The back squat is one of the most popular movements used to develop lower body strength, and is often a staple movement in strength and conditioning programs to improve athletic performance. It has also become one of the most controversial movements in the sport-performance realm, especially when applied to many athletes in the sport of track and field. While technological advances have changed training methods, the question of whether sprinters should employ full-depth squats, partial-depth squats, or even squat at all, remains one of the most debated topics in the field today.
Before I progress, I want to be clear that this isn’t a piece trying to convince you of the merits of sprinters and jumpers learning how to back squat to parallel or below. I believe they are beneficial, and when properly taught and implemented back squats can not only be performed safely by nearly any athlete, but they serve as an invaluable component of the strength training regimen. But I’ll get to that in part II. If you are squatting your athletes, this is a guide for how to improve your outcomes with athletes who may look a little different under the bar so you can adapt your coaching model and corrective strategies to the morphology of the individual.
What Is A Long-Limbed Body Type?
Often in sports we see a concentration of body types when it comes to elite level performance. Certain physical characteristics are selected for because of the advantages they confer in particular sports. For example, swimmers tend to have a relatively long torso and arms, short legs, and big hands and feet. Weightlifters tend to have similarly long torsos with relatively shorter arms and legs. Track and Field is no exception, especially when it comes to sprinting and jumping.
Peruse the field at any high level competition like the NCAA Championships, World Championships, or Olympic games for any sprint or jump event, and you are likely to notice a few common themes when it comes to skeletal anatomy.
This recurring “sprinter” build is comprised of relatively long limbs (particularly femurs) and a short torso. While this build can present advantages for sprinting and jumping, it often comes with challenges for the weight room - especially when it comes to squatting. The difficulties faced when squatting athletes with this build are often the cause of coaches opting for ¼ or ½ squat variations under the guise of “specificity”, when it is usually simply to avoid an uncomfortable or awkward position.
Why Are Squats Hard For Sprinters?
To understand why athletes with the prototypical sprinter build often struggle with back squats, we need to look at the mechanics of the movement. One requisite when performing the barbell back squat for any body type is to keep the barbell centered over the mid foot. Keeping the bar balanced here for the duration of the movement ensures that the athlete doesn’t fall forward or backward, and that force can be efficiently applied vertically to the bar.
Athletes with short femurs and long torsos, like those often found in the sport of weightlifting, can keep a relatively vertical torso as short femurs do not place their hips far behind the bar at the bottom of the movement. This horizontal distance from the hips to the bar is also called a moment arm, and the shorter the moment arm, the more vertical the torso will be.
However, as athletes with long femurs and short torsos descend into the bottom position, they must create more of a forward lean in order to keep the bar centered over the foot to accommodate the distance the hips travel back due to the long femurs. As this moment arm lengthens, the musculature of the lower back must work harder to stabilize the spine to transfer force from the hips to the bar. Often the knees have to translate forward further as well, creating a smaller angle at the shin.
To those without long femurs, this position often looks wrong. If you’re a coach used to being in or cueing a more vertical torso, or if you’ve only watched teammates who are built for squatting, long-limbed athletes sometimes look like they are doing something wrong by comparison. To the athlete it can feel uncomfortable if they are unfamiliar with the position.
Optimal technique can look different for each athlete. Creating one rigid “ideal” technical model based on athletes whose morphologies are advantageous for squatting and applying it to athletes with long limbs and a short torso will create a constant struggle. Sometimes coaches see the more forward-leaning position and try to cue the athlete to keep their chest up to produce a more vertical torso, when in reality that just makes them fall backwards by forcing the bar to move behind the balance point over the middle of the foot.
Different body types will look different for movements like squats, even when they are technically performed correctly. For a long-femur athlete to use the squat effectively, they must get strong and stable with a slightly more forward leaning torso in order to maintain balance over the mid foot. This will put slightly more stress on the musculature of the lower back. That’s ok. That doesn’t mean the squat should always be avoided, it just means it needs to be examined through the appropriate technical lens and developed with these expectations in mind. Tissues adapt to the demand placed on them, and while untrained athletes may be uncomfortable in the bottom position initially, the musculature that supports the bottom position will adapt over time to be able to handle the demands without the discomfort. These adaptations do not occur if the position is chronically avoided.
Mobility Requirements
While long-femur athletes can still use squats effectively, the main barrier comes not from body type alone, but when this body type is combined with a lack of requisite ankle mobility.
Being able to create stiffness at the ankle is generally considered a good thing for sprinters and jumpers. A flaccid ankle complex without requisite strength to maintain stiffness can mean slower ground contact times and less efficient transfer of force upon ground contact. These are crucial qualities when developing speed.
Some coaches take the concept of stiffness to justify an extreme lack of mobility at the ankle. But ankle mobility and stiffness don’t have to be mutually exclusive qualities. Aside from the fact that severe immobility can contribute to problems like bony stress injuries, when this sort of severe movement restriction is combined with the typical sprinter body type, we get a recipe for problematic squat positions. As athletes descend into the bottom position, the knees must slide forward more than with short-limbed athletes. There must be a requisite level of ankle mobility in order for this movement to occur. If the athlete lacks ankle mobility, they will appear to fold in half in order to keep the bar balanced over the mid foot, placing significantly more stress on the lower back.
Where To Go From Here
Rigid ankles and long femurs relative to the torso are a combination of traits that may limit the effectiveness of the back squat. It is important for coaches to exercise common sense when coaching athletes who have this combination.
It is not uncommon for strength and performance coaches to yield to the church of “specificity”, implementing only shortened range of motion under the proposition that athletes with the typical sprinter build shouldn’t work to develop the skill of deeper squatting specific to their body type. There are also coaches on the other end of the spectrum who force athletes that simply cannot achieve the desired bottom position of a squat to “get lower” at all costs. Neither of these are excellent choices for the long-term development of the athlete. One unnecessarily removes a valuable tool for strength and power development from the training process by accepting inability as a permanent state, while the other teaches athletes to hate lifting by forcing them through a range of motion they may not be able to tolerate under load.
For long-limbed athletes with enough ankle mobility to perform parallel back squats, there’s no reason to fear them unless there is a pre-existing condition or injury that would otherwise prevent them from being performed safely. Partial range of motion movements like 1/4 squats, 1/2 squats, and pin squats can be useful tools during certain times of the year, but the idea that sprinters and jumpers need to permanently stay out of a parallel position simply because it is difficult deprives the athlete of a valuable tool for their long-term development.
For those with long limbs and rigid ankles, my advice is to simply utilize other movements while developing the requisite mobility to perform back squats correctly. Opting exclusively for partial rang of motion can stunt development. Movements like box squats, belt squats, and Bulgarian split squats can be subbed in as heavy movements with a longer range of motion at the hip while working to improve the ankle mobility required to perform deeper barbell back squats. During this transition period, back squatting to higher positions may be suitable to develop strength through the ankle complex as mobility improves, and allows for the practice of the movement in the range of motion that can safely be achieved.