maratoolSide Squats with Barbell
How to do the side squats with barbell
- Place a barbell on your shoulders and grasp it with a wide grip.
- Stand with your feet wide apart, with the foot of the leg you will be leaning towards angled out.
- Bring your lower body to your foot by bending the hip and knee of your lead leg, and keeping your other leg fairly straight.
- Return to the starting position and switch legs.
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 abductors stop the knee collapsing inward and hold the pelvis square; the hamstrings assist hip extension and slow the knee down.
Every exercise for:QuadricepsAbductorsHamstrings
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
A barbell locks both hands to one bar, so neither side can drift and the load climbs in plate-sized steps. That makes it the simplest way to add weight and the least forgiving thing to bail out of.
Every exercise using:Barbell
These train the quadriceps too, using equipment this one does not:
- Single Leg Butt Kickbody only
- Single-Leg Leg Extensionmachine
- Smith Machine Hack Squatsmith machine + machine
- Split Squat with Dumbbellsdumbbell
- Squats with Exercise Bandsband
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.