The squat is arguably one of the most beneficial lifts you can do to increase overall strength and muscular development. Like any exercise, learning the basic setup and pattern is critical to preventing injury.
While not everyone's squat will look the same, there are some rookie moves you should avoid to keep yourself safe and actually make progress.
A good squat starts with a good setup. Some of the most common mistakes include:
When you begin the eccentric or lowering portion of your squat, start by sitting your hips back. How far? It will be different for people with different leverages. It'll also be different for the style of squat you're doing: front squat, high-bar back squat, or low-bar back squat.
Regardless of leverages or squat style, your hips still need to be pushed back in order to have a controlled decent. One of the biggest technique errors that causes people to squat into their knees? Looking up too much.
Here's what this looks like:
While having your eyes up, or even your head slightly lifted, can be beneficial for some lifters (especially during a front squat), excessively cranking your head back to the point where you're looking at the ceiling causes you to shift your weight to the front of your feet. This does a couple harmful things:
The fix for squatting into the knees can be as simple as practicing pushing your butt back slightly before you flex the knees. If you look up towards the ceiling when back squatting, try maintaining a neutral head position and focus on a spot on the floor approximately 5 or 6 feet in front of you.
This will allow you to get more hip drive out of your squat, create better balance, and will spare your knees and lower back from a lot of wear and tear.
During the concentric or lifting phase of the squat, the hips and chest should rise at the same time. If your hips and chest rise simultaneously it's a sign you're bracing your core appropriately, using a manageable weight, and avoiding harmful stress placed on your spine.
If the hips and chest don't rise simultaneously, you generally get the classic "good morning squat." Here's what this looks like:
This ugly squat happens when the hips rise faster than the chest. This could happen due to a technique error, but the most likely culprits are too much weight on the bar, inadequate tightness through the torso, and lack of quad drive when standing up out of the hole.
This form deviation isn't just a move rookies make; it'll happen to almost everyone at some point if they're pushing themselves on the weight.
Having this happen every once in a while, as in the last rep of your last heavy set, is acceptable. But if your first rep on your first set looks like this, and you continue to increase the weight from there, you're ego lifting.
That is definitely a rookie move, and it will spell disaster for your spine later on.
Increase core rigidity and quad strength, and practice great technique with submaximal loads.
To increase core rigidity and your ability to brace, do plenty of "anti movements" such as Pallof presses, suitcase carries, stir the pots (shown below), and front rack carries.
To increase quad drive, do the leg press using a lower and narrower foot placement for quad emphasis at the end of your squat workout.