06 Feb A Proper Squat Warm-Up: Building Stiffness Before You Ever Touch the Bar
Article Rundown
- Build stiffness and full-body tension before ever touching the bar
- Root through the feet to create ankle, knee, and hip stability
- Use goblet squats to reinforce control, posture, and proper depth
- Add targeted hip activation only when something feels off
Building Stiffness Before You Ever Touch the Bar
When most people think about warming up for the squat, they think about breaking a sweat or loosening things up. That’s not how I approach it. A good squat warm-up isn’t about getting loose — it’s about building tension, control, and stiffness so your body knows how to organize itself under load.
If you can’t create full-body tension standing on one leg or holding a kettlebell, you’re not magically going to find it when there’s 400, 500, or 600 pounds on your back.
This is how I like to prepare someone for the squat.
Start From the Ground: Foot and Ankle Stiffness
Everything begins at the floor. Before we even think about bending the knees or hips, I want you to root into the ground.
Grip the floor with your feet like a monkey gripping a tree branch. That active foot creates foot and ankle athleticism, and it immediately improves balance and control. From there, I want external rotation — squeeze the glutes and lock everything down.
Now add the upper body: make fists, pull your hands down hard, engage the lats, pecs, and rhomboids. At this point, you should feel rigid — not relaxed.
This is what real full-body tension feels like.
Single-Leg Balance: Creating Tension, Not Just Standing There
Next, I like to challenge that stiffness by standing on one leg — and we always start with the bad side first.
This isn’t about casually balancing. It’s about gripping the floor, locking everything in, and becoming a statue. If the knee collapses inward or you lose external rotation, that’s feedback. We correct it by rooting harder and creating more tension, not by wobbling through it.
The good news is this improves fast. In just a few days, most people see massive gains in control. This is the foundation of stiffness that carries directly into the squat.
Goblet Squats: Teaching Control and Position
Once the body is locked in, we progress to a goblet squat. The kettlebell isn’t there to add load — it’s there to teach tension.
I cue people to try to bend the handle, pulling down to engage the lats and lock the torso in. From there, we control the descent. No bottoming out. No dumping into the hole.
I want a hip hinge to start the movement, followed by actively spreading the floor — knees out, driven by the glute medius, not forced at the knee. At the bottom, we drive through the heels and maintain posture.
This primes the hips, reinforces proper depth, and teaches you where you should be squatting — before you ever touch a barbell.
When the Hips Need More: Targeted Activation Work
Not every day requires the same warm-up. If you’ve been sitting all day or something feels off, this is where targeted hip activation comes in.
Using a loop band, I’ll add:
- Glute bridges
- Clamshells
- Seated abduction
This isn’t about fatigue or chasing a burn. It’s about waking up the glute medius and reminding the hips how to push out and stabilize. Range of motion doesn’t matter much here — clean reps and control do.
Some days you’ll skip this entirely. Other days it makes all the difference.
Pick What You Need, Then Get Under the Bar
The biggest mistake people make is thinking they need to do everything, every time. You don’t.
A proper squat warm-up is about choosing the right tools based on what your body needs that day. Build stiffness. Create tension. Prime the hips. Then move on.
If you can do that consistently, you’ll squat better, feel better, and last longer under the bar — and that’s the whole point.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.