The squat used to be an exercise that was revered and was once the realm of the serious powerlifter, bodybuilder or Olympic weightlifter. However, the back squat is a movement that is rightfully becoming increasingly popular, for both sports performance and even the recreational gym goer. This is due to the many benefits that performing this movement correctly can have on strength, stability, power and creating lean muscle tissue.
Unfortunately, the squat, although seemingly simplistic from a movement perspective (I mean, we all sit down and stand up, right?), is actually a much more of a challenging and technical lift than many people realise, it is for this reason that despite its increasing popularity, it is one of the exercises that is performed with the worst form and greatest injury risk - probably up there with the deadlift for the same reasons!
If you don’t spend much time thinking about the set up to your squat, then you really should if you are serious about improving it and preventing injury. Top level powerlifters spend hours perfecting their set ups and working on un-racking the bar, for good reason, your set up and un-racking of the bar sets the tone for your entire set.
Getting into the correct start position will be dependent on the mobility you have at the shoulder. As a general rule, the hands should be positioned outside the line of the shoulders, allowing greater stability and balance, but not so wide that the elbows are drawn up and no tension can be generated through the muscles of the back. Where the bar is positioned on the back will depend on a lot of factors, including whether you want to perform a high or low bar squat but for now, we’ll stick to a high bar squat as it is the easiest to position and is less demanding on the lower back, so is the best place to start for most people.
The bar can be placed on the traps to use them as ‘padding’, but typically the comfiest and most stable position is a ‘groove’ that runs underneath the traps and of top of the rear delts. This will be slightly different from person to person but play around until it feels comfortable and when you feel it, you’ll know.
Creating activation of the muscles in the correct manner is not just important for being able to move the weight on our backs, but also to do it safely and this comes right from the second we step under the bar during our set up. The set up for a back squat is not a ‘passive’ thing like many people treat it (and I observe time and time again), simply by resting the bar across the shoulder and only thinking about the squat when commencing the actual squatting part of the movement.
The set up for the squat should start before the bar is lifted from the rack, making sure that not only is the bar positioned in the right place but that the bar is actually pulled into the shoulders, not passively resting on them. This can be achieved by engaging the lats, this doesn’t mean pulling hard through the arms but letting the back muscles take the lead - imagine doing a lat pulldown but without the arm pull retracting the shoulder blades. This will help get the shoulders in the right position, engage the muscles of the upper and lower back and pull the chest through, forcing the upper back to enter a neutral position, not hunched over, and this is important to keep the bar on the right path throughout the entire squat.
Now we have tension through the back, the bar is stable and we are ready to ‘attack’. We then need to un-rack the bar. No matter what weight you have on the bar, this should always be done with intent. This creates good habits and means that you will always have a consistent and aggressive set up, a set up that sets the tone and everything is ‘firing’ as it should be. When un-racking the bar, do so from a proper squat position (not one foot in front of the other, this leads to lack of tension and bad habits).
Stance width here will depend on where you naturally feel comfortable; there is no right or wrong here, a lot will depend on your natural shape and joint structure (and outside the remit of this article!) but the feet should be just outside shoulder width apart, but only you will know with a bit of time and trial and error where your stance feels strong. A good tip is to imagine if someone was dropping something very heavy from a great height and you had to catch it and absorb the load, think about where you’d put your feet in this situation and you won’t be far off!
Then, all we need to do is simply drive the bar off the rack and whilst keeping tension, walk out to the starting position where we then refocus and begin our squat. In part 2 of this article, we will take a look at the actual squatting technique and some common mistakes that can easily be avoided to help you to a stronger, safer squat.
Paul Rimmer (BSc, MSc, PhD).
