Muscles worked
Your quads and glutes do the main work, helped by your adductors. Holding the dumbbell at your chest makes it natural to stay upright, which gives your quads a big share of the work. Your upper back, abs and arms hold the dumbbell in place throughout. A wider stance with your toes turned further out gives your inner thighs and glutes more to do. The dumbbell also acts as a counterweight, so many people find it easier to sink deep and stay balanced than in an unloaded squat.
Common mistakes
- Knees caving in. On the way up, your knees tend to drift towards each other. Keep them pointing the same way as your toes, and think about spreading the floor apart with your feet.
- Too shallow. This is one of the easiest exercises for learning to squat deep, so use that. Sink as low as you can with a steady back and your whole foot down, and keep the same depth on every rep.
- Bouncing at the bottom. Dropping down and bouncing up costs you control where the lift is hardest. Lower yourself slowly, pause briefly at the bottom and stand up from there.
Variations and alternatives
- Bodyweight squat: no weight, if you are completely new or train at home without dumbbells.
- Back squat: the next step once the heaviest dumbbell you can hold gets too light for your legs.
- Bulgarian split squat: one leg at a time with dumbbells, giving each leg plenty of work with less weight.
- Sumo squat: a wide stance with the dumbbell between your legs, when you want more work for your inner thighs and glutes.
Sets and reps
Your load is often limited by the dumbbell you can hold, not by your legs. So the goblet squat suits muscle building with 8 to 12 reps, or endurance with 12 to 20 reps, over 2 to 4 sets. For heavy strength sets of 3 to 6 reps, the barbell back squat is a better choice. The guide to sets and reps explains how to choose.
Add reps first and move to a heavier dumbbell once you reach the top of your range on every set. At the heaviest dumbbell you can hold, make it harder without more weight: lower yourself more slowly, or pause for two seconds at the bottom. Both count as progressive overload, as long as you write down what you did.