Butt Wink in Squats: How to Fix It | Personal Trainer Chiswick
The moment where your squat stops feeling right
Most people don’t notice the problem straight away.
They feel it.
The squat starts normally. The descent feels controlled enough, the movement looks fine from the outside, and nothing immediately stands out as wrong. But as they reach the bottom, something changes. The position they had on the way down doesn’t quite match the position they come back up with. There’s a slight shift, a loss of tension, or a sense that they’ve dropped into a space they don’t fully control.
For some, that shows up as tightness in the lower back after training. For others, it’s more subtle — the legs never quite feel like they’re doing the work they should, and the movement never feels solid enough to push.
That’s usually where the conversation around the “butt wink” begins.
Not because someone is analysing their squat frame by frame, but because something about the movement doesn’t feel reliable.
What people think is happening vs what actually is
If you search for this, you’ll usually get one of two answers.
One side treats it like a fault that needs to be fixed immediately, as if any rounding at the bottom is a problem waiting to happen. The other side dismisses it completely and tells you it’s natural, something everyone does, and not worth worrying about.
Neither of those explanations really helps when you’re trying to understand your own squat.
Because the real issue isn’t whether it exists.
It’s why it’s happening in your movement.
That’s the part most people skip, and it’s the part that actually determines whether it becomes a limitation or not.
What’s really happening at the bottom of your squat
A squat is a coordinated movement between multiple joints. As you lower down, your knees travel forward, your hips move back and down, and your torso adjusts to stay balanced over your feet. When everything is working together, the movement feels controlled and repeatable.
But for a lot of people, there comes a point where that coordination starts to break down.
It’s not always obvious, and it doesn’t always look dramatic, but internally the body is running out of room somewhere. It might be the hips reaching the end of what they can currently control. It might be the ankles limiting how far the knees can travel. It might be the trunk losing the ability to hold position under load.
The important part is this: the body still wants to go lower.
So it finds a way.
The pelvis begins to tuck under slightly, the lower back follows, and the movement continues into a depth that the original structure couldn’t quite support on its own.
From the outside, it looks like a small technical issue.
From the inside, it’s a compensation strategy.
Why your body does this (and why it’s not random)
This is where the conversation becomes more useful.
The body isn’t making a mistake. It’s solving a problem.
If you ask it to reach a position that it can’t quite access cleanly, it doesn’t stop and refuse. It adapts. It shifts tension, changes angles, and redistributes the load so it can still complete the task.
That’s why simply telling someone to “stop doing it” rarely works.
You’re asking the body to remove a solution without addressing the reason it needed that solution in the first place.
Why the squat starts to feel less effective
When your position changes at the bottom, the way force moves through your body changes with it.
A strong squat shares the work between the feet, legs, and hips. There’s a sense of pressure through the ground, the knees and hips contribute together, and the whole movement feels connected.
When that bottom position shifts, that connection often breaks.
The legs don’t contribute as effectively, the hips lose some of their mechanical advantage, and the lower back begins to take on more of the load than it should.
That doesn’t always show up as pain. More often, it shows up as a lack of progress. The squat never quite feels strong, and loading it becomes something you approach cautiously rather than confidently.
It’s the same pattern you see in other lifts.
In a deadlift, it might show up as the hips shooting up before the bar moves. In lunges, it might show up as the knees collapsing inward. In pressing, it might show up as the lower back arching to finish the movement.
Different exercises, same underlying idea.
The body redistributes load when it runs out of better options.
Why stretching alone doesn’t solve it
This is where a lot of people get stuck.
They assume the problem must be mobility, so they start stretching their hips, opening their ankles, and adding more range wherever they can. Sometimes that helps temporarily, but the squat itself doesn’t change in a meaningful way.
The reason is simple.
Having access to a position isn’t the same as being able to control it.
You can be flexible enough to reach depth, but if you can’t organise your body in that position under load, your body won’t stay there when it matters.
That’s why mobility work only becomes useful when it directly improves the movement it’s supposed to support.
How this actually gets fixed in practice
When I see this in a session, I’m not thinking about forcing a perfect squat straight away.
I’m looking at where the movement starts to break down and working backwards from there.
The first step is usually finding a version of the squat that the person can actually control. That might mean using a goblet squat, where the weight in front helps balance the movement, or squatting to a box to give them a clear reference point. It might also mean reducing depth slightly, not as a regression, but as a way to stay within a range where the position still holds together.
From there, the focus shifts to understanding the bottom position rather than just reaching it. Slowing the movement down, adding pauses, and spending time in that position allows people to feel where they lose tension and where the movement changes. For many, it’s the first time they realise they’ve never really owned the bottom of a squat — they’ve just passed through it.
Once that awareness is there, you can start building strength in the position you’re trying to keep. This is where tempo squats and paused squats make a real difference. They don’t just improve how the movement looks, they change how it feels under load, which is what ultimately determines whether the body will choose that position again.
Alongside that, you address the specific limitations that show up. If the ankles are restricting movement, you work on improving dorsiflexion in a way that carries over into the squat. If the hips feel blocked, you create more space and control through targeted work. If the trunk is the issue, you build the ability to stay organised under load rather than collapsing as you reach depth.
The key is that all of this connects back to the squat itself.
It’s not a collection of random drills. It’s a process.
The difference between forcing a position and building one
There’s a big difference between trying to make your squat look a certain way and actually building the ability to move that way.
If you force yourself into a position you don’t control, something else will always give. It might not be obvious straight away, but the compensation will show up somewhere.
If you build the movement properly, the change feels different.
The squat becomes more stable. The bottom position feels more predictable. The movement starts to repeat itself in a way that makes progress possible.
What this feels like when it starts to improve
The changes aren’t always dramatic at first, but they’re noticeable.
The bottom of the squat feels less rushed.The transition out of the hole feels smoother.The legs start to feel like they’re doing more of the work.
Most importantly, the movement becomes something you trust.
That’s when loading it becomes easier, and that’s when progress actually starts to build.
This is bigger than just squats
Once you understand this pattern, you start to see it everywhere.
The body is constantly making small adjustments to complete the task you give it. When those adjustments become consistent, they turn into habits. When they turn into habits, they shape how you train.
Fixing the squat isn’t just about one lift.
It’s about learning how to recognise where your body is compensating and understanding how to guide it back toward something more efficient.
Where to go next
If this made you look at your squat differently, the next step is to look at the patterns around it.
Why your knees cave in during squats and lunges.Why you can’t feel your glutes and your lower back takes over instead.
These aren’t separate problems. They’re part of the same conversation.
And if your squat has never quite felt right, sometimes the quickest way to improve it is to have someone actually break it down properly.
