 When I talk about squats All I'm talking about is I'm bending at the hip the knee and the ankle at the same time Just like this, but you know what else that looks like looks like a lunge It's the same kind of thing it's a little bit different, but it's pretty much the same kind of thing Similar musculature though the activation is different the same stuff is getting involved So what I want to do today is talk through some of the differences here In a bilateral squat, I'm using two feet. That's what the bilateral comes from unilateral one leg bilateral two leg In a bilateral squat my base of support is really wide depending on how wide I want to take my stance. I have Greater ability to control my center of mass and that center of mass is dictated both by the positions that I Adopt while I'm doing this lift and the ones that I am able to maintain. It's It's determined by stiffness and hips It's determined by sensitivity of your nervous system and it's determined by the load that is on top of you Right if I have a barbell on the front of my body, I'm going to adopt a different position Then if I have a barbell on the back of my body Okay, so all this stuff comes into play With the bilateral squats since the base of support is really wide the stability demands are much lower I don't need so much balance. There aren't many people who are going to fall over when they're standing on two legs unless you have some sort of vestibular proprioceptive Problems you're probably not going to run into many issues with balance when you're on two legs The problems come when you shift on to one and when you move over to the next and the interplay between those two So a bilateral squat doesn't have very strong stability demands Okay, I get stability from the position So what I can do then is I can demonstrate more force more power more speed more strength Okay, I can use heavier weights and I can train this force production capability of my body Right. I'm not going to single-leg squat 225, but I can body weight squat to or I can barbell squat 225 So stability demands are the major major difference second biggest difference is just the joint positions that are required from bilateral squatting so The hip has more motion When I bring it this let me so I'm going to keep it in line and I'm going to bring it as high as I can Without moving my entire body. Okay, that's about as high as I can go It's maybe a hundred degrees of hip flexion just like this I'm going to try to do this again not compensate at my other leg and just pull it up as high as I can That's as far as I want to go I'm getting a little pinch in my hip. I'm getting that muscles getting really tight. It's telling me that I'm at my limit Now let's say I move my hip outward So I'm going to pull up my balance is really good today You guys are lucky and then I'm going to pull my hip out And you see how now it comes out more comes up more Okay, I'm up as high as I can go and now let me just translate this over and Then bring it up as high as I can look at that So that's active motion. That's the hardest motion to demonstrate right this would be passive Because gravity is forcing me into that position. This is active because I'm pulling my hip into that position Now What's going on? So the shape of the hip joint is not consistent. It's not just a circle and a ball is in the circle It's kind of like a half moon and chiseled out in some areas and I get blocked When I go this way, but I don't get this bony block when I'm here This is actually much more relieving for those that pinching in the hip that I was telling you I was feeling I feel it here, but I don't feel it here That's because the position of the hip joint is different. I now have more mobility this way Okay, so this Outside position is a lot like this squatting position and so I can get more squat depth more easily Not just because I have a bilateral stance and I have a lot of stability But because the hip joint is in a position where it can demonstrate more mobility so if you're looking to train at depths without Emphasizing or without Increasing your your flexibility you might want to try doing some sort of bilateral lift as well Okay, hopefully that kind of makes sense that one that one's a grayer area, right? Much more gray than I can just do more weight, right? So Next so we talked about Using more load and the stability demands we talked about the joint positions that are Achieved in a bilateral squat now. Let's look at this from the unilateral squat from the let's say split squat position here So one foot is forward one foot is back. It's like a lunging position, but I'm not moving my feet I'm still doing a squat pattern, but it's mostly on one leg It's mostly on this front leg as long as I keep my weight kind of forward a little bit I can load this front leg more if I try to stay back. I'll load the back leg more and it doesn't feel right So try to bias yourself into loading the front like just slightly. Okay What is going on here? Well now Instead of having my knee out like this as long as I'm not queuing my knee out like this I'm gonna have harder time getting into the mobility, right? I'm not gonna have as much mobility I'm not gonna be able to squat so deeply that way unless I'm really flexible, which sometimes some people are It's just going to demand more control Okay, so if we go in order just like last time right lots of stability less stability in fact not that much stability if my base of support is the width of both of my feet here and The you know accompanying the difference between them or the distance between them This base of support is just one foot if I put this back foot down I get a little bit more stability So if we talk about a pistol squat, I have almost none I have one foot size and my foot's pretty small, so I don't have that much stability But if I put this other foot down then I have somewhere in between Having one foot up in the air and having both feet down on the ground Okay, so now you're starting to see we can place these things on a continuum, right? This squat progression we can look at from different ways I can look at I can progress to a bilateral squat till use more load or I can progress to a split squat or a Pistol squat to demonstrate more mobility under load to oppose gravity with more mobility Okay, so we talked about load We talked about these positions now the the the next thing that I want to talk about I mentioned there are similar muscles active in these patterns But they're not active to the same degree So when I'm here and I shift my weight a little bit more forward maybe I'm 60 40 front to back Okay, as I come down I need a lot more lateral glute outside hip muscle here To support myself because if I shut it off then my my hip collapses outward and the opposite side of my body falls down like this Okay, and you'll see some people will do this this way. They'll be really I might say Overlateralized they're over to one side too much and I might need to cue you hey push through that foot and I'm serious I'm doing this right now and it's pushing this back to the midline. It's keeping me in line Okay, so there is this Not only narrower base of support, but there is a different stability demand the synergistic muscles that help you accomplish this movement like the gluteus medius is much more active When I'm preferentially loading one leg Rather than both Because I don't need glute made here so much It's gonna help push me up together when they work both work together, but this way it's gonna keep me from falling Okay, so I get a little bit out of it here, and I get a lot out of it here right off on So again, even though they're active in both squatting variations. I'm loading this a lot more so when I Take myself to train with unilateral type movements whether that be Reverse lunge whether that be a forward lunge or Whether that just be the split squat. We've been talking about or like a pistol squat like we were kind of talking about earlier The the emphasis gets placed more on the synergistic the supporting musculature So if you need supporting musculature and you might and a lot of people do Then maybe you need to spend a little bit more time in this Unilateral area, but if you're just new to lifting and you're totally weak and you're trying to learn how to squat a Bilateral squat is a good place to start Let's say you've been training for a year. You've been doing a five by five program you found on the internet and You've been doing this a lot and This is your goal. You want to squat more Well, I think you should still spend some time here Because this supporting musculature will keep your body together. It'll keep you in those positions that Allow you to demonstrate your abilities So when I squat if I lose my hip position like this and I stick my butt way out That shuts my glued off because it stretches it really long and it can't contract. It's passive right But if I know the way to not shut it off I know the way to turn it on because I trained myself in these Unilateral variations where it's really stressed Then I can take that over to my main lifts the lifts that I'm testing the lifts that I'm trying to improve and I can get this carry-over training effect from an exercise that is kind of unrelated Not the same but kind of still related an assistance exercise So those are some of them many many differences bilateral squats good for using more weight You have more stability in the exercise itself Unilateral squats are really good for emphasizing synergistic movements. They're good for muscles synergistic muscles and they're good for emphasizing balance and for Teaching your body to control mobility and for demanding more from your your positions and from your motor control Hope that helps. There's anything I missed leave a comment below or just ask your question and we can have a discussion