reckonerPendulum squat
A squat machine where the pad swings on an arc instead of sliding on rails. Your back stays on the pad and you can sink very deep with the load where your legs can take it. It is a quad builder, and the cue is sink deep, drive up.
Back on the pad, sink deep, drive up.
- Pattern
- Squat
- Trains
- Quads, glutes
- Kit
- Machine pendulum squat
- Loading
- A weight you choose
- Reckoner prescribes
- 4 sets of 5 to 8 reps at RPE 8
- Progression step
- 5 kg once the top of the range is clean
- Skill
- Simple to learn
- Recovery cost
- Moderate
- Not prescribed if you have declared
- Knee, hip
Muscles worked
How to do it
Set the pads
Stand on the platform with your back flat on the pad and the shoulder pads resting on your shoulders. Feet in the middle of the platform, about shoulder width. The pad has to carry your back through the whole arc, so set it with the machine empty.
Release the lock
Stand up a little to take the weight, then release the safety lock. Note where it is, because you will need it again with tired legs at the end of the set.
Sink deep
Bend your knees and let the pad carry you down, knees tracking over your toes, as deep as you can keep your back on the pad. Depth is the reason to use this machine: full squats grew the glutes and inner thighs more than half squats did in one trial2.
Drive up through the whole foot
Push the platform away through your whole foot until your knees are nearly straight. Lock the machine before you step out.
What goes wrong
Bouncing out of the bottom
The arc makes the bottom feel springy, so a rebound feels like a strong rep. Control the way down and press from a brief stop instead.
Cutting depth
Shallow reps let you load more, so the set looks stronger. The deep range is why this machine exists, and half reps trade away the part that builds the most2.
Heels coming up
Weight drifts onto your toes because the arc pushes you that way, and the heels lift without you noticing. Push the whole foot into the platform, and move your feet a little higher if it keeps happening.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, from 40 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 40 kg | More reps 5 → 6 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 2 | 4 x 6 at 40 kg | More reps 6 → 7 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 3 | 4 x 7 at 40 kg | More reps 7 → 8 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 4 | 4 x 8 at 40 kg | Load up 40 kg → 45 kgYou hit the top of the range with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7), so the weight on the machine goes up 5 kg to 45 kg. The weight went up, so the reps come down to five. You are now working 5 to 8. |
| 5 | 4 x 5 at 45 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 45 kg | More reps 5 → 6 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and 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
Pendulum squat or hack squat?
Both are supported squats for the legs. Rotating squat machines through the week grew the thighs as well as doing the leg press every session, in one ten week trial in young women1. Pick whichever your gym has and run it through a block.
Why is the number so different from my squat?
The machine balances and guides the load, and every machine's leverage differs. Reckoner records the plates you add, so compare the number with itself.
Will Reckoner put this in my plan?
It can, when your gym has one. It is not on any gym preset, so tick it in your equipment checklist. Knee and hip are recorded against it, as with the leg press.
Similar movements
Reckoner eases the load first when this lift stalls, and offers one of these only if it stalls again after that. A lift already as light as your kit goes has no load left to ease, so the offer comes straight away. Each of them has a page.
Sources
- Kassiano and colleagues, Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 2025. Muscle Hypertrophy and Strength Adaptations to Systematically Varying Resistance Exercises seventy young women over ten weeks, one group doing the leg press every session and one rotating the leg press, the hack squat and the Smith machine squat, with thigh muscle thickness rising similarly in both
- Kubo, Ikebukuro and Yata, European Journal of Applied Physiology, 2019. Effects of squat training with different depths on lower limb muscle volumes seventeen men over ten weeks of full or half squats, with knee extensor volume rising similarly in both and adductor and gluteus maximus volume rising significantly more in the full squat group. A barbell squat study, cited here for depth