Weighted Squat

🎯 Quadriceps🏋️ OtherIntermediateCompoundCalves (2°)Glutes (2°)Hamstrings (2°)

How to do the weighted squat

  1. Start by positioning two flat benches shoulder width apart from each other. Stand on top of them and wrap the weighted belt around your waist with the amount of weight you feel comfortable with. Make sure your toes are facing out.
  2. Once you are standing straight up with the weight hanging in between your legs, position your arms so that they are fully extended to the side of your body. This is the starting position.
  3. Begin by bending the knees as you maintain a straight posture with the head up. Continue down until the angle between the upper leg and the calves becomes slightly less than 90-degrees (which is the point in which the upper legs are below parallel to the floor). Inhale as you perform this portion of the movement. Tip: If you performed the exercise correctly, the front of the knees should make an imaginary straight line with the toes that are perpendicular to the front. If your knees are past that imaginary line (if they are past your toes) then you are placing undue stress on the knee and the exercise has been performed incorrectly.
  4. Begin to move the body back up by pushing the floor of the flat bench with the ball of your foot mainly as you straighten the legs again and go back to the starting position. Exhale as you perform this portion of the exercise.
  5. Repeat for the recommended amount of repetitions.

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 calves control the ankle and hold the heel position; the glutes finish hip extension; the hamstrings assist hip extension and slow the knee down.

Every exercise for:QuadricepsCalvesGlutesHamstrings

How this movement works

The working muscles shorten as they drive the load away from you, and more than one joint changes angle to do it. Load spreads down a chain instead of sitting on one muscle, which is why a compound push handles more weight than any single-joint alternative — and why joint position, not the muscle, is usually what fails first.

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

What you need

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

Difficulty

Listed at intermediate level. It assumes you already own the underlying pattern and can hold position under load — if the position breaks before the target muscle tires, drop back to a beginner variation until it does not.

Of the 173 quadriceps exercises in this database, 62 are listed at intermediate level.

Related exercises

Photos: free-exercise-db — public domain (Unlicense) Full attribution →

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