Barbell overhead squat
A squat with the bar locked out above your head. It exposes every stiff ankle, hip and shoulder you have, and it does that at very light weight.
The movement
2 stages
Locked overhead
01 Locked overhead
Take a wide grip and lock both elbows with the bar behind your ears.
02 Bottom
Sit down between your heels with your knees pushed out and the bar still.
How to do it
Setup
- Take a grip much wider than a bench press grip, wide enough that the bar clears the top of your head when your arms are straight.
- Press the bar overhead from your shoulders until both elbows lock, with the bar sitting behind your ears rather than in front of your face.
- Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart and your toes turned out slightly.
Execution
- Push up into the bar and settle it over the middle of your feet.
- Sit straight down between your heels, keeping your chest tall and the bar in the same place above your feet.
- Stop at the depth where you can still hold the bar still, then drive your whole foot into the floor to stand.
BreathingBreathe in at the top, hold that breath through the descent, and breathe out once you are standing.
Getting it right
Form cues
- Press up into the bar the whole way down, never let it settle.
- Keep the bar above your ears, not above your forehead.
- Turn your knees out so your hips can drop between them.
Common mistakes
- Letting the bar drift forward, which pulls your chest down and ends the rep.
- Loading it like a back squat, so both the depth and the bar position collapse.
- Gripping too narrow, which puts the bar on top of your head instead of behind it.
Worth knowing
- Work in a rack you can drop the bar out of, and learn the movement with an empty bar or a broomstick. The failure to plan for is the bar going behind you, so know how you will step out from under it.
General guidance, not medical advice. See how Setkit works.
Notes
The overhead squat is a squat and a shoulder position at the same time, and the shoulder position is what fails first. Holding a bar locked above your head demands that your upper back stays tight and your shoulders stay overhead while your hips travel eighteen inches down. Almost nobody manages that on the first attempt, and almost nobody needs weight to find out.
That is why the loading looks strange next to the rest of the library. A lifter who back squats 100 kg may struggle with 30 kg overhead, because the limit is position rather than leg strength. Treat the weight as a way to check the position, not as the point of the exercise, and add to it only when the bar stops moving around.
The bar tells you where the error is. If it drifts forward on the way down, your ankles or your upper back gave first and your chest followed the bar. If it drifts back and you feel yourself falling toward your heels, you sat back instead of sitting down. Film one set from the side and the two faults look completely different.
Most people should build to this rather than start with it. Get a front squat to depth with a tall chest, then hold an empty bar overhead and walk around with it before you squat under it. If your shoulders will not stay locked out while you walk, they will not stay locked out at the bottom of a squat.