If you can’t get parallel with squats and fall backwards instead or must hold something in front of you, you won’t like the reason.

Many things have been blamed for not being able to go parallel with squats (free barbell or bodyweight), and often, the most likely culprit gets overlooked.

If you struggle to reach parallel with free barbell or bodyweight squats, you may want to take a look at the length of your thigh relative to your shin. Are you “long thighed” or “short thighed”?

This relativity factor is NOT related to overall body height.

If when you wear shorts, you’re “all thighs,” chances are you have the so-called long femur.

A femur that seems too long for the shin is very likely longer than your torso, and therein lies the problem.

Long femur, short shin

When it comes to barbell or bodyweight squats, a long femur (thigh bone) is a biomechanical disadvantage, especially when paired with a short torso.

In fact, regardless of a person’s height or relative shin length, if their femurs are longer than their torso, this puts them at a disadvantage in the squat.

Many other variables have been blamed on being unable to go parallel with the squat:

Lack of flexibility in the ankles and hips

Weak anterior tibialis muscle (muscle in front of calve)

Stiff lower back; tight calves and poor form.

General weakness. An out-of-shape person, even with femur length shorter than torso length, will likely struggle and end up with bad form (rounded back, hunched shoulders, arms needing to be extending out front to prevent toppling backwards).

Though these are all legitimate reasons for difficulty in parallel squatting, they can also be corrected.

If your femurs are relatively long compared to your shins, coupled with a torso shorter than the femurs, you’re in big trouble.

To counteract the anatomical problem, what must you do?

Someone with poor anthropometrics for the squat must lean their torso very far forward — so far forward that they can lose the arch in their lower back that they’re supposed to have when doing the squat.

In these cases, the back is rounded, chest down. They aren’t in a squat; they are in a crouch.

But even if the back remains straight, it’s still leaned WAY too far forward.

To keep from falling backwards in the barbell squat when parallel, you must have the barbell positioned right over your ankles/midfoot.

To achieve this, the long-femur man or woman (especially with short shins) must really pitch forward to get that barbell over the ankle.

This forces the lower back muscles to absorb considerable tension, increasing injury risk to the lower back and subtracting workload from the quadriceps and glutes.

If a person has great flexibility at the junction of the shin and foot, as well as Achilles tendon flexibility, they could move their knees far ahead of their feet (increase bend in foot/shin junction), which would bring their hips (center of gravity) forward, to get the barbell over the ankles/midfoot.

This would enable him or her to keep balance without leaning their torso over so much.

However, there are several problems here.

1) The shin/foot/Achilles flexibility needs to be developed and may never be enough

2) The knees being so far ahead of the feet puts one in an inefficient position to handle heavy weight, since workload is shifted away from the butt and hamstrings and concentrated too much on the quadriceps, and

3) This positioning puts undue stress on the knees.

The inability to get the feet flat on the floor while in a parallel squat is typically blamed on “poor ankle flexibility.”

Check your femur-to-shin or femur-to-torso proportion; chances are extremely high that this is the problem with parallel squat difficulty.

Now, imagine someone, let’s call him Henry, with very short femurs and crazy long shins; exaggerate these features in your mind as you mentally illustrate the profile.

Henry lowers into a squat. Note how close his hips are to his knees while his thighs are parallel.

With his very long torso, note that Henry hardly has to lean forward to get the barbell over the midpoint of his feet.

The angle that’s created by Henry’s torso with his thighs is significantly bigger than the angle created by the long-femur, short-torso counterpart.

If Henry’s spine is long enough and femurs short enough, his back will be practically upright while he’s parallel in the squat.

Adults who can’t get parallel with a squat, let alone deep, must realize that one reason children squat so easily is body proportions.

Google “children squatting” and hit “images” and you’ll see toddlers in a very comfortable looking squat position, which makes adults envious who struggle or find it impossible to get into even a parallel position.

Look at the femur length of the toddler above, and compare it to his torso.

What do young children have, as far as natural squatting skills, that adults lack?

Just why IS it easier for children to squat than it is for adults?

If you’re seething with jealousy, it will be of some consolation to know that a lot of this has to do with the length of a child from head to hip, relative to their legs.

Anyone who’s been in the news loop only halfway has certainly read at least one story of a toddler drowning  —  as a result of tipping headfirst into a bucket of water or a toilet bowl.

The news article goes on to warn parents about this danger because toddlers are top-heavy.

Shutterstock/Nym_Pleydell

A report from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission states that between 1996 and 1999, 58 children under age 5 were reported to have drowned in five-gallon water buckets.

The CPSC report says that “…the stability of these buckets, makes it nearly impossible for top-heavy infants and toddlers to free themselves when they fall into the bucket headfirst.”

Toddlers have also fallen into toilets with tragic outcomes; the CPSC report adds, “The typical scenario involves a child under 3-years-old falling headfirst into the toilet.”

Bottom line: Young children are top-heavy.

This top-heaviness makes it easy for young children to do a full squat and maintain the position.

Shutterstock/savageultralight

The so-called butt wink in a back squat is bad news and if you have this problem, it needs to be corrected.

Many people butt wink when they perform a squat. Many don’t realize they do this. Why is the butt wink a bad thing?

Well, look at someone doing this. What do you see?

A butt wink is when the lower back loses its extension and morphs into rounding, as the person lowers deeper into the squat.

Some people do the butt wink right before they bottom out, while others experience it a little bit before they reach their depth (whether that’s parallel femurs or deeper).

The butt wink is not deliberate or intentional. It just happens, and there are varying explanations.

How many times have you heard, “Never round the lower back,” when it comes to the squat? Yet, the butt wink is precisely that.

So what’s so bad about a rounded lower back in the squat exercise?

Plenty. The lower back (erector spinae) muscles are stabilizers. They are not force-production muscles.

Their job is to stabilize the spine and transfer forces from the upper body to the lower body, not move heavy weight.

This is why low back injury can result when someone lifts a heavy item off the ground while their lower back is rounded, trunk flexed forward.

The erector spinae are not supposed to absorb forces that the legs and glutes are supposed to absorb.

When a person is at the bottom of a squat, in a butt wink, the erector spinae muscles are absorbing forces that they shouldn’t be, even though the man or woman may not feel this occurring.

When they begin rising out of the squat, the butt will “unwink.” In order for this to happen, the low back muscles must engage before the legs and glutes do.

Once the low back is returned to an extended (arched) position, the legs and glutes can take over.

The risk of low vertebral injury increases as the weight load increases. A “rounded back” during a squat doesn’t always have to resemble the Hunchback of Notre Dame’s.

• Watch someone butt winking.
• It can be quite subtle, but when it’s there, even a half-trained eye can detect it.
• It doesn’t look right, and there’s a reason for that; it’s not right.

Though the increased risk of low back injury is slight if the load isn’t that heavy, who needs strain in this region?

The risk is higher in people who already have tweaky erector spinae muscles.

The butt wink is bad. Make a concerted effort to kick this problem once and for all.

Lorra Garrick is a former personal trainer certified through the American Council on Exercise. At Bally Total Fitness she trained women and men of all ages for fat loss, muscle building, fitness and improved health. 

There is no comparison between an adult’s full squat and a young child’s full squat, yet people continue comparing the two when discussing the back squat exercise.

As a former personal trainer, it continues to amaze me at how often other personal trainers and hardcore strength training and weightlifting enthusiasts keep pointing out that if a young child or toddler could get down into a full squat, an adult should be able to do so. Bah!

Any layperson with his eyes half open should be able to see a more-than-subtle difference between a toddler’s, and even grade schooler’s, body proportions, and an adult’s, even a short adult’s.

The distance between a toddler’s hips and head, relative to their legs, is significantly greater than in an adult’s!

View a profile of a toddler in a full squat. The relatively huge head of the child below prevents him from falling backwards and provides a comfortable leverage point.

Shutterstock/Rozochka

The length between the toddler’s hips and head acts as a fabulous leveraging device that easily keeps the baby (or young child) from falling backwards, while allowing the toddler to keep his back fairly upright.

To keep from falling backwards, a person in a deep squat needs to have the shoulders vertically aligned with the midfoot.

The less length between the hips and the shoulders, the more that the person needs to lean their torso forward, to get the shoulders smack over the midfoot.

This fact of physics is SO obvious, I don’t know why it escapes so many fitness professionals and gym enthusiasts.

A young child squats to retrieve something on the floor or work with something on the ground.

Instinctively a toddler knows that if he bends over like an adult, he’ll fall flat on his head.

Toddlers and babies are top-heavy enough to tip headfirst into a bucket of water and drown; they can’t lift themselves out because there’s not enough “length” under their center of gravity to straighten back up.

A report from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission states: “…the stability of these buckets, makes it nearly impossible for top-heavy infants and toddlers to free themselves when they fall into the bucket headfirst.”

I’ve read the strength training and muscle building forums, and time and time again, someone points out that if toddlers can full squat, adults can, once they stop making excuses.

Now, I’m not endorsing any excuses here. My criticism is the comparison of adult full squats to children’s full squats (also known as the Third World squat).

I might also mention that the full squat of a toddler is entirely different from the classic Third World squat, which is more of a crouch, though in some nations, an adult version of the toddler full squat is commonly used as a resting position.

Another reason the child’s squat to adult’s is an unfair comparison is because toddlers have ridiculously short femurs relative to their shins.

This is SO evident in early toddler-hood, when babies are walking across a room just in their diapers, and all you see are these shins coming out of the diaper; where are their thighs (femurs)?

The femur gets longer, relative to the rest of the body, as the child grows, but for quite a while, that femur is this short stumpy thing that provides superb leverage in a full squat, keeping the shoulders easily aligned over the midfoot because the minimal hip displacement by the super short femur minimizes the forward torso lean.

An adult’s head is one-eighth their height, on average. An infant’s is one-fourth their body length!

Though a toddler has grown quite a bit since being born, his head is nowhere near one-eighth his body length!

That big bobbing head of a toddler serves as an excellent counterforce to the mild hip displacement in a full squat!

Older children, too, have this advantage, but not as pronounced, but enough to make a comparison between even an older child’s full squat and an adult’s full squat outright ridiculous.

Lorra Garrick is a former personal trainer certified through the American Council on Exercise. At Bally Total Fitness she trained women and men of all ages for fat loss, muscle building, fitness and improved health. 

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Top image: Freepik.com

Sources:
cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml02/02169.html
www.dace.co.uk/proportion_child_2.htm

Here are three simple and fun exercises to improve back squats if you have the unfortunate levers of relatively long femurs.

Bad levers do not mean that you can’t override long femurs by “strengthening your ancillaries.”

Three Exercises for Improving the Back Squat if You Have Long Femurs

Wall squat. Stand facing a wall and figure out the closest you can be to it before your knees would be touching when in a parallel squat.

You’ll need to hold onto something to get into a parallel squat to figure out the distance you need to be from the wall. Mark that distance (e.g., place yardstick parallel to wall).

Face wall and begin squatting, making sure that there’s something nearby you can hold onto.

The objective is not to let your head or face pitch into the wall, though it’s fine if your face (or side of) grazes it as you lower. You just don’t want to lose control and pitch forward.

You will notice several things:

1)     This really forces your lower back to maintain an arch

2)     It stretches the back of the lower leg/Achilles tendon, and

3)     As you keep doing this, you’ll find you can eventually eliminate holding onto something with your hands, and instead just allow your palms to graze the wall.

With that third point, the arms can be straight but somewhere between horizontal and vertical, palms against wall.

The goal then would be to eliminate the grazing and not touch at all. Another goal is to sink as deep as possible.

You’ll notice that as you near the bottom, you’ll lose the lower back arch. This will happen to even a person with short femurs.

I don’t recommend going this far, because you want to teach your body to always have a low back arch.

Wall squats will force your body to get good at maintaining a low back arch past a parallel position.

As you improve with wall squats, stand a little closer to the wall. This will encourage less forward positioning of the knees, but realize that your proportions will have the final say-so.

The second exercise for improving the back squat if you have long femurs is what I call staircase squats.

Ideally, there’s a solid wall on either side of you. Even more ideally, you can sit on the steps where at least one of the walls ends and you can use that for support by curving your palm and fingers around it.

• Sit on a step.
• Position feet on the next step, as you would in a back squat.
• Place heels against the back of the step.
• Arch lower back and shift forward to get knees past the feet (maximize dorsiflexion in ankles).

Every time you begin this exercise, note if your shoulder is right over your midfoot.

This is key, because once you achieve this, you’re ready to remove your butt from the step  —  while keeping heels on it.

The beauty of this exercise is that you never have to worry about falling backwards. The wall allows you to use something for balance without gripping it.

The objective is to eliminate using the wall as you maintain the squat position, butt just a tiny bit off the step.

Hold the squat till you fatigue, then sit and rest. Repeat several times. Concentrate on maintaining the lower back arch.

Make sure feet don’t drift outward any more than you desire, as this can happen without you realizing it.

Working off the next step can be taxing, so alternate between that and the step after the next step.

In fact, beginners may want to use only the second step down, rather than the next step.

This exercise will increase dorsiflexion and train the lower back to keep the arch in those with the longest femurs.

The third exercise for improving the back squat if you have long femurs involves the stability ball, BUT it’s not what you think. There is NO wall involved.

Use a ball that when you sit on it, your femurs are either parallel or below parallel.

If femurs are above parallel, use a smaller ball.

• Position feet as you would in a back squat.
• Arch lower back.
• Align shoulders vertically with midfoot.
• Make sure you’re dorsiflexed as much as possible (never force dorsiflexion; just achieve your natural limit).

You are now in position for a back squat; because the shoulder and midfoot are aligned, you should be able to push the ball aside and hold this position.

Do that and hold until fatigue sets in. Rest and repeat several more times.

Those with long femurs will find that these exercises will enhance your ancillaries: the assistive parts of your body in a back squat. They are the 1) lower back, 2) ankles, 3) hips and 4) shins.

Long femurs + ancillary training + wide stance and you have it made!

When doing these exercises, always wear athletic footwear, and do not force anything or over-train because the tissue around the ankle joint can easily be overstretched.

Lorra Garrick is a former personal trainer certified through the American Council on Exercise. At Bally Total Fitness she trained women and men of all ages for fat loss, muscle building, fitness and improved health. 

Though a long femur relative to shin is a disadvantage in squats, it’s a biomechanical plus in the leg extension and hamstring curl.

The long femur to short shin proportion has been vilified as bad levers for the squat and deadlift.

But it’s vital to point out that these “bad levers” are actually a biomechanical advantage for the leg extension and hamstring curl.

Let’s Look First at the Leg Extension

Shins appear LONG relative to femurs. Shutterstock/lunamarina

Many bodybuilders swear by this exercise for bringing out more sculpting in the quads. The fulcrum is the pivot point (in this case, the knee).

The resistance arm is the length between the knee and the foot where the foot is against the pad (weight application).

The force arm is the length between the knee and the hip.

The leg extension motion is similar to the classic example of a fulcrum and levers that we all learn in physics 101: the teeter totter, in which the fulcrum is represented as a triangle beneath the teeter totter.

On one end of the totter is a weight (the resistance). At the other end is the force (person pushing down on the board).

The closer the triangle (fulcrum) is to the weight, the easier it is to push down on the other end and lift the weight. Imagine the triangle very close to the weight.

That’s a very short resistance arm. Let’s say that the fulcrum is two feet from the weight, and the person at the other end is 15 feet from the fulcrum. He has an easy job.

Now move the triangle (fulcrum) so that it’s only two feet from the person and 15 feet from the weight.

The force arm is now only two feet, and the resistance arm is 15 feet. It will be extremely difficult to push the board down and move the weight.

Apply these concepts to a person with a long femur and short shin, seated on a leg extension machine.

If the distance between knee (fulcrum) and hip is longer than the distance between knee and foot, this is akin to that triangle being closer to the weight.

In other words, think of the knee (fulcrum) as that triangle. Because the shin is short, the knee (triangle) is closer to the foot (weight application) than it is to the hip!

This becomes clearer when you imagine the athlete’s legs in full extension.

The knee is the fulcrum (triangle). If it’s closer to the weight application (foot) than it is to the hip (guy pushing down on teeter totter), it will be easier to move the weight!

Conversely, if the knee is closer to the hip (short femur, long shin), this is akin to the fulcrum (triangle) being closer to the guy pushing down on the board  —  making the work more difficult.

Imagine the profile of someone with a one foot femur and three foot shin sitting on the leg extension machine.

They begin extending their legs. That’s a LOT of shin bone that they must raise up, with that weight at the bottom (foot), and such a short force arm (short femur) to apply the effort.

Imagine a profile of someone with a super long femur and stumpy short shin. Gee, it’s pretty easy to get that shin parallel!

This same concept applies to the hamstring curl.

Shutterstock/Microgen

It will be harder for someone with short femurs and long shins to crank the weight towards their butt (short force arm) than it will for someone with a stretchy long femur and stubby short shin (short resistance arm).

So if you have long femurs and short shins, don’t despair over squat difficulties.

Do the best you can with the squat, but always include leg extensions and hamstring curls and see how much easier it is to move heavy loads than those with perfect squatting levers.

Lorra Garrick is a former personal trainer certified through the American Council on Exercise. At Bally Total Fitness she trained women and men of all ages for fat loss, muscle building, fitness and improved health. 

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Top image: Shutterstock/Flamingo Images