To goodgolly; about squats.

Alright. If you do anything, you should squat. Of course, I would never advise anyone to just loaded up a weighed bar on their back and start squatting. All exercises should be done bodyweight first, with external loading second. This is off the top of my head, so it may be a little rough. In trying to teach my dad to squat, I’ve had to theorize a progression of exercises to work up to the ellusive back squat.

First, bodyweight squats. You said you can already do the. Awesome. But let’s make sure we’re on the same page. My eyes were openned when I watched Dan John on the Video Fitcast. What I want you to watch for is the Goblet Squat drill. This drill is key to getting your footing right. Too many people squat with their feet pointed forward. You need to open up your stance a little and squat between your legs. Before I do any lower body work, I warm-up with ten bodyweight squats prior to warming up with a loaded bar. I pretty much do them goblet squat style. It may look a little odd, but feeling my elbows against my inner leg gets my footing right every time.

If you want, you can just do goblet squats with a dumbbell. But eventually you won’t want to keep holding dumbbells in front of you. Enter the dumbbell front squat.

I like these because they force you to keep your body upright. Doing so will allow you to gain more flexibility. Plus, if you’re still afraid of weight, you can be confident that you won’t be crushed by a couple of puny dumbbells. There’s a limit, of course. I recall when I DB front squatted with 50 lb dumbbells. Cleaning that heavy of a dumbbell to my shoulder seems rather silly when you can just use a barbell. If you feel you’ve mastered the dumbbell front squat and want to level up, you’re more than ready for barbell front squats.

If Krista can do it, you can to. Note how her elbows are horizontal. Front squats may be a technically harder variation, but I agree with the sentiment that if you can front squat, back squats will be a piece of cake. In fact, the hardest part is just learning to hold the bar.

You need a squat rack for this. It might look something vaguely like this:

Set up the bar around shoulder-height. Place your fingertips under the bar, and step under the bar, letting it rest on your shoulders. The weight of a naked bar probably won’t be enough to stress your wrists. The actual front squat grip isn’t so much a grip as it is the bar “resting” on your shoulders. Your hands are not holding the weight up.

The nice thing about front squats is that it’s easy to dump the weight forward. Just come down to the safeties and step out. Bam, no harm done.

Of course, if that sounds complicated, there’s a way around it.

I believe this is known as a “Zombie Squat”, as your arms are forward as if you’re a zombie. The bar rests on your shoulders, and you hold your arms out straight in front of you.

I don’t think there’s a particular weight you need to front squat prior to back squatting. It’s merely a variation to improve your form. It’s not as hard as people think. Now for something that has nothing to do with the weight.

Now, I’m not suggesting you go do sets of overhead squats. I think doing overhead squat drills with a broom or hockey stick are a great way to improve flexibility. You can also hook your thumbs overhead and squat. You’ll probably feel it right in the middle of your back. If you want to talk about flexibility, variations of lunges are your friend. Walking lunges, reverse lunges, side lunges, step-ups. With weight, of course. Unilateral work = good.

Point-blank, if you can do all of this with some proficiency, you’ll back squat without a problem. If you need advice at that point, come find me. Ha ha.