- Bending at the hips is important when performing barbell squats (or bodyweight squats). It can be potentially dangerous for the knees protrude far over the toes. The pressure of a squat should be on your heels and not on your toes. Bending at the knees can cause you to lose form and potentially hurt your knees.
- Breath in before squatting down and breath out when squatting back up. Squatting can be a very challenging and taxing exercise on the body. Take deeper breaths when squats are heavy to avoid becoming fatigued. If you feel the need, take several breaths at the top of a squat for extra energy.
- Keep your head position forward when squatting. This is especially important when doing barbell squats. Looking down will cause your spine to be out of alignment, which makes the exercise dangerous when using weight.
- Keep shoulders back and chest out to keep your spine in the proper alignment.
- Squat to parallel or lower! Many people, especially men with big egos, try to use too much weight but do not squat low enough. If you do not go low enough, you will not work the glutes, quad, and hamstring muscles properly. Note, however, that squatting below parallel may be difficult for people with poor flexibility. Work on hip flexibility and ankle flexibility before trying to squat below parallel (especially with weighted squats).
- For better balance, keep your toes pointed out slightly.
- If you want to work the butt more (which is the theme of this article), take a wider stance with your feet farther away from each other. A closer stance places more emphasis on the quad muscles.
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