What muscles does a sumo squat work?

The quads extend the knees, as in any squat. The wide stance and turned-out feet raise the demand on the glutes and on the adductors down the inside of your thighs. Your hamstrings and lower back help hold the position.

Is a sumo squat better than a normal squat for glutes?

A wide stance produced greater gluteus maximus activity than a shoulder-width or narrow one when it was measured. That is a fair reason to include it. It is not a reason to drop the narrower version, since the quad work is the same in both.

Do sumo squats work the inner thighs?

Yes. Adductor longus activity was higher in the wide stance than in narrower ones. Be aware that the largest inner thigh muscle has fairly poor leverage for extending the hip, so it is helping rather than driving.

How wide should my feet be for a sumo squat?

The wide setting used in the research was about 140 percent of shoulder width. Start near there rather than as wide as you can manage. If you cannot reach parallel with your chest up and your whole foot on the floor, narrow it.

Will sumo squats tone my inner thighs?

They train the muscles. Nothing about the exercise decides what covers them, and we will not pretend otherwise.

Why do my knees cave in on sumo squats?

Usually because the knees stop following the direction the feet are pointing, most often as you start standing up. Pushing the knees out along the line of the toes on the way up is the change. If the stance or toe angle is more open than your hips allow, bring both in.

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Bodyweight · beginner · upper legs

Sumo squat

Also called Wide stance squat, Plie squat, Sumo bodyweight squat.

The short answer

A sumo squat stands you with your feet well outside your shoulders and your toes turned out, then squats straight down between them. Your quads still do the knee extension, exactly as they do in any squat. What the wide stance adds is your glutes and the muscles down the inside of your thighs, which have more to do when your legs are spread and your feet are angled out. That word is worth being precise about: the wide stance adds work rather than moving it off the quads.

How to do it

Step oneStand with your feet wider than shoulder-width apart and your toes pointed out at approximately 45 degrees.
Step twoPlace your hands together in front of your chest or on your hips.
Step threeEngage your core and push your hips back and down, lowering into a squat while keeping your chest upright and knees tracking over your toes.
Step fourDescend until your thighs are parallel to the floor or lower.
Step fiveDrive through your heels to return to the starting position.

What usually goes wrong

Each starts with what you would notice.

Your knees drift inward toward each other as you come out of the bottom.

WhyThe knees are no longer following the direction your feet are pointing, so instead of tracking out over the toes they travel across them. In a wide turned-out stance that gap opens quickly because the feet are angled and the knees are not.

FixOn the way up, push your knees out along the line of your feet rather than just standing. Watch one rep in a mirror from the front. If they only cave near the top, the fault is in how you start the stand, not in how you descend.

You cannot get anywhere near parallel without folding forward.

WhyThe stance is probably wider than your hips will open. Very wide feet limit how far down the hips can travel before the pelvis runs out of room, so the depth has to come from the spine instead.

FixBring your feet in. The wide condition in the research on this was 140 percent of shoulder width, which is wide and is not as wide as possible. Narrow it a few inches at a time until you can reach parallel with your chest upright.

Your weight rolls onto the inside edges of your feet at the bottom.

WhyThe stance is fighting the direction of the toes, so as you descend the feet flatten inward and the arches take the load instead of the whole foot.

FixGrip the floor with the outside of each foot and keep the big toe, little toe and heel all in contact. If they will not stay down, that is another sign the stance is too wide for you today.

You feel the movement across your lower back.

WhyThe chest has dropped forward as you descended, so the trunk is now holding a leaned-over position and your back is doing the work of keeping you there rather than your legs doing the squatting.

FixSquat down between your feet rather than back behind them. The sumo stance lets your torso stay much closer to upright than a narrow squat does, and losing that is usually a stance or depth problem rather than a back one.

Sumo squat or regular squat

The claim you will read everywhere is that the sumo version trades quad work for inner thigh and glute work. It has been measured, and the trade does not happen.

Researchers compared narrow, shoulder width and wide stances at two loads in nine male lifters. Stance width made no difference at all to the quads. The wide stance produced greater activity in the gluteus maximus and in the adductor longus, one of the muscles down the inside of the thigh.

So the sumo squat is not a lighter squat for the front of your legs. It is the same knee extension work with more asked of the hips and inner thighs on top. That is a reason to have it in a program, and not a reason to swap it in for a narrower squat.

One caveat worth stating: that study used a loaded barbell squat. The direction of the finding is what carries over, not the exact numbers.

How wide should your feet be

Wider always looks more sumo, and there is a point where wider stops adding anything and starts taking depth away.

The research that found the extra glute and adductor activity used 140 percent of shoulder width as its wide setting, against 75 percent as its narrow one. That is a helpful anchor because it is a specific width rather than an instruction to spread out as far as you can.

Toe angle is less settled. Turning the feet out lets the hips open and the knees travel outward, and we have not found evidence that establishes a correct number of degrees. Your knees should be able to follow the line your feet are pointing all the way down. If they cannot, the feet are turned out further than your hips want.

What the bodyweight version is and is not

The muscles down the inside of your thigh are usually described as the whole point of this movement, so it is worth being accurate about what they do. The largest of them does extend the hip as well as pull the leg inward, which is real. Its leverage for extending the hip is small compared with the hamstrings and much smaller than the glutes, so it is a contributor rather than the engine.

The other thing to know is what happens with no weight. In the same research, going from a moderate load to a heavier one raised activity in the quads and the inner thigh, and did not raise it in the glutes. With no load at all, a bodyweight sumo squat is a good movement to own and a modest stimulus, which is exactly what you would expect from an exercise whose difficulty cannot be adjusted.

Holding a dumbbell or a kettlebell between your legs is the standard way past that, and it keeps the stance and the pattern intact.

What it will not do is slim or reshape the inside of your thighs. Training a muscle is the part an exercise controls. Where the body carries fat is not, and any page that tells you a wide stance changes that is selling you something.

What it is for

The sumo squat takes a stance wider than a normal squat with the toes turned out, targeting the quads. The wide stance changes which part of the hip drives you out of the bottom and lets some people reach a depth a narrow stance will not give them.

Questions people ask

What muscles does a sumo squat work?: The quads extend the knees, as in any squat. The wide stance and turned-out feet raise the demand on the glutes and on the adductors down the inside of your thighs. Your hamstrings and lower back help hold the position.
Is a sumo squat better than a normal squat for glutes?: A wide stance produced greater gluteus maximus activity than a shoulder-width or narrow one when it was measured. That is a fair reason to include it. It is not a reason to drop the narrower version, since the quad work is the same in both.
Do sumo squats work the inner thighs?: Yes. Adductor longus activity was higher in the wide stance than in narrower ones. Be aware that the largest inner thigh muscle has fairly poor leverage for extending the hip, so it is helping rather than driving.
How wide should my feet be for a sumo squat?: The wide setting used in the research was about 140 percent of shoulder width. Start near there rather than as wide as you can manage. If you cannot reach parallel with your chest up and your whole foot on the floor, narrow it.
Will sumo squats tone my inner thighs?: They train the muscles. Nothing about the exercise decides what covers them, and we will not pretend otherwise.
Why do my knees cave in on sumo squats?: Usually because the knees stop following the direction the feet are pointing, most often as you start standing up. Pushing the knees out along the line of the toes on the way up is the change. If the stance or toe angle is more open than your hips allow, bring both in.