Overhead Squat

How to do it

1. Take a barbell in a wide snatch-width grip and press or jerk it overhead.
2. Lock the arms straight with the bar over or slightly behind your ears, shoulder blades rotated up.
3. Set your feet about shoulder-width with the toes turned out.
4. Squat down keeping the bar stacked directly over the middle of your feet.
5. Go as deep as the position holds without the bar drifting forward.
6. Drive back up, keeping the arms locked and the bar overhead throughout.

Common mistakes

• Letting the bar drift forward. The bar over the middle of the foot is the whole exercise; once it travels forward the shoulders are holding it rather than being stacked under it, and the squat has to stop.
• Bending the elbows. The arms lock at the start and stay locked; a bending elbow is the shoulder running out of room.
• Adding load before the position holds empty. An overhead squat is a mobility test that happens to be a lift, and the bar mostly reports whether the shoulders, hips and ankles all reach at once.
• Gripping at clean width. The wide grip is what lets the bar sit behind the head with straight arms; a narrow one makes that geometry impossible.

Muscles worked

Primary

• Quads

Secondary

• Abs
• Calves
• Glutes
• Hamstrings
• Spinal Erectors
• Shoulders
• Triceps