Squat Training: High Bar vs. Low Bar

Two dudes are sitting at the bar, SCREAMING at each other using random fitness terms. The one dude has a massive butt and huge quads but spaghetti-looking arms with big traps. The second dude looks like he can barely wipe his ass, he has no neck but a massive back and huge legs and huge arms. Mobility, trunk stability, load on the bar, all of these terms being thrown at one another while they battle over a clearly hot topic. But what the hell are they debating?!?!? All of a sudden they are gesturing at their shoulders, their hips, their knees. Could it be?!?! Of course, what better debate to have in the bar than a high bar squat vs. a low bar squat. It’s time to roll and figure out exactly what they were screaming about.  

What are they talking about?!?! 

Let’s get into the basis of the argument and figure out what they are even analyzing. The high bar squat is typically used mainly by Olympic weightlifters and by Sports Performance coaches who actually understand movement patterns that are specific for athletic development. The bar will sit high on the lifter’s traps, forcing them to have a very upright posture, a tight torso and in most cases, the lifter will squat as far as they possibly can during the lift.

The low bar squat is a movement used within the sport of powerlifting to determine how much weight an athlete can move with a squatting pattern to around ninety degrees at the hip joint and then back to a fully extended position. Typically during the low bar squat, the knees will barely track forward to the toes and the lifter will push their hips back while the chest drops forward, leading to knee flexion that will ideally be legal for a powerlifting competition. This changes the length of the lever and makes the physics a bit different from a high bar back squat.

Let’s Get into It...What actually happens?

When executing a squat, lifter’s will partake in a pattern known as knee glide or dorsiflexion. This is the motion of the knee tracking forward over the foot. This will occur in varying amounts dependent upon limb length, ankle mobility and bar placement. Typically, a high bar back squatter partaking in Olympic weightlifting will have a higher degree of dorsiflexion occurring during the squat while a low bar squatter will have a much smaller degree of dorsiflexion.

The reason powerlifters and low bar squatters like to avoid dorsiflexion can be numerous. The number one reason for a powerlifter to minimize dorsiflexion of the ankle is due to the fact that the knee will track forward when dorsiflexion occurs, forcing the lifter into a much deeper position. Typically, powerlifters want to keep their range of motion much shorter during competition while still maintaining a legal hip depth. By thinking through the biomechanics, the length of the shin is fixed on any given athlete. The further this lever (the shin) is from upright, the lower the squat becomes.  Low bar squatting involves a forward lean. This forward lean is the cause of the center of mass change that we discussed earlier. Picture an athlete with a few hundred pounds on their back, if they simply leaned forward, they would fall. What actually takes place is a counterbalance in which their hips come back further to compensate, keeping the center of mass over their midfoot, where it will be in any proper squat or Olympic movement(except for split jerks for obvious reasons). When the hips come back, this stops the knees from coming as far forward and BAM, you can squat to legal meet depth without actually moving the weight as far.

Lowering the bar on one’s back also shortens the distance between the bar and the hips. With levers, the greater the distance from the fulcrum, the more of a speed advantage and the less this distance becomes, the greater the force advantage. A low bar squat will generally have a greater weight outcome for this very reason. This is all without consideration of the muscles used in the two movements.

What is being used...BRUH?

In general, a high bar squat tends to be more anterior chain dominated (remember the quads on the one dude in the argument?), developing the quadriceps most noticeably, whereas a low bar squat will allow the hamstrings and glutes to play a greater role in the movement. The high bar squat tends to be more advantageous for hypertrophy training (and the size of the butt…). The high bar squat as mentioned allows for a greater range of motion and tends to create more stimulus per load allowing for more muscle growth because of the length of the eccentric portion of the lift. It also takes less of a toll on the shoulders and wrists making it less likely to inhibit other parts of training. These factors tend to make it favorable for non-powerlifting athletes as well as Olympic lifters due to the carryover to cleans and snatches.

One could assume at this point that a low bar is the way to go for powerlifters seeing that the goal is to lift more weight. Before diving into explaining my personal choices and the coaching choices for most of my athletes, I want to step away from all of my biases and personal methods. The key takeaway from this post should be that every powerlifter should high bar squat at some point. This can be in the offseason, during speed days, or during a few mesocycles throughout the year. The use of high bar squat as a variation allows for an athlete to train the muscles used in the low bar squat more often while not constantly overloading the same movement 2-3 times a week all year round. This is important in achieving greater general development in new athletes and it allows more advanced athletes to accomplish the greater amount of volume they need in order to see results in those muscle groups without having to increase injury risk in bones and connective tissues.  High bar squatting can also be a form of mobility work. Many athletes think that rolling out and stretching before a session is all they need to do to improve mobility, but this simply helps with passive mobility. It’s great to open up a range of motion with tissue work or stretches, but the idea is to be strong in that range of motion that those 30 minutes of work just opened up so that the body doesn’t tighten back up to avoid them again. Since a high bar squat usually requires more ankle, knee, and hip mobility than a low bar squat, an athlete can use this as a tool for maintaining joint health and injury prevention. This also will hopefully result in fewer feelings of tightness in muscles between sessions and shorter stretching and rolling sessions to be needed before a lift.

Recap

Finally, going back to the benefits of the high bar as a tool for hypertrophy, almost every athlete will have to move up a weight class at some point in their powerlifting career and to not use the high bar as a tool to accomplish this would be a mistake in my opinion. This goes for every lift and its variations. When dealing with a sport where we easily get caught up in weight on the bar and shortening range of motion, it is often forgotten that this is not the best way to train for all of our goals. Full range of motion bench, deficits pulls, RDL’s, snatch grip deadlift, and the focus here being high bar squat are all tools that utilize greater ranges of motion which offer a greater stimulus for muscle growth at any given load. This will allow athletes to gain muscle without as great of an injury risk due to the lower loads needed. My choice to compete with high bar squats along with many of the athletes I program for is due to the nature of the programming used. Most of the volume in my programming comes from Olympic lifts. This means that much of this volume replaces my accessory work. With this being the case, there is a much greater carryover of these movements into my high bar squat. I also find that not training low bar squats has less interference with my deadlifts and bench as it is less taxing to the posterior chain and results in much less load on my wrists and elbows. It is as simple as high bar squatting fitting slightly better into my hybrid personal training split and an effort to prevent injuries at the sacrifice of mechanical advantage on meet day.