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As functional creatures, we should all be able to perform an ass to grass squat without displaying any structural faults. However, if we talk about how deep you should squat using a barbell, we have to look at this in a bit more detail.

 

If we talk about the sport specific needs of a barbell squat, different sports will require you to squat to different depths. Olympic Lifters for example will squat ass to grass because their sport requires them to. A half depth front squat isn’t going to be of much help to somebody at the bottom of a heavy arse clean. They train in full range because they need to be strong through full range.

 

On the other hand if we look at Powerlifters, they are only required to squat to parallel to meet the competition standards of their sport. This begs the question, why bother to squat past that point? If your sport doesn’t require you to squat, strength and conditioning coaches have even been known to advocate above parallel squats, simply to build explosive strength in that top range of motion. Sprinting is a great example of this.

 

Taking it back to Weightlifting. As mentioned previously Olympic Lifters will squat to full range, but there are some exceptions. During the front squat, we want to squat ass to grass to have maximum carry over to our clean, however this isn’t necessarily true for the back squat. As we do not catch the bar on our back during a clean, the back squat is not part of the clean movement like a front squat is. Therefore we can consider the back squat as a pure strength exercise, whereby parallel would be considered adequate.

 

For the general population and taking away sports specificity, my advice would be to squat to full depth. Providing you can do so safely and have the required mobility. This will give you the most bang for your buck, and more importantly, you won’t look like one of those Helmets in a globo gym doing knee pulses with a bar on your back. 

 

If you enjoyed this post, check out my next post “Play The Long Game“.