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I have been noticing recently that a lot of people in my gym have been doing sqauts with a 5lb weight under their heels. I gave it a try and noticed that I have more control, I can get deeper as well as lift more on my squat. Does anyone know if there is any benefit or drawback doing squats this way????

Benefit: You need less ankle mobility, which explains the feeling of more control, more depth and heavier weights.

Drawback: Its an artificial way of improving your squat mechanics. A better and more sustainable approach would be to incorporate some ankle mobility work into your routine.

I don't really want to get into the whole elevated heel works the quads more. The mobility points should be enough.

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Yeah..look at it this way. The only reason you feel more comfortable and in control is because you are making up for lack of mobility.

So right there you've pinpointed a need like Kane said. Improve mobility and stability and you will be stronger in the long run than you will be without doing it.

The elevated heel thing is not the end of the world. Elevated heels are used by Olympic lifters as a matter of course. But you can be sure that they have lots of mobility.

But here we are probably talking about people who can barely do a proper squat and are all f'd up. The last thing they need to do is side-step mobility.

I never raise my heels AT ALL.

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If you act sanctimonious I will just list out your logical fallacies until you get pissed off and spew blasphemous remarks.

^^Agreed.

Another thing to look at it is your footwear. A running shoe or a cross trainer won't have a flat sole, so your shoes will have a bit of a heel lift right off the bat.

Oly lifters are a different animal of course, their shoes have a heel purposely built in.

Thanks for the info fellas. So, to get it straight you would reccommend NOT using the "elevated heel". Is there a way for me to improve ankle mobility? Or I should just do my squats flatfooted?

I would recommend not elevating the heel but like Eric said, its not the end of the world. The one thing I would absolutely not recommend is using the heel lift in place of ankle mobility.

You can google ankle mobility and come up with some exercises.

It won't happen overnight so in the meantime you could keep squatting with elevated heels and then move to flat footed once mobility has improved. Its hard to say without seeing your squat.

Thanks again, I will investigate the Ankle mobility exercises.

You're welcome.

BTW, when we say it's not such a huge deal to elevate the heel we mean just elevating them a little bit.

Elevating them a whole lot..like how people use 2x4's really puts the knees in danger.

Do you think that using flat shoes (chucks)for some workouts and using a running shoe for other workout would be good enough to change the heal elevation up ?

Or do you think it would just be best to use the flat shoe all the time and elevate the heal with a 5lb plate ?

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