Barbell Zercher Box Squats

Set your J-hooks of your squat rack so that the barbell sits at about abdominal height. Set a bench or box at the back of the squat rack. If unspecified, the box height should be at a height where your hips and knees are parallel at the bottom or so that your hips are an inch below your knees at the bottom. If that height is 18 inches and you only have a 16 inch box, you can add a plate onto the box to increase its height, add a mat, etc.

Grab the bar in the zercher position with the crook of your elbows. Keep your arms parallel and separated when using light to medium weight. When the weight gets REALLY heavy, you may want to interlock the fingertips as seen later in the video. Your feet should be wider than shoulder width with the feet and knees turned out slightly. Stand up straight, take a deep breath, hold your breath in your stomach and brace your stomach by expanding your stomach into the entire belt, not just the front.

If you don’t have a belt imagine you do and follow the same technique to take load off of the spine and onto the abs. Sit all the way back onto the box keeping the torso tight the entire time so that your shins are vertical at the bottom. Relax the hip flexors only for a second and then reengage the hips to stand up with the bar. Try to “spread the floor” on the way down and up in order to keep your hips tight by pushing your feet and knees out and apart. Catch your breath and then re-brace for the next rep. When you are done with the reps, take small steps and wiggle your feet back to a narrower stance and run the bar straight into the rack and lower it on the J-hooks.

Trainer Tips: Make sure you set your safety pins a few inches below where the barbell will be when you are at the bottom of the squat. If you fail you can just lean slightly forward and dump the bar on the safety pins. Also when you rerack the bar, try not to look left or right and go off of feel not vision. Looking left and right can cause the bar to tilt and potentially miss one of the hooks. We are sitting all the way back here to make the squat more hip and glute dominant. This will be a different form than a regular free-squat but will translate to the free squat by teaching you to use the stronger muscles and not just leg-press the weight with your quads.