Now I have titled this article "The Powerlifting Squat", not The Squat. The Powerlifting squat is a very different beast to other forms of squatting. Most other forms of squatting are used to damage as many muscle fibres as possible, in other words we try and make the exercise as difficult as possible. The Powerlifting squat is different, we are trying to move the heaviest weight we can. To do this efficiently we try and make the exercise as easy as possible.
Bar Position
Many novice powerlifters place the bar too high on their backs, somewhere around the spot where the back and neck meet. If you place the bar here you are not only putting your lower back under much greater stress than necessary, but reducing your mechanical efficiency in the lift. If you place the bar high on your neck, you are increasing the distance from the hips to the bar by at least two to three inches. This significantly increases the leverage involved. This means making the exercise harder and so leads to you lifting less weight. You will also be making the possibility of a lower back injury that much more likely. Now the rules allow you to have the bar up to 3cm below the anterior deltoid. So the rules allow quite a low bar placement. When you raise your arms as when you are squatting, a ridge of muscle forms on the upper back, (this ridge could have been a purpose made bar carrier) you should rest the bar on this ridge of muscle (if you haven't the muscle yet, a few months of heavy squatting will soon put that right). You should not rest the bar on the vertebra of the neck or on the scapula. This ridge of muscle is about 2 to 3cm below the anterior deltoid and so is a legal bar placement.


Hand Position
As the correct bar placement in the powerlifting squat is a few centimetres below the anterior deltoid, this means that your hand placement will be quite wide. Always wrap you thumbs around the bar, there is nothing more frightening than seeing a 300kg barbell slipping down a man's back. Ensure that you use plenty of chalk on the hands as well as on your upper back. If you are wearing a sweat top then it is a good idea to turn it inside out, the rougher inside surface gives more grip for the knurl on the bar.

Unracking the weight and Setting Up
To often I see powerlifters having to do a half squat to unrack the bar. This is a drain on your precious strength reserves. Select a rack height that allows you to get into position under the bar with as little knee flexion as possible, but remember that an empty bar will not bend and so will not need as much clearance as a loaded bar, make sure you take this factor into consideration when working out your rack height. You don't want to be all psyched up and then find that the rack height makes it impossible for you to unrack the bar safely.

Once you have the bar correctly placed on you upper back, a 2 to 3 inch straightening of the legs should have the bar unracked. Now slide one foot back a step and then the other. Notice I say slide, do not try and take a big step. It is not very pretty seeing someone stumble backwards with a large weight on their shoulders, but it is one sure way of scaring the judges. One step back from the racks should give you sufficient clearance so that you do not hit the racks with the bar. Any further movement away from the rack is a waste of energy.

Foot placement is a very important aspect of squatting. The narrower our squat stance the lower we have to go before we reach the legal squatting depth and visa-versa the wider our stance then the shorter the distance we need to travel before we reach the legal squatting depth.

So we can see that if we want to lift more weight, one of the main avenues open to us is cutting the distance that the weight has to travel. If you watch World class powerlifters lifting in competition, you will see that most of them have a very wide foot stance. This enables them to break parallel much earlier than if they had a narrower foot stance. Do not go to a wide stance immediately, if your stance is at present quite narrow, gradually widen it over the next 2 to 3 months. This will give the muscles and tendons of the hips time to adjust. How wide you should go is a personal matter. You will find that if you gradually increase the width of your foot stance that eventually you reach a point where you are not as strong. A little experimentation will be needed to find your best foot placement, but do persevere. One of my friends just increased his foot stance and consequently his squatting poundage went up by 50lbs. Now we have the width of our stance sorted what about our feet. If you point your feet forwards then the knee will be twisted into an unnatural position at the bottom part of the movement. The correct foot stance should have your feet turned out at 45 degrees. This will ensure that when you squat down the structure of the leg will line up in a natural manner. Which means that you will be able to generate more power and so squat more weight.

The Descent
So there you are a quarter of a ton of iron on your back. You look at the referee, waiting for the SQUAT command. SQUAT he shouts, you don't hear him, you're to busy are concentrating on that weight that's threatening to drive you through the floor, but you see his hand moving down. You take a depth breath and descend.

As you descend keep the weight over the middle of your feet, you should not feel it more on the front or the back of your foot. Once you have reached competition legal depth (the lifter must bend the knees and lower the body until the top surface of the legs at the hip joint is lower than the top of the knees), then you immediately drive up hard. Do not go any deeper than you have to. There are no prizes for the deepest squat. Squat to legal depth and no more. Practise squatting to legal depth at all times in the gym, that way you will be more confident when it comes to a competition.

The Ascent
Never start the ascent by raising you hips, as this will make you bend forward and so make the lift more difficult and more dangerous. Drive through your heels and you will keep in the correct groove. As you reach the last third of the movement, drive your hips forward, this will pull you up and allow you to finish in the correct position. Wait for the RACK command and then return the weight to the racks.