A CHECKLIST FOR THE BOTTOM OF THE SQUAT
Every lift we perform in barbell training is characterised by three distinct phases: a beginning, an end, and a middle part in which the actual movement takes place.
If we look at the squat, it is difficult to pick a phase we could deem more important than others. Fail to get tight at the start, and the rest of the movement will suffer. Fail to follow through, and you might miss the rep.
There is, however, a point in the squat which to a large degree predicts how strong you are in the upward phase: the bottom position.
We can use it as an important metric for how much force we are able to produce when overcoming the weight on the way up. If this force exceeds the numeric weight on the bar (plus gravity), you are bound to complete the rep. If the force generated by your muscles is lower than the weight of the bar (because you haven't read the below article yet), you will not be able to stand the weight back up.
Below is a checklist of five points for the bottom of the squat, which, when executed to a high level of proficiency, will lead to way more successful reps than failed ones.
Because that's what you ultimately want from your training. Isn't it?
1 Chest pointing to the floor
Imagine two laser beams radiating out of your chest, pointing to the floor in front of you. When you follow this cue, your back angle will stay horizontal.
But why do we want a horizontal back angle in the squat?
It serves two major purposes:
One, a relatively long moment arm (or let's say a force acting over a certain distance) is produced between the bar path and the insertion of your lumbar spine on the pelvis, covering more or less the entire length of your trunk. By obtaining a horizontal back angle, the muscles on your back have to work that extra bit harder than if your trunk was placed in a more vertical position. In particular, we are talking about your spinal erectors having to do a hell of a lot of work to stop your spine from collapsing when you're bent over more than you think you should be.
Two, we want a horizontal back angle because it results in a better backward-reaching of the hips. This is explained by the fact that your spine is connected to your pelvis. If one moves forward, the other moves backward. Picture this: stand with a perfectly vertical back, and try moving your hips backwards without moving your trunk. It won't work. But what you will observe is that as your hips move backward, your trunk moves forward. Or that as your trunk moves forward by bending over, your hips can reach back more easily.
In essence, your back angle determines how effective you are at accessing your hips in the squat. A horizontal back angle allows for better access to the hips, whereas a vertical back angle shifts the focus towards the knees.
This is a concept we explore further in the next two points of the checklist.
2 Hips moving away from heels
Imagine your butt moving away from your feet, like someone pulling backwards on two strings attached to your butt cheeks. Through this, you are keeping the distance between the bar path and your hip joint relatively long. This will tighten up your hamstrings, glutes, as well as part of your adductors that extra bit more. Extra tension in those muscles means that they're able to generate a higher amount of force in their action of hip extension on the way up.
We want to maximise the access to our hips as they are the powerhouses of our body. Picture, as a simple example, how much surface area of muscle mass your glutes, hamstrings, and part of your adductors make up (a hip-dominant squat), compared to the relatively smaller surface area of your quadriceps muscle (a knee-dominant squat).
Would you rather use more or less muscle mass in its optimal way in the squat?
3 Knees out the way
Your knees have to be shoved out at the bottom of the squat for your tummy to reach approximation with your thighs. This is something that needs to happen in order to obtain correct depth, with your hips dropping just below your knees.
The main reason we want to keep our knees shoved out in the pocket of the squat is that this helps them to stop sliding forward. The problem with this so-called 'knee slide' is that your pelvis will also be pulled forward (or better said, into a posteriorly tilted position), as the femur is a bone of both your knee joint and hip joint. This means: as your knees go forward, your hips will fail to stay back. This kills tension in the hamstrings, and makes your back angle almost inevitably more vertical.
Instead of a horizontal back angle and charged-up hip muscles, we now have a vertical back angle and hip muscles that lack a significant amount of tension. The result is weaker force production out of the bottom - making the lift a million times harder than it should be.
4 Staying tight
The concept of 'tightness' in the squat can have multiple meanings.
'Where exactly in my body shall i stay tight, coach?'
First and foremost, we want to keep our trunk tight as it serves one job (and one job only!) in the squat: to act as a force transmitter between the lower extremities and the bar.
This means that the trunk is never ever actively moved through any part of the range of the motion in the squat, apart from when it is bending over at the top to get into a horizontal position. From this moment on, the only instruction to the lifter is to keep it rigid all the way to the bottom position (or longer if required).
'Squeeze your abs' can in theory be a useful cue to keep your trunk tight in the bottom position, but I personally have my issues with 'muscle squeezing' cues. From my experience, they are not as effective as others, purely because they only entail one isolated muscle that has to function within a chain of muscles all interacting together.
Where, when, and how much to squeeze is something a little more vague than executing a cue which describes an image. One example is to 'keep your trunk rigid like a concrete wall'. This cue does not entail a squeezing of a particular muscle, but describes an image by which the lifter's body arranges its positions and 'muscle activation patterns' automatically, by itself.
Once a stable trunk is obtained, force can be transferred more effectively between your legs and the bar. This, in essence, prevents a 'power leak' along the chain of levers of your body.
5 Bar above mid-foot
Provided the first four points of the checklist are accomplished, and the bar is placed in the correct position on your back, by default, the bar will be above the middle of your foot in the bottom position. This is a desirable outcome, as this is were things are kept in balance, and by which the highest amount of force can be produced in the concentric phase.
Keeping the bar above mid-foot is a particularly important point when taking videos of your squat from a lateral angle. This has great analytical potential to see the overall proficiency of your form.
In your next squat session, remember your trunk being a concrete wall, laser beams on your chest pointing to the floor, hips moved away from heels, and knees out the way for your bottom position to be as it should be: charged with tension, and ready for take-off.
In the end, this position is a key predictor for how much weight you can overcome on your squat that day.
I guarantee you one thing: you will be stronger for it.
For coaching and how to correct errors in your squat, you can email me on oliver@strongforlife.uk. I'd be happy to help.
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