Exercise Tutorial: Overhead Squat
Table of Contents
What Is an Overhead Squat
An overhead squat is squat variation involving holding a barbell over your head. It is a challenging exercises due to its high demand on the lifter's core stability, ankle range of motion, leg strength, and shoulder mobility.
How to Overhead Squat
Here are five steps to perform an overhead squat. Remember to practice it using lightweights first!
Grab the barbell and keep it on your back or front delts depending on your preference.
Walk out of the squat rack by taking a few steps to adjust your feet and balance. Make sure your feet are shoulder-width apart or wider.
Jerk the bar overhead by dipping down and squatting. You do not have to go low on the squat. Return to standing position with tight glutes and core and activated shoulder and upper back to hold the bar overhead.
From the standing position, lower into a squat with quads and glutes fully engaged, feet and knees turning outward, and maintain weight at the center of your feet. Keep your core tight and your arms strong for balance.
Go as deep as you feel comfortable. Push through your feet while maintaining a tight core to extend your knees and hips to return to a standing position. Make sure to keep your chest out and torso upright.
Overhead Squat Form
Brace your core throughout the squat.
Maintain a tight back.
Knees align with toes turning outward.
Keep chest and torso upright.
Overhead Squat Muscles Worked
Overhead Squat Benefits
People rarely do the overhead squat for general health and fitness, as it is difficult to execute. However, the overhead squat is beneficial for many reasons. Unlike a back squat, the overhead squat puts more emphasis on the quads and forces a controlled concentric, isometric, and eccentric contraction. It also requires more core activation and shoulder mobility and stability. In addition, the overhead squat is often used to assess people's functional capacity, which we will discuss in the next session.
Why Do Many Trainers Use the Overhead Squat as an Assessment?
The overhead squat is a whole-body exercise involving major joints and muscles. The execution of this exercise can demonstrate many valuable insights into the performer's physical features and capacity. The assessor may look at the ankles, knees, hips, back, shoulders, and arms to identify potential lack of mobility, underactive muscles, and form issues. The overhead squat can thus pinpoint individual weaknesses and prescribe corrective exercises. For example, if arms fall forward during the OHS, it could be due to insufficient shoulder mobility from overactive lats and underactive traps and rhomboids. If you cannot go deep enough, that indicates a potential lack of ankle dorsiflexion and hip mobility.
However, the overhead squat is challenging to perform, especially with people who are inexperienced in exercise and those who have underlying issues. Most people cannot properly perform an overhead squat, and many may never perform it correctly even with correct training. Other assessment tools and exercises should be done along with the OHS assessment for a more comprehensive assessment.
Overhead Squat Progression
Having good shoulder mobility and a proper squat are essential to performing the overhead squat. Make sure that you are able to properly perform squats before moving on to the OHS. Then, one could hold a stick and perform an overhead squat to feel the motion, muscle activation, and balance. Move on to the empty barbell and perform the OHS. For progressions, increase volume first and then add weight.
Remember to train with a weight that you can control with good form! Never train with excessive volume and intensity, as it may increase the risk of injury.
Overhead Squat Variations
TRX Overhead Squat
For this variation, the lifter will hold on to a pair of TRX bands while squatting. Grab a pair of TRX bands and extend your arms fully so that the handles are above your head. Squat down and keep your arms extended, holding on to the TRX bands to assist with the movement. Return to starting position with arms above your head.
Kettlebell Overhead Squat
This variation allows the lifter to use kettlebells for more freedom of movement. The lifter may also choose to use one or two kettlebells. A feature of this exercise is that the weight is more backward, easing the need for extreme shoulder mobility.
Dumbbell Overhead Squat
This variation is similar to the kettlebell overhead squat and allows the lifter to use dumbells for more freedom of movement. The lifter may choose to do single or double arms. This variation provides the best wrist freedom of movement as you may hold the dumbbell whichever position you find most comfortable.
Squat to Overhead Press
This variation is a progression of the overhead squat, for it adds a pressing movement at the top of the motion. You can do an overhead squat and then perform an overhead press at the standing position. You may also choose to do a front squat and then overhead press the barbell as you return to the standing position.
