Pile Squat with Dumbbell

🎯 Quadriceps🏋️ DumbbellCompoundHamstrings (2°)Calves (2°)

How to do the pile squat with dumbbell

  1. Stand with your feet 2-4 inches wider than your shoulders, with your toes pointed out at a 45 degree angle.
  2. Grasp a dumbbell with both hands in the center of your body.
  3. Keep your knees slightly bent and your back straight.
  4. Squat down as if you were going to sit in a chair, bringing your thighs parallel to the floor.
  5. With a controlled motion return to starting position.
  6. Notes: Keep your feet planted firmly on the floor throughout this exercise.

Muscles worked

The prime movers are the quadriceps across the front of the thigh, which straighten the knee and, just as importantly, control it on the way back down.

Because more than one joint is moving, the work does not stay in one place: the hamstrings assist hip extension and slow the knee down; the calves control the ankle and hold the heel position.

Every exercise for:QuadricepsHamstringsCalves

How this movement works

Several joints move together, so effort spreads across a chain rather than concentrating in one place. Coordination is part of the difficulty: the movement is only as good as its weakest link, and improving it often means fixing a position somewhere other than the muscle you meant to train.

It is filed under strength: produce force against resistance for a countable number of repetitions, and progress the resistance over time.

What you need

Dumbbells let each side work on its own, surfacing a strength difference between limbs that a barbell would quietly cover for, and leaving the wrist free to rotate through the movement.

Every exercise using:Dumbbell

These train the quadriceps too, using equipment this one does not:

Related exercises

Illustration: Everkinetic — CC BY-SA 4.0 — license. Modified versions are shared under the same license. Full attribution →

ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.