Without a doubt, squatting is one of the most versatile exercises you can incorporate into your training routine. Performed correctly, the popular lower-body, compound exercise can help you maintain your motor functions, excel in sports, enhancing total-body strength and development, and improve your ability to perform simple day-to-day tasks.
Of all the lower-body exercises, the barbell back squat remains the gold standard for most seasoned weightlifters. However, it’s not the only way to perform a squat. With just a few tweaks and/or some equipment switches, there are a handful of additional ways to knock out a few reps of this legs-blasting move while getting the same great results. So whether you’re a beginner, a novice, or a competition-level athlete, there’s a squat that’s right for you, and we’ll help you find it here.
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Per Bernal
Barbell Front Squat
Advantages: Balanced legs, core, and upper-back strength, harder to cheat.
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The front squat is quickly gaining popularity among many athletes, partially because of its prominence in CrossFit culture. It’s also a crucial component of Olympic lifts. Whatever the reason you do it, it’s an outstanding movement, not least of all because it’s harder to perform badly than a back squat.
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By placing the barbell across your shoulders in front of the body, the front squat puts much more emphasis on the quadriceps and upper back than the traditional back squat, but still trains the glutes and hamstrings effectively.
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Cues: To perform the clean grip technique, grab the barbell with a grip slightly wider than shoulder-width. Swing your elbows under the bar until they are pointing forward and the barbell rests across your shoulders in front of you. Keep your elbows pointed forward throughout the movement. Squat while keeping your weight on your heels. Keep your chest and elbows up. If you have elbow, rotator cuff, wrist, and/or shoulders issues, it’s best to avoid this variation.
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Nadir Keklik
Goblet Squat
Advantages: Quad strength, lack of spinal compression, different dispersion of weight
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The Goblet squat can be an effective movement for building lower-body strength and muscle mass, especially the quads and glutes. Due to its core and mobility requirements, along with the possibility of impinging the lower back, it’s best to start off with a reasonably light weight until you master the movement.Â
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Cues: Position a kettlebell or dumbbell between your legs, with feet flat on the floor or heels raised on a small plate. Grab the kettlebell in front of you with an overhand grip. Keeping your back arched and chest up, extend your hips and knees until you’re standing straight up.
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M+F Magazine
Bulgarian Split Squat
Advantages: Improves muscle imbalance, enhance balance and lower-body strength
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Unilateral training can have benefits for all lifters. Working one leg at a time helps improve imbalances between sides, trains overall sense of balance, and allows you to overload the muscles without needing as much weight. The Bulgarian Split Squat can also be performed on a Smith Machine, or with dumbbells or a barbell. Just start slowly and focus on developing balance and familiarity with the movement before stacking on the plates. When you’re comfortable, you can up the weight with dumbbells at your sides, held in front of you goblet squat-style, or with a barbell in either a back squat or front squat variation.
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Cues: Place one foot a few feet behind you on a bench or raised platform. Keeping an upright torso, begin by pushing your hips back, like in a back squat. Allow your back leg to bend at the knee. Descend until you reach the bottom position, which can be when your front leg reaches parallel, or when your back knee touches the ground.Â
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Paul Aiken
Overhead Squat
Advantages: Balance, body control, increased muscular mobility
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Like front squats, overhead squats have their roots in Olympic weightlifting. The overhead squat strengthens the midpoint of the barbell snatch and is essential to mastering that particular Olympic lift. For noncompetitive weightlifters, it can be an effective way to train the lower body while developing balance and mobility in the muscles and joints.
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Cues: Snatch or press the barbell overhead and, while keeping it over your center of gravity, perform a squat. Overhead squats demand a certain degree of shoulder mobility to be executed correctly, but taking a wide grip on the barbell makes this much easier. You may find it difficult to use a heavy enough weight on the overhead squat to truly challenge your legs, but that’s not the point here. The hip mobility demands it places on you carry over to all other squatting variations.
These really should be called “not for sissies” squats because they’re a burner of the first order. By shifting the weight onto your toes and forcing the front of your legs to support your entire body as you lower down, you’re isolating the quads under stretch and demanding they lift all that weight back up without help from any other muscle group. Even with nothing but bodyweight, they’re one of the best finisher squat variations you can do.
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Cues: Start out with a four-second negative as you lower your body to the ground, keeping your hips up and maintaining a straight line from your shoulders to your knees. If you’re not comfortable using weight, you can get plenty out of this move with just bodyweight. Explode up on the positive, pausing at the top to contract your quads hard.Â
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Per Bernal / M+F Magazine
Barbell Back Squat
Advantages: Posterior chain power, hypertrophy
This is what you think of when you hear the word “squat”. The barbell back squat is the king of leg moves and one of the most effective exercises for strengthening the lower body. While it trains the entire lower body musculature, this move places greater emphasis on the muscles of the posterior chain, such as the glutes, hamstrings, and spinal erectors, than other squat variations. It’s also an unparalleled lower-body mass-builder when done correctly.
Cues: Grab the barbell with a grip slightly wider than shoulder-width, step under the bar, and place it across your upper back just below the top of your traps. Be sure to keep your shoulder blades pulled tightly together and maintain a tight upper back and core throughout the lift.
After stepping out of the rack, initiate the movement by pushing your hips behind you. Keep your chest up and maintain an arched back while lowering yourself until the crease of your hip is lower than the top of your knee. Strongly reverse the movement until back to the starting position. To make the move go more smoothly, breath in deeply at the top of the movement and hold, then lower to the bottom portion and when you come back up exhale.
