Mark OttobreFounder at Enterprise Fitness

Stop Squatting Until You Fix This

21 Oct 2026 · 2 min

Watch on YouTube

1:34

In this instructional YouTube clip, Mark Ottobre demonstrates how to address a common squat flaw known as the "butt wink," where the pelvis tucks under during the descent, indicating a loss of pelvic control. He explains that effective squatting relies on three major stability hubs – the spine, hips, and scapula. Using a participant named Oscar, Mark first shows a bodyweight squat that exhibits a pronounced butt wink. He then adds a front‑loaded kettlebell, forcing Oscar’s core to engage to prevent forward collapse, which markedly reduces the wink. Next, he introduces a resistance band around Oscar’s knees to further activate the hips and improve stability, resulting in an even greater reduction of the flaw. Mark emphasizes that these drills serve as a neural warm‑up before heavy loading, not a replacement for proper technique, and notes that Oscar can still squat 140 kg on a barbell despite the initial wink. The video concludes with a call to follow Mark for more fitness tips.

Chapters

Can I get you to do a bodyweight squat? Now, when Oscar does this, we can see he has a pretty significant butt wink. What is the butt wink? First of all, it's when he comes down and you can see that his bum winks under and he loses that pelvic control. So there are 3 major hubs of stability in the body. There's your spine, there's your hips, and your scapula. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna grab this kettlebell. He is gonna extend that out in front of him. Now he's gonna do exactly the same movement again, come down, And what you'll see is that the butt wink is much, much less. And the reason for that— come back up— is because the minute we put load in front of him, his core has to engage, otherwise he would fall forward. What a lot of haters will say on the internet is you can just do this with cueing. All right, we'll do it your way for one second. Go wider with your feet, wider with your feet, bring that belly button in, bring your hips under, stack your rib cage on top. Already lost him, but anyway, do the squat for me. Do the squat, do the squat, and you can see the butt wink is still there, so that doesn't really check out. What we wanna do to even make this more efficient for Oscar is we'll put this around his knees. The reason why we're putting the band around his knees is to engage his hips, make him stable. Now do the movement, and what you'll see is that his hips are now much more stable, and we've got an even better improvement again. Oscar's a strong guy. On a barbell, he can squat 140 kilos, no problem. So it's not to say because someone has a butt wink, they can't squat. What this is about is before Oscar goes and does his squats, he's going to do this as a neural warmup. If you've enjoyed this tip, make sure you follow Mark Ottobre for more.