The barbell squat is undoubtedly the best exercise, in my opinion, to build lean muscle and increase strength.
There are many variations to this exercise. You can start from a simple body weight squat before graduating to more advanced barbell exercises such as the front squat and, after even further improvement, the overhead squat.
Here are the top three coaching points that I like to give to my clients when they first begin to squat.
1- Maintain a "neutral spine" throughout the entire movement. To be specific, during the lowering (eccentric) phase and the concentric (way up) phase
A neutral spine is defined in most cases as the natural curvature of your spine. The varying points that need to be engaged during the squat are the cervical, thoracic, lumbar, sacral and the coccyx.
It took me ages to really understand how important this is if you want to increase your strength and considerably improve your squat. Sometimes when certain people attempt to squat heavy loads they forget the fundamental rule of engaging their entire body and making sure that their spine is solid enough so that it doesn't change from neutral posture. You can often see people squatting with more weight than they are capable of squatting with perfect technique. The first thing that goes wrong is they begin to slouch their thoracic, this allows their shoulders to drop and puts an enormous amount of pressure on their spine.
The best piece of advice I can give to someone who is learning to squat is to go light on the weights. Always maintain an upright posture throughout the movement by sticking your chest out as much as possible and tightening your TVA (transverse abdominis) and suck your belly button. This is especially important during the eccentric phase and is crucial for a good lift.
Another good tip is to breathe in and hold your breath tight so that your thoracic stays even more solid due to your lungs being filled with air. If you watch weightlifting athletes doing squats they use this technique a lot when they're squatting extremely heavy weights.
2- Push your knees out to allow your hips to drop low enough
Although there are many schools about depth and foot positioning, speaking by my own experiences and pushing the knees out is a great way to increase the depth of your squat. Initiate the movement by pushing your knees outwards so that your hips descend.
Maintain all the coaching points from above and if you notice or feel a change of your spine, I'd recommend that you stop and go back up as this means you have reached the maximum depth you can achieve with a neutral spine. You can work on improving the depth of your squat by staying down when you are at the bottom of the movement, pause for around 5-10 seconds for each repetition.
3- Feel the load of the squat through your heels and the arch of your foot
Another very important point is to make sure you feel the load pressure mainly on your heels and the arch of your foot. A lot of people have tight muscles and poor ankle mobility and this can sometimes negatively affect their movement pattern when squatting. Stretching is greatly recommended for all muscles especially if you're training with heavy weights.
If you feel that you're going on your toes too much and not really feeling that your heels are grounded fully on the floor then something is wrong. There are many reasons why this is happening but usually you can fix this by adding some elevation under your heels. You can achieve this elevation by putting barbell plates under your heels or by purchasing a pair of high quality weightlifting shoes. This will help to stabilise your body and give you more confidence when you squat.
It is really important that you stay free from any pain whilst performing these exercises, if you have had any injuries in the past, I recommend that you seek out a professional, competent coach who can properly assess the quality of your squat.
I Hope you guys found these pieces of advice helpful. If you feel like you need some further reading and some more in depth information then I recommend this website, they have some really fantastic content to help you master your squat.
http://www.jtsstrength.com/articles/2014/09/04/best-damn-squat-mobility-article-period/
photo credit: hookgrip