reckonerGoblet squat
One dumbbell held against your chest, squatted with. The weight out in front acts as a counterweight, so most people find a depth here they cannot reach with a bar on their back, which is the reason to start with it rather than the reason to stay with it.
Elbows inside the knees at the bottom.
- Pattern
- Squat
- Trains
- Quads, glutes, adductors
- Kit
- Dumbbell or kettlebell
- Loading
- A weight you choose
- Reckoner prescribes
- 4 sets of 5 to 8 reps at RPE 8
- Progression step
- 2 kg once the top of the range is clean
- Skill
- Some technique
- Recovery cost
- Moderate
- Not prescribed if you have declared
- Knee, hip
Muscles worked
How to do it
Hold the dumbbell like a cup
One end cupped in both hands, held vertically against your sternum. Elbows tucked in under it. It rests on your hands and your chest together, not hooked up by your arms.
Stand a little wider than your hips
Feet about shoulder width with the toes turned out a few degrees. You want room between your thighs for your torso to travel down into.
Squat straight down
Sit between your feet. The weight in front lets you stay upright, so use that: chest tall, eyes forward, no folding at the hip.
Elbows inside the knees at the bottom
That is the cue on your wrist, and it is a measurement rather than a nicety. If your elbows meet your knees on the way down, your knees have collapsed inward or your depth has stopped early.
What goes wrong
Letting the dumbbell drift away from your chest
The moment it comes off your sternum, your arms are holding it out in front of you and your upper back is paying for a squat. Pull it back in. If you cannot keep it there for the whole set, the set is over.
Stopping at parallel because the weight is easy
The counterweight is there to buy you depth. Not using it wastes the one thing this variation is good at, and depth is where the return is: full squats grew the glutes 6.7 per cent against 2.2 for half squats over ten weeks, and the adductors 6.2 against 2.71.
Staying on it after it stops being hard
This lift is limited by what one dumbbell weighs and by what your arms can hold against your chest, and both run out well before your legs do. When the last rep of a set is comfortable and the dumbbell rack has nothing heavier, the honest move is a barbell or a machine, not more repetitions.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, from 22.5 kg, 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 at 22.5 kg | 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 at 22.5 kg | 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 at 22.5 kg | 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 at 22.5 kg | Load up 22.5 kg → 25 kgYou hit the top of the range at RPE 7, so the bar goes up 2.5 kg to 25 kg and reps reset to five. |
| 5 | 4 x 5 at 25 kg | 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 | 2 x 5 at 25 kg | 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. The lighter week is over, so this is back to four 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
Is a goblet squat only for beginners?
No, but it does have a ceiling. It is genuinely useful for learning depth and for training legs when a rack is not available, and it stops being a leg exercise the day your arms give out before your quads do.
Kettlebell or dumbbell?
Either. Reckoner records this as a dumbbell movement and progresses it on the dumbbell ladder, so if you are using a kettlebell, log the weight you actually held.
Will Reckoner give me this with a knee restriction?
No. Knee and hip are the two restrictions the library records against it. Declare either in setup and it comes out of your plan.
Similar movements
Reckoner has no other movement in this swap group.
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