When leg day rolls around, many lifters prioritize barbell exercises like squats and Romanian deadlifts. That’s a generally reliable approach for constructing size and strength, but an aversion to machine exercises could make lower body workouts less effective, and it could possibly make gains harder to come back by.
If lifters do incorporate machine-based movements, it’s often basic leg extensions or leg curls and perhaps a gratuitous set of calf raises. But one specific machine — a squat variation, in truth — may be the important thing to unlocking latest muscle growth, increased strength, and improved joint health.
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The hack squat may be very effective for constructing the legs and strengthening the knees and hips. It may possibly be a staple in lots of routines, particularly for those seeking to add muscle to their frame. It’s time to learn the ins and outs of this misunderstood machine.
Find out how to Do the Hack Squat
The vast majority of industrial gyms have at the least one hack squat machine, but different equipment manufacturers have barely different designs. Some are almost completely horizontal, with the lifter lying flat on their back and moving along fixed tracks. Some machines are designed with a full support and shoulder pads on an angled track and foot platform.
Mostly, nonetheless, a seated pad is about up on a 45-degree slant, sometimes called a “linear” or “hip sled” hack squat. An angled foot platform allows your entire lower body to run parallel to the weighted sled, with a seat designed to maintain your upper body vertical. There is commonly a pad supporting the lower to mid-back, no upper back support, and a pair of handles on either side of the seat to carry onto.
Step 1 — Get Your Stance Right
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Sit down and place your feet on the platform. Your lower body flexibility and mobility will influence exactly where you set your feet. The secret’s to have the ability to maintain your heels flat on the platform as your knees bend fully throughout the complete range of motion.
It’s about finding the sweet spot, which is commonly around hip-width toward the center of the platform. Don’t place your feet too high on the platform, too low, too narrow, or too wide — find your Goldilocks stance. What matters most is allowing your knee and ankle joints to realize a protracted, pain-free range of motion.
Keep your legs barely bent without disengaging the protection pins. Sit along with your back supported on the pad. Keep your posture upright along with your shoulders pulled back.
Form Tip: Try wearing a pair of shoes that add to your lower body support. Sometimes minimalist shoes can create an inadequate base and exacerbate foot issues people have with arch collapse. If it takes switching out of your bare feet or Chuck Taylors and wearing a sturdy pair of lifting shoes while performing just a few sets, take the additional step to get probably the most out of the lift.
Step 2 — Lower Yourself right into a Deep Squat
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Press through your entire foot and straighten your legs while releasing the protection. Grip the side handles tightly. Maintain good posture and don’t compromise a “proud” chest position.
Slowly lower your body by bending your knees until your upper thigh is roughly 90-degrees to your hip joint — so long as your knees can handle it without pain. Keep your feet flat on the platform and maintain contact between your hips and the pad. Pause briefly in the underside position.
Form Tip: Irrespective of the precise model of hack squat machine, squeeze the handles tightly throughout the exercise. Keeping a decent grip can improve upper body stability and reinforce a powerful posture. (1)
Step 3 — Lift Strong to Lockout
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Without bouncing out of the underside position, straighten your legs by applying strong and regular pressure through each feet. Don’t let your knees cave inward or bow outward.
Press hard into the platform, transferring a strong leg drive through your hips and into the seat, as you straighten your legs and “stand” back into the highest position.
Form Tip: The hack squat is right for accumulating mechanical tension, which may be very effective for hypertrophy (muscle growth). (2) To maintain the working muscles under tension, stop just shy of fully extending or straightening your legs, and keep your knee and hip joints barely flexed (before lockout).
Hack Squat Mistakes to Avoid
Like most multi-joint movements, not taking note of details can invite the usage of sloppy form and dangerous technique. Troubleshooting this by pinpointing specific mistakes can assist you stay ahead of the curve. Here’s easy methods to prevent these follies from taking hold.
Insufficient Range of Motion
Partially bending your knees and performing shallow reps is commonly as a result of excessively heavy weight that can’t be lifted through a full range of motion. This reduces muscle activity and short-changes your results. (3)
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A joint ought to be trained through its entire available energetic range of motion. It must also be made strong through that range. (4) There’s no reason why this shouldn’t be the case for principally every load-bearing joint within the body — that’s the way you construct general physical preparedness and drastically reduce injury risk.
Free weight movements like lunges or front squats involve loads of total-body stabilizing and muscular coordination, however the hack squat machine allows you to pursue a healthy, deep range of motion while loading all involved muscles and distributing stress evenly across joints.
The machine’s support pads drastically reduce the stabilizing and coordination elements, so you may and may focus solely on working through a whole range of motion.
Avoid it: Keep the burden on the lighter side to make sure a full range of motion. Aim to get your upper thigh at a 90-degree angle to your hips on every repetition. When you may do the specified set of reps with that range of motion, it’s time to progress to a heavier load.
Lifting Your Heels
Whether this comes from poor ankle mobility, general negligence, or an try to “goal the quads” greater than easy flat-footed squatting, it’s best to avoid rising onto your toes, especially whenever you’re learning the hack squat.
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Lifting your heels off of the platform places all of the burden and stress onto the balls of your feet, and can end in loads of stress also being placed in your knee joints. While some lifters’ knees may have the ability to handle this extreme stress, it’s still not winning the chance:reward ratio.
Avoid it: Take into consideration elevating the toes barely off the platform during your descent. It will emphasize your heels staying down. Take into consideration pressing “away” along with your feet such as you’re about to leap backward, quite than pressing “straight down”, as when you’re about to leap up. It will help keep your full foot involved, and encourage your heels to remain planted.
Slouching with a Weak Core
It could seem to be a comparatively insignificant detail for the reason that hack squat is a lower body exercise, but your upper body posture plays a task in performance. It’s just like several exercise — the more muscles the complete body can involve in bracing and tightness, the higher quality the lift will likely be as a complete.
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With the hack squat, slouching forward and never keeping an engaged core can lead to you “leaking strength” for the lift, which reduces your ability to use maximum force.
Avoid it: Begin upper body bracing along with your grip strength. Hold on to those handles tightly to and tense your upper back by squeezing your shoulder blades together. Maintain that tension throughout the entire set.
Advantages of the Hack Squat
The hack squat is usually a key player in your leg workout whether you’re after muscular size or raw strength and power. Simply because it’s a machine doesn’t make it less effective than a barbell.
Leg Size
The hack squat removes the necessity for total-body stabilizing and spatial awareness, and creates a set path movement. This enables greater “isolation” to the lower body. While it’s still a multi-joint exercise involving the hips, knees, and ankles, the muscles above the waist usually are not directly targeted like they might be during back squats, for instance.
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This makes it easier to tap into the muscles of the lower body and stimulate them for hypertrophy (muscle growth). The unique angle of the machine also allows the muscles to be put under constant tension, which further stimulates growth.
Lower Body Strength
Since the hack squat involves the quadriceps, hamstrings, and glutes, it has the potential to be loaded with relatively heavy weights. Your legs may be targeted with decreased strain on the lower back, making the hack squat an efficient method to construct lower body strength without the lower back wear and tear from barbell squats or deadlifts.
Knee Strengthening
It’s no secret that the knee joint is put under a good amount of pressure when performing the hack squat, and that’s actually the explanation why many lifters avoid the movement altogether. Nevertheless, for healthy individuals without pre-existing knee issues, this may create helpful stress on the connective tissues of the knee, and joint health can potentially improve within the long-term.
To make any joint stronger, identical to making any muscle stronger, a lifter may have to get comfortable with a little bit of discomfort. Improving joint strength requires adding (reasonable) stress to that joint, and using sound technique, appropriate loading, and progressive volume is probably the most effective path.
Muscles Worked by the Hack Squat
As a squat variation, the hack squat actually targets your legs. The machine’s path and angle of resistance offer a novel training variety and stimulate the muscles barely in a different way than other variations, making it a highly effective movement.
Quadriceps
The quads are the primary muscle group hit by the hack squat. It is a group of 4 muscles on the front of the thigh that attach through one common tendon at the highest of the knee. Since they’ve one common point of attachment, it’s difficult to isolate the quad muscles individually, however the hack squat trains them very effectively as a bunch.
The quadriceps’ primary role is to increase the knee joint (straighten the leg), so achieving a deep knee bend is very important to work the muscles through a full range of motion.
Glutes and Hamstrings
The hamstrings and glutes, the complete back half of your upper legs, are relatively less involved through the hack squat. Each muscle groups play a task in hip extension (pulling your lower body backward according to your torso), which isn’t a big movement pattern through the hack squat.
The glutes and hamstrings each play a small role in controlling your descent and transitioning out of the underside position.
Hip Flexors
Your hip flexor muscles, found above your quadriceps on either side of your pelvis, are also involved within the hack squat. They work to bring your thighs closer to your torso, so that they are highly activated within the lower a part of the range of motion.
Because your legs are set at a set angle relative to your torso, your hips flexors are under constant tension since the hack squat keeps your hip joint from fully extending (stretching) throughout the movement.
Who Should Do the Hack Squat
This exercise spans a broader audience than may meet the attention. While it’s a comparatively specialized machine, it could possibly be used very effectively by lifters with quite a lot of training goals.
Muscle-Focused Lifters
The hack squat is an efficient movement for any lifter who desires to make their legs grow. It’s a staple in lots of bodybuilders’ quad-focused workouts since it allows the quadriceps to take nearly all of training stimulus with minimal strain on the lower back or other supporting muscles.
Lifters who’ve a tough time isolating their quads with other movements like barbell squats, as a result of having longer legs, poor leverages, or mobility restrictions, may particularly profit from the hack squat. There’s no escape from loads of quad activation with this movement.
Lifters with Back Injuries
The hack squat may be useful for lifters with prior back injuries who need to proceed hard leg training. In case your spine can not handle squatting with a barbell in your back, the hack squat can help you keep loading relatively heavy weights with a giant compound (multi-joint) squat variation.
Beginners
Beginners can often profit from the added stability and predictability of the hack squat machine. The movement pattern is pre-determined, so lifters are in a position to use proper technique more easily. Using the hack squat at the side of more difficult movements (like squats and lunges) may be an ideal method to find results faster and construct crucial training confidence.
Find out how to Program the Hack Squat
The hack squat is most frequently used as a secondary exercise, performed after one other compound lift like squats, deadlifts, and even split squats. This enables the hack squat to more thoroughly work the goal muscles without affecting the steadiness requirements of free weight exercises.
Moderate Weight, Moderate Repetition
For optimal muscle-building, one of the best plan of action is to chase reps into the double-digits. Three to 5 sets of 10 or more reps. Aim to build up relatively high training volume on this exercise — loads of sets and reps — to maximise the hypertrophy signal.(5)
Moderate to Heavy Weight, Lower Repetition
In the event you determine to make the hack squat your primary movement of the workout, you may increase the burden used and lower the reps, since your central nervous system may have somewhat bit more within the tank whenever you’re completely fresh. 4 to 5 sets of 5 to eight reps will let you progress heavier weights while still maintaining perfect form.
Hack Squat Variations
The hack squat machine is one specific exercise, however the hack squat movement is, itself, a more general squat variation. There are several options to get the strength-building and joint health advantages when you don’t have access to a real hack squat machine.
Landmine Hack Squat
The landmine hack gives your ankles a more open angle to maneuver through because your feet are flat on the bottom quite than angled. Meaning happier knees and much more range of motion. Having the burden set in a landmine unit also lets you make minor lateral adjustments to search out the right groove.
Turning around and having your back against the burden plates lets you find the right degree of “body lean” and the suitable foot position, much like squatting with a Smith machine, without the confines of a very fixed path. This combines to deliver an ideal pump, because you’re continuously using your quads to thrust back against the burden and maintain your body’s angle.
Barbell Hack Squat
Technically speaking, that is the unique hack squat. Named after George Hackenschmidt, a European strongman from the very early twentieth century, this movement is finished by placing a barbell just behind your heels, squatting down, grabbing the bar, and lifting it up.
Elevating your heels with a block or weight plate changes the angle of your ankles, much like wearing weightlifting shoes, and encourages a deep squat position. The barbell also acts as a counterbalance and allows an upright torso, which reduces lower back strain.
Reverse Hack Squat
This is a straightforward variation of the hack squat done on machines with full back supports and shoulder pads. By facing into the machine, you may allow your hips to maneuver backwards, much like a barbell back squat, which may increase hamstring and glute activity.
Nevertheless, you must maintain a neutral spine. Hinging excessively on the hips and making a more horizontal torso angle can drastically increase stress in your lower back. Some lifters may additionally find that their knees move forward and hit the machine’s rails, forcing them to maintain their knees and lower legs at a clumsy or inefficient angle.
Hack Squat Alternatives
With no hack squat machine or effective variations, there are several effective machine-based movement to construct lower body size and strength with reduced joint strain.
Leg Press
This may increasingly be probably the most common hack squat alternative for the reason that two movements share many similarities. Each exercises keep your feet on a platform, which places your knees because the prime moving joint quite than your hips, and affects muscle recruitment. Each movements also require your hips to stay flexed as a result of your lower body’s position relative to your upper body.
The leg press could also be an acceptable option for individuals who experience an excessive amount of knee stress from hack squats, for the reason that foot platform is now moving toward your body versus your body moving toward the foot platform. This subtle change could make a giant difference for managing knee stress. (6)
Smith Machine Squat
The Smith machine squat is one other popular and effective alternative to the hack squat (and a comparatively popular alternative to barbell squatting, too).
One key profit to the Smith machine is the power to set your feet well in front of the bar, ensuring a vertical shin angle. Because this position doesn’t allow your knees to maneuver forward, there’s extremely little stress in your knee joints (which also means little joint-strengthening profit). Nevertheless, the muscular stress on the quadriceps is significantly increased.
FAQs
Should I at all times squat deep?
Generally, you’ll stimulate higher overall results — more muscle growth, more strength, and more mobility — by working within the maximum range of motion you may achieve within the working joints. In the event you’re physically unable to squat extremely deep, squat to your current best depth.
With consistency and energy, your range of motion will improve right along along with your muscle gains and your weights. The one time to avoid squatting deep is whenever you make a conscious decision to regulate the range of motion to use a selected training method.
For instance, some lifters might deliberately perform short range of motion squats to make use of heavier weights as a short-term overload phase, before returning to full range of motion training. That’s a far cry from unintentionally loading an excessive amount of weight on the bar and shaving reps high to massage your ego.
Time to Hack It
The hack squat is a movement that’s for everybody and never for everybody at the identical time. Relatively than vilifying certain exercises based on what the pro-barbell “gym bros” say or what the functional-based “research” may purport with insufficient context, it’s higher to do not forget that everyone isn’t built the identical. Your individual mileage may vary with any exercise, and it’s as much as you to use the facility of trial and error.
Hack squats can provide significant advantages relating to quad strengthening and muscle-building. The movement caters to each the start lifter looking to search out his groove and the advanced lifter who’s putting the ending touches on their lower body physique. Give the lift a good try to discover how it really works for you.
References
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- Schoenfeld B. J. (2010). The mechanisms of muscle hypertrophy and their application to resistance training. Journal of strength and conditioning research, 24(10), 2857–2872. https://doi.org/10.1519/JSC.0b013e3181e840f3
- Kubo, K., Ikebukuro, T., & Yata, H. (2019). Effects of squat training with different depths on lower limb muscle volumes. European journal of applied physiology, 119(9), 1933–1942. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00421-019-04181-y
- Pallarés, JG, Hernández-Belmonte, A, Martínez-Cava, A, Vetrovsky, T, Steffl, M, Courel-Ibáñez, J. Effects of range of motion on resistance training adaptations: A scientific review and meta-analysis. Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2021; 31: 1866– 1881. https://doi.org/10.1111/sms.14006
- Mangine, G. T., Hoffman, J. R., Gonzalez, A. M., Townsend, J. R., Wells, A. J., Jajtner, A. R., Beyer, K. S., Boone, C. H., Miramonti, A. A., Wang, R., LaMonica, M. B., Fukuda, D. H., Ratamess, N. A., & Stout, J. R. (2015). The effect of coaching volume and intensity on improvements in muscular strength and size in resistance-trained men. Physiological reports, 3(8), e12472. https://doi.org/10.14814/phy2.12472
- Escamilla, R. F., Fleisig, G. S., Zheng, N., Lander, J. E., Barrentine, S. W., Andrews, J. R., Bergemann, B. W., & Moorman, C. T., third (2001). Effects of technique variations on knee biomechanics through the squat and leg press. Medicine and science in sports and exercise, 33(9), 1552–1566. https://doi.org/10.1097/00005768-200109000-00020
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