Squatting is perhaps the most dangerous – and most effective – exercise that one can use in the gym. A fraction of an inch adjustment on chest, back, or other body part positioning can either make the exercise more productive and safer, or less productive and more dangerous. The choice is yours, as to which type of workout you prefer to enjoy. If your goal is to remain injury-free and make great gains in the gym, you should follow these positioning tips for safer squatting.

Low back losing arch

Don’t allow the lower back to use its arch, in any circumstance. Maintain your lower back arch throughout the entire movement. For beginning trainers, the inability to maintain this lower back arch could be a result of a lack of flexibility. If you have been squatting for more than 2 years, then the flexibility is present. At that point, your inability to maintain the low back arch is simply due to poor form. Practice keeping your arch perfect by squatting with only the weight of the bar. Stop for about 3 seconds at the bottom of each repetition. Have a training partner or intelligent gym employee (no, that is not an oxymoron!) examine your form. Videotape your squatting if possible to verify you are doing it correctly. It may seem like a lot of trouble at the time, but spending 2 years nursing a lower back injury sure sounds much less appealing, right?

Depth control issues

Many squatters of all experience levels have problems taking the weight down too far, or not far enough. It’s tough to know exactly where you are, and where you should be, particularly when you are descending at a rate of 1 foot per second with 200, 300, or 400 or more pounds on your back. For this reason, one can improve his depth, and master control of where to stop each time, by actually starting at the bottom. Using only a broomstick or perhaps an empty 45-pound Olympic bar on your shoulders, practice starting from the exact spot where you should be arriving at, at the bottom of the squatting motion. Stand up, then return to this spot. Try to record small mental cues about how deeply your knees are bent, what the ascent feels like, etc.

Head control

Your head should be leaned back for the entire duration of the squatting movement. Any time the head drifts forward, your chest will tend to be drawn inward. This will lead to an imbalance of the weight, and shift the brunt of the workload from the front thigh muscles, to the back and hips. You will be squatting the same amount of weight, with less comfort, for far fewer results. This also causes the lower back to round out, which leads to many of the aforementioned problems. Practicing spreading the chest seems to help with keeping the head arched. When you spread – almost like a peacock – before your set, the head leans back, the chest stays puffed, and the lower back is forced to stay arched. This keeps the brunt of the workload upon your front thighs, which will lead to greater growth.

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