Are Back Squats Overrated?

by Michael Shaughnessy

Better Ways to Safely Build Your Legs

Barbell back squats are actually not the king of leg exercises. Here's why and what to do instead.

Unless you’re a competitive powerlifter or strongman, there’s no reason to load a barbell on your back and squat. Doing it properly requires mobility in the hips and shoulders. It requires awesome technique. And even then, your spine and knees may eventually hate you for it.

If you want to avoid degenerative disc disease, knee or hip replacements, and if you’re actually wanting to grow your legs, there are better options. We’ll get into them. First things first though. You’re still probably not convinced that the barbell back squat sucks for most people (yes, even you), so let’s start there.

Why The Back Squat (Most Likely) Isn’t Your Friend

  1. The spine is not meant to withstand direct heavy loads.
  2. Most people don’t have the mobility to properly execute it.
  3. It will tax the nervous system significantly more than other variations, slowing down recovery and your ability to train at a higher frequency.
  4. You’re probably taxing the low back and getting minimal muscle gains for your legs.
  5. The cost-to-benefit ratio sucks compared to other lifts.

I see it every day. A 150-pound dude with 185 on his back will do his best set. He folds over like an accordion with his knees caving in and barely gets the bar back up. He racks the bar and sits down for five minutes with his hand on his lumbar spine and a grimace on his face. No pain, no gain, right?

Imagine making a stack of 24 jelly donuts and putting a weight on top of it. What happens? The donuts collapse and the jelly oozes out. Same concept with your spine.

If you’re not properly engaging your abdominal and back muscles, the bar just sinks straight down into your spine. If your wrists are in an extended position, chances are you’re not nearly engaging your lats enough to optimally do the back squat. If shoulder mobility is lacking, this is going to be a really difficult position to achieve as well.

The Two Best Back Squat Alternatives

These exercises trump the back squat and produce great gains:

1. The Front Squat

This is the real “king” of all leg exercises. It loads the quads, hamstrings, and glutes like crazy while mitigating the neural load. That means you can do this lift more often and with faster recovery.

Try to spread the floor (imagine standing on a wrinkled carpet and trying to smooth it out), brace your core, and lead with your elbows to drive up out of the hole.

Another huge advantage to this time-tested variation is that, since the weight is in front of your center of your gravity, it acts as a counterbalance allowing more ease of hitting depth and getting more stretch reflex out of your muscles.

There are many front squat variations you can adapt for your body depending on where your shoulder mobility is. One solution? Just swap your front rack position for an arms-crossed position.

2. The Split Squat

This is the most underrated and under-taught leg exercise in the gym. There’s a very specific way to do it safely to make massive progress for years to come. The two biggest mistakes people make are loading the bar onto the back and creating a stretch of the Achilles tendon under load.

If you load the bar on your back, your lumbar will go into hyperextension and compression. This creates a ton of unwanted stress. Instead, load the bar on your shoulders to stabilize your midline while loading the intended leg.

In regard to the lengthened Achilles tendon under load, most will push back into their rear heel to try and maintain balance.

Split Squat – Bad

It doesn’t take rocket science to recognize the dangers of this position. This not only puts you in a nasty position from a safety standpoint, it also takes a lot of the load off of the front leg, negating much of the benefit.

Instead, stay up on your toes and drop your rear knee straight down toward the ground. This will let you maintain a neutral position of the Achilles and provide more stimulus to the front leg.

Split Squat – Good

Start on the toes of your back foot, drop the back knee straight down toward the ground, and follow the back knee with the heel, keeping the Achilles in a safe, neutral position. This will also increase the load on the front leg, getting more stimulation and engagement. Make this simple change and see how much better if feels.

“I Will NOT Stop Back Squatting!”

Okay, okay, just make sure it doesn’t look like this:

Bad Squat

Instead, it should look like this:

Good Squat

  • Try to “bend the bar” over your back. This will engage the lats. To help your back stay engaged during the entire lift, keep your wrists as straight as possible in flexion.
  • Try to spread the floor or imagine standing on a wrinkled carpet and smoothing it out with your feet. Envisioning these scenarios will help get the glutes involved and keep the knees from caving in.
  • Brace your core: Tighten your stomach like you’re about to get get punched. Breathe into your stomach to create internal pressure. Think of breathing into your obliques or expanding your sides. Use a lifting belt to help you apply these cues.
  • Now bend the knees and descend. Don’t lose tension at the bottom.

If it’s a high-bar squat (bar on the upper traps), your descent will be more vertical. If it’s a low-bar squat (bar lower on the upper back) there will be a bit of a hinge component to the movement, putting more stress on the shoulders, elbows, wrists, and low back. However, this is a much more powerful way to lift maximal loads.

Most people that do a low-bar squat might want to use a lifting belt, elbow sleeves, and wrist wraps to deal with the added joint stress.

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I don’t like front squats. My shoulders were taking a beating from doing them. The weight would forward just slightly on the shoulders, causing undue stress. I don’t perform back squats either. Its dumbbell lunges, with associated variations, along with leg presses and leg extensions. I also perform machine hack squats.

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I switched to front squats last year, but still have to lean almost 45 degrees to stay balanced, even with lifting shoes. Thinking of making the split squat my main leg builder.

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Are back squats overrated? No, I don’t think so. But at the end of the day, it is what you do in order to train them legs that counts (not how). A better question is whether it’s possible to overtrain legs? Legs need both intensity, volume and frequency in order to respond, in my opinion.

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Whilst I know Squats are not for everyone, I feel we should be looking for reasons to squat rather than reasons not to.

The 5 points mentioned I don’t really understand as its biggest “weaknesses” are also its biggest benefits… or could be anthropometry or goal dependant. Even if you lack mobility, all that tells you is there are other things you can be working on.

@aclaar877, Squat shoes could be a fix for a lot of people, but there are still lots of things you can try. If the shoes helped a little bit but not enough, ankle mobility drills could help you out. I’d recommend looking at some of the Squat University videos on YouTube to nail your form down and try to figure out what it may be. This can be done independently of how you choose to train legs right now.

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This is the best course.

When in my 20’s I squat with terrible form and not strong. It was hips up first, followed by a good morning.
In my 30’s I hurt my back and could not squat.
In my 40’s I learned how to squat with good form and very strong.

Don’t give up before investigating different foot spacings and bar descent.

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I remember Charles Poliquin saying one drawback of front squats is that you are limited to low reps as your shoulders will fatigue before your legs.

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Amen. I struggled with back squats for going two decades…back pain…little to show in leg gains…because I thought it was wimpy not to do the “King of Exercises.” Then one day while squatting just 225 I felt this weird low-back pain that just felt WRONG and made me lie down in the squat rack for so long the head trainer came to see what was up. I personally don’t like the guillotine feeling of the front squat either. A barbell is, ultimately, a subpar tool for legs because you have to HOLD IT somehow…meaning your upper body is involved…and you’re trying to work LEGS—but the upper body will always fail first. BELT SQUATS have proven the answer for me. You have to Jerry-rig a set-up (at home is best) and get a dedicated belt-squat-belt (not a dip belt), but MAN is it a great move…and super comfortable. My thoughts, worth what you paid for ‘em :slight_smile:

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If there was a move that would have made you just as strong with no back injury, that didn’t take you 20 years to learn properly, however…wouldn’t you have preferred to do that instead? Unless you’re a powerlifter—and/or have naturally great squatting form and proportions—I just wonder if the back squat is worth it.

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The answer is a little involved. The condensed version: I was a competitive bodybuilder all of my 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s. I had to get my legs up. I was just shy of 6’0" and fairly long legs. I also powerlifted a couple years in my 20’s. I squatted and did the inverted plate loaded leg press. There were no fancy incline leg press. I could leg press a load of weight.

But when I learned to perform the squat efficiently my legs changed drastically for the positive. (All through my 30’s I relied on the leg press.)

It was for me.

They also involve the upper body. The movement itself involves muscles other than those of the legs even without any weighted resistance. And I have done high rep back squats until my legs trembled while I could still have held the weight on my back for more reps if my legs could have managed.

The thing is, has anyone built an impressive body or a body capable of performing physically at a high level using isolation moves exclusively?

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A good question. Of course, a belt squat isn’t an isolation move…nor is a Bulgarian squat or a split squat. Mike Boyle has his athletes do no back squats and they are about as elite as they come.

Andrew Heffernan
andrewheffernan.com

“What I’m after is for people to live fully their unavowed dreams.” Moshe Feldenkrais

I love front squats but they tear my wrists apart. I switched to Zercher squats 5 years ago and they are KING OF SQUATS! If you try them and your arms cannot handle the pressure, wrap a towel around the barbell. Just remember to keep your back upright.

Yeah, I’ve been working on dorsiflexion and have 4-5 inches. I may try the lifting shoes plus a 1/2 inch board. And I also have a SSB. It just feels like once I’m over bodyweight things get exponentially harder because of the lean, and I don’t think it’s a weak core, because deadlifts at that weight are a piece of cake, and I’m nearly horizontal in that start position. The guy from Squat U is ten minutes away from me, so I’m thinking of seeing him in person.

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That’s quality. I’d go to see him even if I didn’t have any problems. I’ve seen clips of him improving some of the best squatters in the world. In just 10 minutes he could probably make a world of difference to 90% of us I’m sure.

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