Hatfield Squat: How to Do It, Setup, Benefits and Programming

The Hatfield squat is a back squat done with a safety squat bar while you hold the safety arms, rack uprights or a pair of handles in front of you for balance. Because your hands aren't needed on the bar, they can steady you instead, which turns the squat into a much more leg-focused lift: less balance, less lower-back strain, more quad. It's named after Dr Fred Hatfield, the American powerlifter nicknamed "Dr Squat", who squatted over 1,000lb (roughly 455kg) in competition and pushed this method as a way to keep overloading his legs. If you own a power rack and an SSB, it's one of the most useful accessory squats you can add.

What the Hatfield squat actually does

A normal back squat asks a lot of you at once. Your legs move the weight, but your trunk has to brace hard and your whole body has to stay balanced over the middle of your foot. On heavy sets, your legs often aren't what fails first; your torso folds, or you drift forward and lose position.

Hatfield's idea was to remove those limits. The safety squat bar sits on your traps without your hands, and gripping something fixed in front of you stops you tipping forwards or backwards. You can then sit more upright, stay in a quad-heavy position and push your legs closer to their real limit. The point isn't to help yourself up with your arms, though. Your hands are there for balance and a tiny bit of assistance at a sticking point, nothing more.

How to set up in a power rack

You need a rack with adjustable safety arms (pins or straps) or a pair of handles that sit in front of you. A full power cage is ideal because the safeties run inside the frame at chest height.

1. Set the J-hooks. Put them at about mid-chest height, so you can unrack the SSB with a short knee bend.
2. Set the safety arms high. For a Hatfield squat they double as handles, so set them at roughly hip to lower-ribcage height when you're standing. You want to hold them with straight-ish arms at the top and still keep contact at the bottom. Some lifters set them lower and hold the uprights instead, which works fine on a narrow rack.
3. Check the depth. Do a test squat with an empty bar. At the bottom your arms should still reach the support comfortably without your shoulders being yanked forward.
4. Load evenly. Collars on. The SSB's camber makes an uneven load feel much worse than on a straight bar.

If you're working with a squat stand rather than a cage, you can still do it by holding the uprights, as long as the stand is bolted down or heavily weighted. Wobbly stands and Hatfield squats don't mix.

How to do a Hatfield squat

1. Unrack. Get under the yoke so the pad sits centred on your upper traps, stand up and take two or three steps back. The handles can rest wherever they fall; you won't hold them.
2. Take your grip. Reach forward and hold the safety arms or uprights with both hands. Feet shoulder-width or a touch narrower, toes slightly out.
3. Brace. Big breath into your belly, ribs down. You still need a brace, just less of a desperate one.
4. Sit down between your heels. Let your knees travel forward over your toes and keep your torso tall. This is the quad-heavy position Hatfield squats are built for, so don't push your hips back like a low-bar squat.
5. Hit depth. Go as deep as you can while keeping your lower back neutral. Full depth matters here: in a 10-week study, full squats grew the glutes and adductors more than half squats did, and improved full-squat strength nearly three times as much (Kubo et al., 2019).
6. Drive up. Push the floor away through your whole foot. Keep your hands light; they guide you, they don't lift you.

Muscles worked

• Quadriceps. The main target. The upright torso and forward knee travel shift the work towards your knee extensors.
• Glutes and adductors. Both work hard out of the hole, especially if you go deep.
• Hamstrings and calves. These assist, but less than in a low-bar or free squat.
• Upper back. Your traps and mid back still have to hold the yoke. A study of 12 competitive powerlifters found lower trapezius activity rose by about 50% with a safety squat bar compared with a straight bar (Hecker et al., 2019).

Your abs and lower back do noticeably less. That's not a flaw; it's why the lift exists. For more ways to load the front of your thighs, see our list of quad exercises.

Benefits

You can overload your legs. Since balance and torso strength stop being the weak link, your quads get pushed harder for the same effort. Many lifters can use around their normal back squat weight for reps, sometimes more.

It's kinder to the lower back. The same Hecker study found the SSB cut trunk flexion by about 7 degrees and hip flexion by about 6 degrees versus a straight bar, and the authors concluded the more upright trunk puts less stress on the lower back. Holding the rack makes the torso even more stable on top of that.

Your shoulders get a break. No reaching back for a bar means no strain on stiff shoulders, elbows or wrists, which is a big deal for older lifters and anyone who bench presses a lot.

It's useful when you're banged up. Lifters with a niggling back, a sore shoulder or poor balance from an ankle problem can often keep squatting this way when a normal back squat hurts. Get anything ongoing checked by a physio first, but the Hatfield squat is a good tool for staying in the gym while you recover.

Common mistakes

Pulling yourself up with your hands. By far the most common. If your biceps are sore after a session, you've turned it into an assisted squat. Use the two-finger test and lower the weight.

Setting the supports too low. If you have to bend forward to grab them, your torso tips and you lose the upright position that makes the lift worth doing. Raise them a notch.

Cutting depth. With the rack in your hands, it's tempting to load up and do half reps. You'll move impressive numbers and get far less out of them. Squat as low as your hips allow.

Pushing the hips back. Hatfield squats work best with a vertical torso and the knees going forward. Sitting back like a powerlifting low-bar squat just puts more of the load onto your hips and hamstrings.

How to programme it

Treat it as a main leg lift on a quad-focused day, or as a heavy accessory after your competition-style squat.

• Strength: 4 to 5 sets of 4 to 6 reps, resting 2 to 3 minutes.
• Hypertrophy: 3 to 4 sets of 8 to 12 reps, resting around 2 minutes.
• Back-friendly leg day: use it in place of back squats for a 4 to 6 week block, then compare how your back feels.

Once a week is plenty for most people, twice if it's replacing your normal squat. Add 2.5kg to 5kg once you hit the top of your rep range with light hands on every rep. A lifting belt is optional; you need it less here than on a free squat.

Variations

Straight-bar Hatfield squat. If you don't own an SSB, you can do a version with a straight bar held in a front squat rack position or a Zercher hold, freeing one hand to grip the rack. It's clumsy and you can't really go heavy, so treat it as a stopgap.

Front-squat bar position with straps. Some lifters use a cross-arm front squat grip with lifting straps around the bar, then hold the rack with one hand. It loads the quads well but your upper back fatigues quickly.

Smith machine version. A Smith machine squat holding the frame with one hand, or using the bar's rotating hooks, mimics the stability. The fixed bar path means you can't fine-tune your position as much.

Belt squat. A belt squat hangs the load from your hips and lets you hold a handle in front, so your spine carries almost nothing. It's the closest relative of the Hatfield squat and arguably even easier on the back.

Pause or pin Hatfield squat. Hold the bottom for two seconds, or squat down to pins set at depth, as in a pin squat, to build strength out of the hole.

Who should use it

The Hatfield squat suits lifters who want bigger quads but find the back squat is limited by their torso, anyone with shoulder or lower-back issues that make a straight bar uncomfortable, and older lifters who'd rather not fight for balance under heavy weight. Beginners are better off learning to squat without support first; a goblet squat teaches the pattern, and the Hatfield squat makes more sense once there's something to overload.

If you train at home, you'll need a safety squat bar and a rack with safety arms that set high enough to grip. Check our squat rack guide for frames with the right adjustability.

Recommended reads

• Safety squat bar: what it is and what to buy
• The best power cages in the UK
• How to do a belt squat
• Back squat technique guide
• The best quad exercises