Butt wink when you squat? Do these 4 exercises.

Squatting without a butt wink is very hard for me. I’m 6’4 and have very long femurs. I’m also not naturally flexible.

These are not excuses though! I still want to squat deep with good form and I’m sure you do too if you landed on this article.

What I’ve learned after years of working on my squat is that the more I work against my body the less progress I make.

If you force your body into a deep squat without adequate strength, your low back and pelvis will tuck under and you’ll get a butt wink.

The key is to teach your body how to absorb tension in the right places. Only then do you slowly and gradually ask your body for more range of motion.

This is what I’ll teach you to do in this article.

What is a butt wink?

There is no unanimously agreed upon definition for a butt wink. It is not a medical or anatomical definition.

The term likely became popular in recent years because of the explosion of “functional” fitness. People care more about power lifting now than ever before.

Most people who get into fitness are normal modern day adults who work at an office behind a desk.

No judgment! This is me. I became a personal trainer five years after I passed the bar to be a lawyer.  

This means I also spend a lot of time behind a screen. For many years before that, I sat behind a desk in law school, college, high school, etc.

I played basketball religiously growing up but I never got into movement until adulthood. I don’t remember ever squatting below parallel in my teenage years. 

Even squatting to partial range of motion is something my high-school coach asked us to do in the gym but I’m sure this was done with horrendous form.

So when I first came across influencers talking about the importance of a deep squat, it was a bitter pill to swallow.

My squat was TERRIBLE. And why wouldn’t it be? I never did it!

My experience is not unique and I’m sure many of you can relate. This is how the “butt wink” expression came to be.

Deep ass-to-grass squatting became popular but many of us can’t do it with perfect form. The low back and pelvis compensate and we get the butt wink.

What causes butt wink?

A butt wink happens when there is lack of function in the ankles, hips, knees and spine. The low back will do what these other joints cannot do.

If your hips cannot internally rotate well, your low back and pelvis will round. If your ankles cannot dorsiflex sufficiently, you will butt wink.

Similarly, if your knees have trouble getting into deep flexion or your thoracic spine cannot properly extend, you will butt wink.

There are a lot of things that need to go right in the squat. The low back and pelvis is just where the compensation is most apparent. But the limitations can be anywhere up or down stream.

Fixing Butt Wink with Corrective Exercise

To reduce butt winking in the squat, you need to address the joints that are involved in the movement.

It all starts with the hips. The hips need to rotate in the squat - both internally and externally. For most people, it is a lack of hip internal rotation that creates the butt wink.

You’ve likely seen the 90/90 exercise before but I want you to bring a different intention to this version.

This intention should also be used with every exercise in this article. Find an easy way to rest in the position and don’t go into pain or discomfort.

Don’t force your body into a deeper position if it’s uncomfortable. This won’t do anything except make your nervous system fear this position even more.

The second exercise will target ankle dorsiflexion. When I first did these, I would just push my knees past my toes as much as I could. This did nothing. 

The point of these exercises is to make the squat more accessible without buttwinking. The way to accomplish this is to get the muscles around the ankle to get better at absorbing load.

If you simply push into more range without activating these muscles, the exercise is pointless.

The above exercise will challenge deep knee flexion. The seiza (aka hero pose) takes the hips and ankles generally out of the equation so if this position is uncomfortable for you, your knees can use some work.

The last area to focus on is the spine. It is important to understand how to extend the spine when you’re in the squat to avoid it from rounding in a butt wink.

The only way to get better at squatting is to practice squatting. You can certainly do some isolated spinal extension work but I find that this does not translate as well as just practicing this cue in the squat.

The intention with this exercise is not to go that deep. Instead, go as far down as you can while maintaining a straight back. 

Elevating your heels will reduce the demand of your ankles and will give you some room to learn what a more neutral spine feels like. 

You need to get really good at distinguishing the feeling of a straight back from a rounded back in your squat. This will take time but once this sensation is ingrained, it will be easier to integrate into deeper squats.

The Back Squat and the Butt Wink

It is important to note that depending on your body, there will be a limit of how much butt wink you can reduce.

When you get into a resting squat, some butt winking is natural, safe and arguably preferred.

But this is not true when you get into a heavy loaded movement like a barbell back squat. There is so much emphasis on full range of motion these days that some might disregard their form for the sake of depth.

Big mistake. It is never a good idea to butt wink when you have a heavy load on your back. This can certainly lead to back pain in addition to other problems

It is important for you to understand what your goal is in training. If you want to get better at the squat and increase flexibility, you should focus on mobility work and goblet squats with lighter loads.

If your goal is strength then by all means, do back squats but stay within a range where you don’t butt wink too much.

How much should you care about the butt wink?

Some degree of butt wink is natural. When I look at my 2-year-old son resting in a squat, I’m amazed at how effortless he makes it look.

And guess what? He has a butt wink. But he is able to control how much butt wink he’s in.

When he’s playing with some toy on the ground, he’ll sink deeper into a butt wink and rest deeper into that position.

But when he’s playing with something right in front of his face, he’s able to come up a little bit more and bring his pelvis into more of an anterior tilt.

This is what my ultimate goal is and what I encourage you to reflect on too. It’s not the need to have some perfect squat but to build a body that has options.

The problem isn’t so much the butt wink but the inability to squat without it. Creating more movement options is the ultimate path to building more resilience in your body.