Barbell back squats: common challenges for beginners
Barbell back squats are a popular exercise in the gym and often prescribed as part of a bone health program (as well as a part of most general strength programs) because they load a large number of muscle groups at once. The use of the barbell across the shoulders also limits being restricted by how much weight you can hold in your hands.
Not everyone is able to get under the bar, however, due to various differences in their anatomy or injury history etc. Below we outline a few different options to help you be successful with back squats , or if not, what you could do instead.
Getting the bar into position on the shoulders
A common difficulty people experience is literally just getting the bar into place on the shoulders.
There are 2 options for where you can place the bar: high bar, or low bar position. High bar is the most common and it involves resting the bar on your upper trap muscles. Low bar involves rolling the bar a little further down the back to sit more across the top of the shoulder blades.
The first 2 minutes of this video discusses how to get in under the bar, specifically outlining the difference between high bar and low bar at minute 1:00-1:23.
A lot of people report discomfort with this position.
Neck discomfort
If the discomfort comes from resting the bar against the bones in the neck, this is incorrect - the muscles of the neck should have tension in them to cause some ‘bulk’ in the muscles, allowing the bar to rest on those as opposed to on the bones of the neck.
Shoulder/upper arm discomfort
If the discomfort comes from the shoulders, or you are conscious of feeling the exercise in your shoulders/arms, this may be due to shoulder mobility.
We suggest really pulling yourself into position under the bar, pulling your shoulders back as you get in under the bar, as opposed to getting under the bar first and then reaching behind you to find the bar. The way we suggests encourages your shoulder blades and shoulders themselves to move backwards, which will make the most of the range you do have available in the shoulders.
We describe this in the video below:
If, despite using this technique, you still cant get under the bar, you can try a few mobility exercises across a number of weeks and see if it becomes any easier.
These are described in this video:
Still struggling to get the bar on your back? A few more ideas...
Wider hand width
A way around shoulder mobility is to have your hands wider. Experiement with different distances to see what could work.
Safety bar squats
Safety bar squats are great if the main reason you can’t back squat is because of shoulder mobility, but they do require having access to one of these bars.
Options if you need to avoid barbell back squats all together
While barbell back squats are a great way to progressively overload the squat pattern, they aren’t achievable for everyone. Here are some options you can try instead.
Goblet squats
Goblet squats are a great option if you can’t tolerate the bar on your back. You will be limited in how much you can progress the weight with these by your arms fatiguing holding the weight. Holding the weight as close as possible to the body helps. In the video we show you how to get the weight up into position, too. Most likely, you will need to do more reps of these to get a similar level of fatigue in the legs compared to barbell squats.
Kettlebell squats
Kettlebell squats eliminate more of the upper body fatigue from goblet squats but will still be dependent on your grip strength and also likely to load your lower back a little more than other variations. Focus on bending your knees a lot and yea
Leg press
The leg press trains similar muscles to squats and can be a good choice to use instead.
We describe each of these options in this video:
Hopefully this has given you some alternative ideas to give you success when doing loaded squats of any sort!
Frances & Jaslynn
