The Science of Squat Depth

How deep should you squat for athletic performance? Strength Coach Dane Miller breaks down the Science of Squat Depth and from scientific research to determine if athletes should squat partial range or full range of motion for athletic performance.

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0:00 How deep should you squat for athletes?
1:05 Squat Study
4:42 MAXING out the Squat Test
6:17 Study Results
11:05 What did researchers expect?
12:25 Another Squat Study
12:42 Problems with Study
14:00 Using Jerks instead of Squats?
15:00 What Can WE Learn?

[GarageStrength]

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[hermanstr]

recently started watching this channel, ive got to say its easily my favourite fitness channel I've been using some off your drills and exercises for my rugby preseason and have already seen so much improvement in balance and coordination and agility. Would love to see some backline focused rugby videos, other than that thanks for the great content, I just wished more of the products you advertised could ship to Australia.

[VocalBeast]

So happy to have seen how your channel has grown. Cannot stress how much I love this channel and the consistency you bring with every video. Big ups my man!!!!

[Steve-qyor]

Great job Coach!!! I have been training for nearly 40 years (53 yo) and I have my masters in exercise physiology. I felt like I was back in class listening to my professors while watching this. Really solid work here...I just clicked subscribe!

[helmutkrusemann]

your knowledge is unmatched. I appreciate you and thank you very much for sharing so much great content!!!

[ipoddish]

This is really interesting. I went from a 315 1rm back squat to a 365 1rm back squat at the same bodyweight, and my vertical jump improved drastically. All of my squat training in that off season was done with bands as well so I wonder if that had an impact on the results.

[GarageStrength]

Get STRONGER LEGS with our BIG SQUAT PROGRAM 🏆✔🦵

[Whampchoir]

Such a great analysis and summary of an interesting piece of research. Thank you

[felipecoelho]

That was a really fkng good video. You guys made a study that's usually pretty boring to read into a very easy to understand video. Thanks for the great content!

[selfemployed]

I always do full range of motion with both front and back squats, I recently started pin and quarter squats. I do feel like they have helped my dip and drive for the jerk.

[SchuViews]

Appreciate the science based approach you take Dane! Athletes can take your work to heart because you apply the science to your programs to build Olympic level athletes.

[disciples]

I love your videos as the advice is great for a rugby player trying to get explosive

[rollsroyce]

Great information...👍🏾👍🏾 thank you..and nice Blackstar shirt 😁

[withmydoglikeshaggy]

This is super dope. Would love move vids like this.

[jessen]

Great video 👍
Would be nice with a link to the study 👍🙏

[rashidabdul-salaam]

First of all…..the T-shirt is dope! ✊🏽✌🏽 oh and thanks for all of the useful information as well

[DomCOuano]

i see it. you got your hands up and in front of you when you're doing most athletic moves. front squat totally translates to fighting and balling and everything. dang. thanks Coach!

[HarrySKeith]

That "Black Star" shirt is on POINT sir!

[bigry]

Love the Black Star shirt! Had that album on repeat in college. 2 of the best lyricist of all time hands down

[zenpharaohs]

What a great study; I would have liked to know this 20 years ago, or even 40 years ago. I get you are very focused on power and speed. However some of the reasons I moved to lower range of motion (more than quarter, but not deep) squats was there were a bunch of studies "in the last century" which did show that whatever angular range of motion you trained in a joint led to an increase of about 10-15 degrees more angle for strength. And that might still hold up in comparison to this study, since quarter squat doesn't seem that close to deep - which would predict what was observed in the study - not much improvement. However squatting "parallel" is not that far from deep, so maybe that is not directly countraindicated by this study. I suppose they went for quarter squats for a reason, but it sort of means the "parallel" case is in limbo?

I suppose a collateral question for study would be like considering rack pulls as opposed to full deadlifts. I do think a lot of people would be surprised if there was no hypertrophy from rack pulls. But isn't that what you might expect from the results of this study?

One of the reasons we avoided "full" range of motion was studies that showed that full load and full range of motion was risky (i.e. why some people don't "lock out" at the top, squat all the way even if they squat deep, etc.) That doesn't appear to have been something this study observed. That old rule would have predicted full movements provide improvement in limited movements, but that the limited movement they used here is too limited to improve results at the extreme angles.


Another point is that to get full range of motion, we figured that copious unilateral work was a better bet, since you don't need the same loads. I bet heavily on unilateral lifts about 15 years ago and think that was a good move. All my heavy bilateral squats since then have been box squats with full relaxation on the box, with depth just about exactly parallel. All the deep squats I've done in that period are unilateral (mostly Bulgarian). Do you think reserving full range of motion to unilateral exercises would be a mistake?


In any case it's too late for me, my college athletic "career" (fencing) was in the 1970s. So yeah, I used to be really interested in jumping performance (although not the one you usually think about) but my high impact days are pretty much over now.