 I want to compare and contrast two different types of back squats today. So a barbell back squat is where you put the bar on your back, and as you squat down, you kind of bend over a little bit, try to stay relatively upright, and you come back up. There are two different types, right? So I kind of described both of them there. If I put the bar really high on my shoulders, we'll call this a high bar squat. So the leverage away from my back and away from my hip gets longer, because I'm up here, I'm not putting the bar down here, I'm putting it up here on my trap muscles, right? My upper, upper trap muscles. So as I bend over, that torque from the weight gets amplified, and the whole point of lifting and biomechanics and coaching is to minimize some of that when you're trying to get stronger, or maybe even maximize that disadvantage, that torque, to allow you to use a really light weight for something to build muscle, right? So the difference is I can do maybe 25s for my lateral raises if I go like this, but I can only do 15s if I keep my arms straight. The lever is longer away from my body. So the same principle applies to back squatting, high bar back squatting, right? So I have this longer lever, and I feel more, gets amplified. So I cannot bend over more, because that puts me at too much of a disadvantage. Therefore, a high bar squat, we need to try to control by being more upright. General rule is I want the back angle and my shin angle to be parallel, okay? Hopefully I'm doing that in our demo. This is definitely wrong. You see how my shins go forward like this and my back is upright, and then this is definitely wrong for that. Contrast that with a low bar squat. So with the low bar, I just put it on my rear delt area and I crank my shoulders back. Like I'll grab the bar and I use that to just crank my shoulders back. The bar sits really low, and so the soft tissues of my shoulder joint actually start supporting the weight. It starts to hold the bar, and I have to bend over so I don't just rip my arms right off my body. And that gets my back underneath the weight a little bit more. And then when I squat down, I need to bend over even more so that I don't lose control, right? So we call this low bar squat a hip dominant squat. Most of my motion is occurring at my hip, getting extra hip motion, less knee motion. In any squat, I need the bar to stay over the foot, like front of the ankle area. That's what tells me that you have your balance. That's what tells me that you're not shifting forward when you squat. So if you're filming yourself, get a good like totally 90 degree angle and look for it. Now, okay, compare and contrast. I don't really give people the low bar back squat very often because I think it's overrated. I used to do it, but if I'm bending over more, it's hard for me to get this hip mobility, which people are already limited in. And if I'm doing it for the sake of powerlifting, it's really hard to hit depth. Because we define depth as the hip crease coming below the knee. So if I drop straight down like a high bar squat, that happens much easier than if I'm bending over a lot like this, right? This feels like I'm as low because my head is as low, but obviously my knee is, you know, it's like 90 degrees. It's not even bent that much and my hip is not below my knee level. So consider that. A lot of people start with their low bar squat. A lot of, you know, professional powerlifters or experienced powerlifters will use a low bar squat because they're wearing extra supportive canvas around their hips. They're wearing a squat suit. They're wearing squat briefs, whatever. And they can bend back and they can keep their tibia vertical. They can keep their shin vertical and still push their butt way back. That really allows them to use those hip muscles. But they're also getting a lot of support out of the suits that they're wearing. So if you're not wearing a suit, consider being more upright. That's pretty much the variation that I'm using, or that's the variation that I'm pretty much using for most or all of my clients. If you have some knee problems, I'll let you bend over more and not bend your knee quite as much. But I still want you to be able to demonstrate that you can squat down and bend your knee without it hurting. So those are just some random thoughts on comparing contrast to the knee dominant, hip dominant, high bar versus low bar squatting.