Plie Dumbbell Squat
Trains the Quads.
- Equipment
- Dumbbells
- Mechanic
- Compound
- Force
- Push
- Level
- Beginner
How to do it
- Stand with your feet much wider than your shoulders and your toes turned out.
- Hold a single dumbbell vertically with both hands between your legs.
- Set your back flat and your chest up.
- Squat straight down between your feet, letting the dumbbell travel toward the floor.
- Keep the knees tracking out over the toes rather than falling inward.
- Drive back up through the whole foot, squeezing at the top.
Common mistakes
- Turning the toes out further than the knees can follow. The knee tracks the direction the foot points, and a stance whose feet point further out than the hips can rotate puts a twist through the knee on every repetition.
- Letting the chest drop forward. The wide stance lets the torso stay much more upright than a normal squat; leaning forward puts the dumbbell's weight onto the lower back.
- Stopping short because the dumbbell hits the floor. If it lands before you do, stand on two low blocks — the depth belongs to the squat.
- Expecting it to train the inner thigh in isolation. A wide stance does bring the adductors in more than a narrow one, and it is still a squat that the quadriceps and glutes lead.