A proper barbell squat starts with the bar positioned over your mid-foot and stays there for the entire rep. That single principle, keeping the bar balanced over the middle of your foot, governs every other detail: where you place the bar on your back, how wide you stand, how you breathe, and how deep you go. Here’s how to put it all together.
Choosing Your Bar Position
There are two standard ways to carry the bar, and your choice affects your entire body position during the lift.
A high bar position sits the barbell directly on your upper traps, the meaty shelf of muscle at the base of your neck. This lets your torso stay relatively upright throughout the squat, and it’s the position most people learn first. A low bar position moves the barbell a few inches lower, resting it across the rear deltoids (the back of your shoulders). This creates more forward lean because your torso has to tilt to keep the bar over mid-foot, but it typically lets you lift heavier loads since it shortens the lever arm on your hips.
If you’re new to squatting, high bar is the simpler starting point. It requires less shoulder flexibility and the more upright posture feels intuitive. Low bar becomes worth experimenting with once you’re comfortable with the movement and want to push heavier weights.
Setting Up Under the Bar
Walk up to the bar in the rack so it sits across the front of your shoulders at about mid-chest height. Duck under it and position it on your chosen spot (traps for high bar, rear delts for low bar). Grip the bar with both hands slightly wider than shoulder width. A narrower grip creates more tension across your upper back, which helps the bar stay locked in place, but it demands more shoulder mobility. If you feel pinching or strain in your shoulders, widen your grip until the discomfort disappears.
Before you unrack, squeeze your shoulder blades together and pull your elbows slightly down and back. This tightens the muscles of your upper back into a firm shelf for the bar to sit on. A loose upper back lets the bar shift during the lift, which throws off your balance and puts unnecessary stress on your spine.
Stand up to unrack the bar, then take two or three short steps backward. That’s it. Long walkouts waste energy and increase the chance of stumbling. Set your feet and get still before you begin your first rep.
Foot Position and Stance Width
Place your feet roughly shoulder width apart with your toes pointed outward at about 21 degrees. Older guidelines suggested keeping toes nearly straight ahead (no more than 10 degrees out), but more recent biomechanical research recommends a moderate toe flare of around 20 degrees combined with a shoulder-width stance. This combination allows your hips to open naturally as you descend and distributes stress more evenly across your knees and hips.
Your exact stance will depend on your proportions. People with longer femurs (thighbones) often need a slightly wider stance or more toe flare to squat to full depth without their torso folding forward excessively. The test is simple: if your heels lift off the floor or your lower back rounds at the bottom, try widening your stance or angling your toes out a few more degrees. Both feet should stay flat on the ground throughout every rep.
Breathing and Bracing
Before you descend, take a large breath into your belly, not your chest. Then brace your abdominal muscles as if someone were about to punch you in the stomach. This combination of a deep breath and a tight brace is called the Valsalva maneuver, and it significantly increases the pressure inside your abdomen. That pressure acts like an internal weight belt, stiffening your trunk and stabilizing your spine under load.
Research in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research confirmed that this technique increases intra-abdominal pressure beyond what bracing alone achieves, and that the effect becomes more pronounced as lifting intensity climbs. At loads above about 80% of your max, performing a brief Valsalva is essentially unavoidable. Hold that breath and brace for the entire rep. Exhale at the top, reset your breath, and repeat for the next rep. Breathing out on the way up, as some general fitness advice suggests, is fine for lighter loads but will cost you stability once the weight gets heavy.
The Descent
Initiate the squat by bending your knees and hips at the same time. A common cue is to “sit between your hips,” which encourages you to drop straight down rather than shooting your hips back like a hinge. Your knees should track in the same direction your toes are pointing as you descend.
Control the speed. A steady two-to-three-second descent gives you time to maintain tension and feel your balance. Dropping quickly might feel easier at light weights, but it builds a habit that becomes dangerous as loads increase. Think of pulling yourself down with your hip flexors rather than just letting gravity take over.
Aim to descend until your hip crease drops just below the top of your kneecap, commonly called “below parallel.” Research on knee joint mechanics shows that the forces on the posterior cruciate ligament, the ligament most loaded during squats, are driven primarily by how much weight is on the bar rather than by squat depth. Increasing depth did not significantly increase cruciate ligament force in controlled studies. In other words, going deep is not inherently harder on your knees than stopping at 90 degrees, as long as your form stays solid.
Keeping the Bar Over Mid-Foot
This is the most important mechanical concept in the squat. The barbell should travel in a nearly vertical line, staying directly above the middle of your foot from start to finish. When the bar drifts forward toward your toes, you’ll feel your weight shift to the balls of your feet and your lower back will round to compensate. When it drifts behind mid-foot, you’ll rock onto your heels and risk tipping backward.
At the bottom of the squat, the bar should still be over mid-foot with your hips below your knees. At the top, you return to the starting position with the bar stacked directly over mid-foot. If you film yourself from the side, the bar path should look like a straight vertical line, or very close to one. Any curve, loop, or drift means something in your positioning is off.
A useful self-check: if your toes come off the ground at any point, the bar is too far back. If your heels rise, it’s too far forward.
Driving Out of the Bottom
The upward phase starts with your legs. Push the floor away through your whole foot, maintaining that mid-foot pressure. A common mistake is letting the hips rise faster than the chest, which turns the squat into a good-morning (your torso folds forward while your legs straighten). If this happens, the cue “chest up” or “drive your back into the bar” can help you keep your torso angle consistent as you stand.
Your knees should continue tracking over your toes on the way up. If they collapse inward, a pattern called knee valgus, it usually signals that your inner thigh and hip muscles are overpowering the glutes. The traditional coaching fix is the “knees out” cue, which works for most people during squats. Strengthening your glutes with accessory work like banded squats or hip thrusts also helps over time.
Lock out the rep by standing fully upright with your hips under the bar. Don’t hyperextend your lower back at the top. Just stand tall, reset your breath, and go again.
Equipment That Helps
Weightlifting shoes with a raised heel (typically 0.5 to 1 inch) reduce the ankle flexibility required to push your knees forward during the squat. If your ankles are stiff and your heels lift off the floor at the bottom, these shoes can make a real difference. They don’t magically add depth for everyone, but they change the demands on your ankle joint enough that many people find it easier to maintain good positions. Flat shoes like Converse work perfectly well if your ankle mobility is adequate.
A lifting belt, worn snugly around your waist, gives your abdominal wall something to brace against, amplifying the pressure from your Valsalva maneuver. It’s a useful tool once you’re squatting moderately heavy loads, but it’s not a substitute for learning to brace properly without one first. Wrist wraps, knee sleeves, and other accessories are optional and mostly a matter of personal comfort.
Putting It All Together
The full sequence looks like this: set the bar on your back, squeeze your upper back tight, unrack with a short walkout, set your feet shoulder width with toes out about 20 degrees, take a big belly breath and brace hard, descend by bending knees and hips together while keeping the bar over mid-foot, sink until your hip crease is below your knees, then drive up through your whole foot while keeping your chest angle steady. Exhale at the top. Reset and repeat.
Start with just the empty bar (typically 45 pounds or 20 kilograms) and add weight gradually over weeks. Film yourself from the side to check your bar path and from the front to watch for knee cave. Small position adjustments, a slightly wider stance, a touch more toe flare, a grip change, make a bigger difference than most people expect. Dial in the setup that fits your body, and the squat will feel like it locks into place.