Seven squat mistakes, and how to see them on your own video
You cannot feel your own back angle mid-rep. A phone on the floor and a side-on view tells you more than any amount of cueing.
· 9 min read
Almost nobody can tell what their own squat looks like. Proprioception is unreliable under load — a squat that feels upright is often twenty degrees forward, and a squat that feels deep frequently stops well above parallel.
The fix is embarrassingly low-tech: prop your phone against a water bottle, film one working set from the side, and watch it. Everything below is visible on that video once you know what you are looking at.
1. Cutting depth
What to look for: pause the video at the lowest point. The crease of your hip should be level with or below the top of your kneecap. If it is clearly above, you are doing a partial squat.
Why it happens: usually the weight is too heavy, and the body stops where it can still reverse. Sometimes it is ankle mobility. Occasionally it is a genuine belief that deep squatting harms the knees, which the evidence does not support for healthy knees.
What to do: drop the weight by 20% and squat to depth. A deep squat with a lighter bar builds more than a quarter squat with a heavy one, and the quarter squat teaches a movement pattern you will have to unlearn later.
2. Knees caving inward (valgus)
What to look for: film from the front for this one. Watch the knees as you come out of the bottom. If they track inward toward each other, that is valgus collapse.
Why it happens: weak glute medius, usually. Sometimes it is simply a too-narrow stance, or shoes with a soft compressible sole.
What to do: think about pushing your knees outward against an imaginary band as you rise. Add direct glute work — side-lying abductions, banded walks — twice a week. Widen your stance slightly and turn the toes out around 20 to 30 degrees.
3. Heels lifting off the floor
What to look for: from the side, watch the heel at the bottom. Any daylight under it means your weight has shifted forward onto the toes.
Why it happens: restricted ankle dorsiflexion, most commonly. The shin cannot travel far enough forward over the foot, so the heel comes up to compensate.
What to do: two things, in parallel. Immediately, squat with a small plate or a proper lifting shoe under the heels — this is a legitimate long-term solution, not a cheat. Separately, work on ankle mobility with knee-to-wall stretches daily.
4. The good-morning squat
What to look for: from the side, watch what rises first out of the bottom. If the hips shoot up and the bar stays low — leaving you bent over with the weight on your back — that is a good-morning squat.
Why it happens: quads that are weak relative to the posterior chain, so the body shifts the work to the stronger muscles. Very common in people who deadlift more than they squat.
What to do: lighten the load and consciously drive with the chest leading. Add front squats or paused squats, both of which punish this pattern immediately and make it obvious when it happens.
5. Losing the neutral spine
What to look for:from the side, watch the lower back at the bottom. If it rounds under — the “butt wink” — you have gone past the depth your hips can currently manage.
Why it happens: hip mobility, stance width, or individual hip anatomy. Some rounding at the very bottom is common and not automatically dangerous, but pronounced rounding under a heavy bar is worth removing.
What to do: squat to just above the point where it starts. Widen your stance and turn the toes out further. Work on hip mobility. Depth will improve, but forcing it by rounding is not the way there.
6. The bar drifting forward
What to look for: the bar should travel in a straight vertical line over the middle of the foot. On video, watch whether it drifts forward over the toes at any point.
Why it happens: the bar is out of position on the back, the upper back is not braced tightly enough, or the weight has shifted to the toes.
What to do: pull the bar hard into your traps before you unrack, squeeze the upper back tight, and think about pushing through the middle of the foot rather than the toes or the heels.
7. Rushing the bottom
What to look for: count the frames. If you drop fast and bounce straight out of the bottom, you are using elastic recoil rather than muscle.
Why it happens: it is easier. The bounce genuinely lets you move more weight.
What to do: control the descent over about two seconds and pause briefly at the bottom. You will need to reduce the weight, and the set will build considerably more than the bounced version did.
A checklist for your video
| Fault | Film from | The tell |
|---|---|---|
| Cutting depth | Side | Hip crease above the kneecap |
| Knees caving | Front | Knees track inward on the way up |
| Heels lifting | Side | Daylight under the heel |
| Good-morning squat | Side | Hips rise before the chest |
| Spine rounding | Side | Lower back tucks under at the bottom |
| Bar drifting | Side | Bar path curves forward over the toes |
| Bouncing | Side | Descent under one second, no pause |
Fix one thing at a time
The temptation after watching your first video is to fix everything at once. That does not work — you cannot hold seven cues in your head under a loaded bar, and attempting it usually makes all seven worse.
Pick the one that appears earliest in the chain. Depth and heel lift are usually upstream of everything else, so fixing those often resolves two or three of the others without direct attention. Work on one cue for two weeks, film again, then move on.
And a note on load: almost every fault on this list appears when the weight goes up and disappears when it comes down. If your video shows three of these, the most likely single cause is that the bar is heavier than your current technique can hold together. Lowering it for a month is not a step backwards.
For training you can do without a gym at all, see our no-equipment home programme — the squat progressions there build the same pattern with no bar to disguise it.
Figures on this page are typical values compiled from public nutrition data and are approximations — real dishes vary with recipe, oil, and portion size. This article is general information, not medical or dietary advice. Talk to a doctor or a registered dietitian about any medical condition or before making significant changes to your diet.