Squat Overhead: Advantages, Benefits, and Tips to Improve

Have you ever noticed that when babies want to pick something up from the ground they tend to squat, unlike adults who bend their backs to pick it up? This is also why the squat overhead or the barbell squat is an important exercise, as it allows us to recover a motor pattern that most of us perform in childhood, but which unfortunately we end up losing as we get older.

This is without doubt one of the most complete exercises for lower limbs, whether your goal is to gain muscle mass, lose weight or obtain sporting performance.

Benefits of the squat overhead

In addition to the obvious benefits for those who want to increase muscle mass  in the lower limbs (thighs and buttocks), the barbell squat is also excellent for those who want to lose weight.

This is an exercise that involves big muscles, which promotes a great caloric expenditure, helping to maintain the caloric deficit that you need so much to lose weight.

But it is not only the muscles of the lower limbs that are exercised.  Because of the weight of the bar during the movement, the trunk stabilising muscles need to come into play: so much so that some experts even argue that if you regularly do squats, you don’t need to do isolated abdominal exercises.

For this very reason, when well executed, the squat overhead is also very important to improve your posture and in injury prevention. By practising these exercises regularly your muscles and joints will become stronger, more resilient and flexible, allowing you to better withstand more extreme physical strain, joint impacts, sprains and changes in speed and direction.

It also helps in the growth and maintenance of bone mass, as well as maintaining good general physical condition, and is very important for carrying out everyday tasks. After all, how many times do you sit down and stand up a day?

There are also several studies that have shown that performing the squat regularly naturally increases testosterone, an essential hormone for muscle growth.

Execution errors

Despite being a basic exercise in everyday tasks (or at least it should be), the execution of squats is not always the most correct. Since you’ll have to bear extra weight on top of your joints, there are some extra precautions you should take and some mistakes you have to avoid.

The main errors to avoid are:

• Knees go inwards on the way up;
• Misalignment of the feet with the knee;
• Heel lifts off the floor;
• Descending with the trunk too vertical;
• Spine loses its neutral curvatures
• Shoulders rotated forward
• Eyes directed towards the ground;
• Wrongly placed Bar on the back.

How to execute correctly – Step by Step

To avoid the mistakes mentioned above, here are a few tips for a good execution of the exercise.

Firstly, it is very important to understand if you are performing the squat correctly without the bar. You won’t gain much advantage from performing this version with the bar until you master the technique without it.

Then, to perform it correctly you should:

1. Place your feet slightly wider apart than hip width, keeping the toes slightly turned outward;

2. The shoulder blades should be together during the whole movement, with the chest expanded upwards and forwards, rotating the shoulders back (This will make your trapezius provide an excellent base for the bar);

3. Throughout the movement you should look straight ahead.

4. The descent starts with the hips back associated to a slight forward bending of the trunk and only then we start bending the knees (imagine you are going to sit on a chair, it is more or less the same movement)

5. The knees should always be in line with the tips of the feet, meaning, slightly rotated outwards;

6. It is very important to keep all muscles in the CORE area contracted (abdominal and lumbar wall) in order to maintain the neutral alignment of the spine;

7. The descent should end when you can no longer maintain the alignment of the spine and your hips start to rotate, letting your lower back round out;

8. At the start of the climb, focus on making that the heel does most of the pushing against the ground;

9. The ascent ends with the complete alignment of the body in the vertical position, don’t throw your hips too far forward;

10. Rest, you also deserve that

To get the most out of the squat overhead, it should be done as deep as possible, that way the gluteal muscles will work harder and you’ll give them a better stimulus to grow longer and faster.

Check the video below, where you’ll understand everything I’ve just explained:

Start training now and you’ll see that it won’t take you long to realize that, as I often say, “squatting is life”.

The barbell squat is without a doubt one of the most complete exercises to include in your lower limb workouts. But don’t forget: you shouldn’t skip any steps. First learn how to do it without additional load and then gradually add weight to the bar. There’s no point putting on a lot of weight if you don’t do it with the right technique.

Make the most of this exercise that has so much to offer you!