Muscles worked
Your quads and glutes do most of the work, but the wide stance and turned-out toes give your inner thighs more to do than in a regular squat. The dumbbell hangs straight down between your legs, so your torso can stay upright without your back carrying a bar. Your abs keep your trunk still, while your hands and forearms hold the dumbbell. A wider stance moves more of the work to your inner thighs, as long as you can still reach good depth.
Common mistakes
- A stance wider than your mobility. Stand too wide and you stop high, never reaching real depth. Bring your feet in a little until your thighs can reach at least parallel to the floor.
- It turns into a deadlift. When your hips shoot back and your chest drops, the work moves from your legs to your back. Keep your chest up and sink straight down between your feet, as if sitting down.
- The dumbbell rests on the floor. If it touches down at the bottom, your legs get a break every rep. Turn around just above the floor, or stand on two solid boxes of the same height if you want to go deeper.
Variations and alternatives
- The goblet squat holds the dumbbell at your chest with a narrower stance and puts more on your quads.
- The sumo deadlift uses the same wide stance with a barbell, but brings in more hips and back and allows far heavier loads.
- The machine hip adduction isolates the inner thighs, if that is the area you want to give extra work.
Sets and reps
The sumo squat suits 8 to 15 reps over 2 to 4 sets. The dumbbells often run out before your legs do, so sets are rarely truly heavy. When the heaviest dumbbell you have feels light, lower more slowly, pause for a second at the bottom or add reps. Which range to choose is explained in the guide to sets and reps.
Move up in weight once you reach the top of your rep range in every set with good depth, and stay one or two reps in reserve on most sets. A heavier dumbbell and a longer pause at the bottom both count as progressive overload.