Sumo Air Squat

How to do the Sumo Air Squat

1. 1Stand with your feet set wider than shoulder-width apart, toes pointed out at roughly 30–45 degrees.
2. 2Clasp your hands together in front of your chest or extend your arms forward at shoulder height to help with balance.
3. 3Brace your core and keep your chest tall with your spine in a neutral position before beginning the descent.
4. 4Push your knees outward in the direction of your toes as you hinge at the hips and bend your knees to lower your body.
5. 5Continue descending until your thighs are at least parallel to the floor, or lower if hip mobility allows, without your lower back rounding.
6. 6Keep your heels flat on the floor and your weight distributed evenly across the whole foot throughout the movement.
7. 7At the bottom, pause briefly and check that your knees are tracking over your second and third toes, not caving inward.
8. 8Drive through your heels and squeeze your glutes as you press the floor away to return to standing.
9. 9Lock out your hips fully at the top before beginning the next repetition.

Form tips

• Push your knees actively outward throughout the descent and ascent — this keeps the adductors and glutes engaged and protects the knee joint.
• Think about sitting down between your heels rather than forward over your toes; this cue encourages a more upright torso and deeper hip engagement.
• If your heels rise during the squat, your ankle mobility is the limiting factor — elevating your heels slightly on plates or a wedge lets you work on depth while that mobility develops.
• Control the tempo on the way down — a 2–3 second descent improves muscle activation and reinforces proper knee tracking under load.
• Keep your gaze level or slightly upward to help maintain a neutral spine and prevent the chest from collapsing forward.

Common mistakes

• Knees caving inward (valgus collapse): allowing the knees to drop toward each other reduces adductor and glute engagement, places shear stress on the knee ligaments, and signals a lack of hip abductor strength or poor motor control.
• Heels rising off the floor: lifting the heels shifts load onto the knees and forefoot, reduces stability, and prevents you from reaching the depth needed to fully engage the hips and glutes.
• Excessive forward lean: collapsing the chest forward and rounding the lower back transfers stress to the lumbar spine and removes the hip-dominant loading that makes the sumo variation effective.
• Feet positioned too narrow: using a conventional or slightly wider than shoulder-width stance defeats the purpose of the sumo variation — the wide stance and toe-out angle are what recruit the inner thighs and achieve greater hip depth.
• Rushing through reps: bouncing out of the bottom position with momentum bypasses the muscle tension at end range, reducing the training stimulus and increasing the risk of losing positional control.

Frequently asked questions