Barbell Full Squat
Trains the Quads.
- Equipment
- A barbell and a rack
- Mechanic
- Compound
- Force
- Push
- Level
- Intermediate
How to do it
- Set a barbell in a rack at upper-chest height and step under it, resting it across your upper back.
- Unrack it and step back, feet about shoulder-width with the toes turned slightly out.
- Brace your stomach and set your chest up.
- Squat down by bending the knees and pushing the hips back together.
- Continue past parallel until the hips drop as far as a flat back allows — this is the depth the name refers to.
- Drive back up through the whole foot without letting the chest drop.
Common mistakes
- Chasing depth the hips cannot reach. Full depth is where a flat back ends, and that varies a great deal between people; going past it rounds the lower back at the point the load is highest.
- Loading it like a parallel squat. A deeper squat is a longer range through a weaker position, and the weight comes down to meet it.
- Letting the knees fall inward coming out of the bottom. Deep is where that is most likely, and pushing the knees out over the middle of the foot is part of the movement.
- Treating depth as the only variable worth changing. Depth is what brings the glutes and adductors in, which is a real reason to go lower — and a squat stopped at parallel with more weight on it is not a failed attempt at this one.