Wide Stance Squats Build the Glutes
And helps reduce knee injury risk in female athletes, new study finds.
Female lacrosse players face relentless demands on their lower bodies. The sport’s explosive cuts, rapid direction changes, and intense deceleration create a vulnerable window for knee injuries, particularly non-contact tears that strike without warning. A new study from Kyoto University zeroed in and asked: Does the way you stand during squats actually matter? The answer is a resounding yes, and the implications for injury prevention are significant.
Researchers watched 10 university-level female lacrosse players perform bodyweight squats in six different stance configurations to map out exactly how small technical tweaks reshape the biomechanics of one of strength training’s most essential movements. What they discovered was nothing new, as female physique competitors found long ago: a wide stance with toes pointed outward (30 degrees) activates the hip extensors dramatically more than a narrow stance, generates substantial side-to-side force demands, and creates more favourable hip mobility. By contrast, a narrow stance cranks up ankle demands while introducing asymmetrical loading between legs. For coaches and athletes, this isn’t abstract theory. It’s actionable data that can lead to more targeted muscle building or sharpen injury prevention work.
Methods
The research pulled together 10 female lacrosse players from a Japanese university team, all competitive-level athletes with 3.5 years of average playing experience. Participants ranged from 20 to 24 years old and performed squats under six randomised stance conditions: narrow, shoulder-width, and wide stances combined with either parallel feet or 30-degree external rotation. All squats were unloaded bodyweight movements, performed at a controlled cadence using a metronome set to 60 beats per minute (a 2-second descent, 1-second pause at the bottom, 2-second ascent).
Researchers recorded muscle activity from 10 lower-limb muscles using surface electromyography (EMG), captured three-dimensional motion from a 10-camera system, and measured ground reaction forces from bilateral force plates. They analysed both the descent and ascent phases separately. The wide stance was set at 1.5 times the acromion distance (the width across the shoulders), shoulder-width at 1.0 times that distance, and narrow at 0.7 times that distance.
Results
Hip Mobility and Joint Range
Stance width and foot position dramatically influenced how much motion occurred at the hip, knee, and ankle. The wide stance with external rotation (toes out) produced the greatest hip motion at 116.9 degrees of flexion-extension. The narrow parallel stance (feet straight) generated the smallest angle at 98.2 degrees. This 19-degree spread is substantial and directly reflects how much of the hip’s available range is recruited during each setup.
The knee showed more variability across participants, but ankle motion followed a clear trend: narrow stances cranked up ankle dorsiflexion demands significantly more than wide stances. Specifically, the narrow parallel created 25.1 degrees of ankle motion compared to just 12.4 degrees in the wide parallel stance. That’s more than double the ankle loading.
