity and motor unit recruitment of the hamstrings during back squats and concluded that the back squat “is not a primary exercise for the hamstrings.” Just this year, Bret Contreras and researchers published a study in the Journal of Applied Biomechanics that examined the electrical activity of the gluteus maximus, biceps femoris and vastus lateralis during parallel, full, and front squats in experienced female lifters. Motor nerve activity was monitored in all three of these muscles throughout the concentric and eccentric portions of the lift. EMG activity for the biceps femoris was significantly lower than either the gluteus maximus or vastus lateralis in each of the lifts. Because of this, they concluded that, “squatting was insufficient for hamstring development.” Squats are an essential ingredient to success but they aren’t the only ingredient. To ensure adequate hamstring development, additional exercises like the stiff legged deadlift, Romanian deadlift, leg curls, hip thrusts, and glute-ham raises should be a part of your programming.
 
Where do we go from here?

“Anybody can squat”, says Shanks.  If back squats bother you, try another version. Options include goblet squats, front squats, Bulgarian split squats, suitcase squats, or even box squats. No matter what squatting exercise you perform to maximize your strength gains execute the lift by moving through the entire range of motion, maintaining an upright torso, and tracking the knees over the toes.
 
As Shanks puts it, “squats are empowering; they make you feel like a badass.”