The humble goblet squat

One of my female students who I see twice a month was training in a chain gym. It’s common for me to only see my clients twice a month, but I harass them a couple of times a week via email about training/dietary compliance. You see, I’m all about ‘teaching students’ rather than ‘working out clients’. My aim, is to get to the point where my students only really need me for training programmes, technique tweaks and accountability calls. One of the biggest scams in the Personal Training industry is that you actually need a Personal Trainer.

But I digress. This female, let’s call her Strong Girl, was doing goblet squats with a kettlebell as a part of her warm up. A member of staff tried to correct her and so began a debate about what the goblet squat actually is and what it does.

Staff Guy: “Are you doing a goblet squat? You need to move your butt more backwards, like this.” Proceeds to shove ass backwards as if opening a door.

Strong Girl: “No, that’s where your butt goes in a back squat. In a goblet squat your butt goes to almost 6 ‘o’clock.”

Staff guy: “I think you’re a bit confused. When you squat your butt has to go back more.”

Strong Girl: “No. You are confused. Goblet squat is 6 ‘o’clock-ish, front squat is 7 and back squat is 8. It’s all about where the weight is. Are you sure you’re a Trainer?”

Staff Guy: “…. ok, have a nice workout.” [Hopefully goes off to Youtube to look up Dan John videos about squatting…..]

After hearing this story I was a bit worried that a fellow fit-pro thought this, if even a fit-pro can get this wrong then so can ‘Joe Generic Gym goer’.  So I Googled ‘goblet squat’ and out of the top twelve pictures seven were ‘wrong’ (one was very wrong) or came with ‘wrong’ instructions. Interestingly none of the pictures were of Strength Coach Dan John who’s the guy that created the Goblet Squat as a drill to teach large numbers of secondary age school children how to squat.

That last bit is important – Teaching large numbers of people who’ve forgotten how to squat, to squat.

The goblet squat is primarily a teaching drill or a mobility drill. I try to include it in almost every warm up I prescribe as it ensures that the students hips are sufficiently ‘warmed and opened up’ for whatever we’re about to do that day.

Emphasis on ‘teaching and mobility’. Sure you can go ‘heavy’ on a goblet squat, but that’s a relative term. I don’t see many people using a 48kg kettlebell or 50kg dumbell and doing goblet squats.

Scouring Youtube was the same hit and miss as Google Images. But here’s a good video from Brett ‘Mr Glutes’ Contreras.

As Brett says in the video, the goblet squat is a teaching drill/strength exercise for beginners and a warm up/technique drill for experienced lifters. In the goblet squat you have to go deep into the position to get the best results from it as a hip opening drill. Also, trying to mimic a back squat will mean that you’ll end up ditching the weight as it will want to fall forwards away from you.

Interestingly, a diet of kettlebell swings and goblet squats on a ratio of about to 10:1 will serve most people well. The hardstyle kettlebell swing (or the deadlift) works the same major muscle groups at the squat, only in a different order/sequence/dominance. The swing keeps the muscles strong whilst also having the benefit of being a fantastic ‘cardio’ and power exercise. The goblet squat keeps the squatting pattern open.

From personal experience when I tore my right medial meniscus the second time (you’d think I’d learn), after the injury calmed down through surgery and eventually rehabilitation I was unable to squat heavy for around 9 months [Note: the medial meniscus is one of the cartilage structures in your knee]. The only squatting I could do was some light goblet squats with a 16kg kettlebell, anything heavier would aggravate the injury.

During the 9 months my training included heavy kettlebell swings (2x24kg) and the aforementioned goblet squats. About 3 months post surgery I had been teaching a female client back squats, demonstrating mostly with an unloaded bar. At one point I needed to illustrate a point and rather than unload the bar (it was only 40kg) I decided to give it a go.

Once I’d finished up for the day I went to the rack and worked up to 5 reps at 100kg (bodyweight 81kg). Not an impressive number by any means, but impressive in that I hadn’t ‘touched the bar in anger’ in about a year. I made sure to ‘leave some in the tank’, just in case the reason my meniscus was behaving was because adrenaline had beaten it into submission. [I also did a 165kg deadlift, twice bodyweight, having not done any heavy pulls for about a year. The power of the swing!]

The heavy hardstyle swing had kept all my squatting and deadlifting muscles strong without the need to go into a range of motion that was painful. The light goblet squat kept the ‘path open’, so I never became stiff and inflexible. My meniscus must have been fully healed for a few weeks or a month before the attempt which is why I never got any pain signals from the knee whilst it was being asked to support over twice it’s normal load over a challenging range of motion.

The moral of the story is that a well executed goblet squat can be the secret ingredient to a training program that allows you to perform beyond exceptions.

We can work around injuries, we can make you more resilient. But only if we move well, move often, and move strong.