reckonerBodyweight squat
Squat down, stand up, nothing in your hands. It is the shape every other squat is built on, and because there is no load to hide behind, it is the one where depth and control are the whole exercise rather than a detail of it.
Sit back, keep the heels down.
- Pattern
- Squat
- Trains
- Quads, glutes
- Kit
- Bodyweight
- Loading
- Your own bodyweight
- Reckoner prescribes
- 4 sets of 5 to 8 reps at RPE 8
- Progression step
- Nothing to add, so the sets climb instead
- Skill
- Simple to learn
- Recovery cost
- Very low
- Not prescribed if you have declared
- Knee, hip
Muscles worked
How to do it
Feet about shoulder width
Toes turned out a few degrees, weight spread across the whole foot. Arms out in front as a counterweight if that helps you stay upright, which for most people it does.
Sit back and down together
Hips back, knees bending, chest staying up. Sit back and keep the heels down. That is the cue on your wrist, and the heels are the part people lose first.
Go as deep as you can hold the shape
Down until your thighs are at least level, deeper if your hips allow it without your pelvis tucking under at the bottom. Where that point is depends on your hips, so find yours rather than borrowing somebody else's.
Stand all the way up
Push the floor away and finish with the hips fully through. A set of squats that never reaches the top is a set of half reps, and it is easier to do that with no load than with one.
What goes wrong
The heels coming up
When the heels lift, your weight has gone onto the front of your foot and the squat has become something your knees are holding rather than your legs are driving. Sit back further, narrow the depth to where the heels stay down, and let the depth come back as your ankles allow.
Going faster instead of going deeper
Bodyweight squats get easy, and the tempting fix is speed. It is the wrong one. Depth is where the return is: full squats grew the glutes and the adductors significantly more than half squats over ten weeks, at 6.7 against 2.2 per cent and 6.2 against 2.71. Slow reps at full depth beat fast reps at half.
Staying here after it stops being hard
There is no load to add, so there is a ceiling, and it arrives sooner than people expect. When a set of these no longer challenges you, the answer is a weighted version or a harder pattern rather than another thirty reps.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, run through the real engine. Nothing below was typed in: the prescription, the decision and the sentence beside it all come from the same code that writes your week.
| Week | Prescribed | What it did |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 4 x 5 | More reps 5 → 6 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 2 | 4 x 6 | More reps 6 → 7 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 3 | 4 x 7 | More reps 7 → 8 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 4 | 4 x 8 | One more set 4 → 5 setsYou hit the top of the range at RPE 7 and there is no weight left to add. When a lift runs out of load, the set is the increment, so it does five sets next week. |
| 5 | 5 x 8 | Deload 40% of sets offFive weeks of building, then one week lighter. About 40% of the sets come off. The load holds and your reps stay where you earned them, so you keep the strength and lose the fatigue. |
| 6 | 3 x 8 | Holding steady No changeYou hit the top of the range at RPE 7 and there is no load left to add to this lift. It stays at eight reps while Reckoner looks for the next lever. The lighter week is over, so this is back to five sets. |
Real engine output, not an illustration. Every row was produced by running the engine itself when this page was generated.
The full rule, and why the reps move before the load does, is in how Reckoner decides to add weight.
Questions people ask
How do I make bodyweight squats harder?
Slower lowering, a pause at the bottom, and more depth, in that order, because all three are free. After that you need load or a harder pattern. The library carries a vest squat, a goblet squat and several single leg patterns, and each is its own movement with its own record.
Are bodyweight squats enough on their own?
For a while, and then no. They will build real strength from an untrained start and they run out, because your bodyweight does not increase to match your legs. That is a fact about the exercise rather than a criticism of it.
Will Reckoner give me this with a knee restriction?
No. Knee and hip are both recorded against it. Declare either in setup and it comes out of your plan, and the library records a sit-to-stand squat with no restrictions against it at all.
Similar movements
There is no load to ease on this lift, so Reckoner offers one of these the first time it stalls. Each of them has a page.
Sources
- Kubo and colleagues, European Journal of Applied Physiology, 2019. Effects of squat training with different depths on lower limb muscle volumes seventeen men training full or half squats twice a week for ten weeks, knee extensor volume rising 4.9 per cent against 4.6 per cent with no difference between depths, while the adductors and gluteus maximus grew significantly more in the full squat group at 6.2 against 2.7 per cent and 6.7 against 2.2 per cent, and the rectus femoris did not change in either group