The squat that teaches perfect depth.
Keep your chest up and elbows inside your knees at the bottom.
Holding the dumbbell at your chest shifts the load in front of your body, which counterbalances you into an upright torso and lets you sink between your knees to honest depth, the reason coaches use it to teach squatting. The quads drive the movement with the glutes powering out of the bottom. It earns its place as both the best entry point to loaded squatting and a legitimate quad builder in its own right, especially at high reps.
For learning to squat and for high-rep quad work, it is superb. Its limit is load, eventually holding the dumbbell becomes harder than the squat itself. When that happens, it becomes a warm-up or volume tool rather than your main strength lift.
The front-loaded dumbbell keeps your torso upright, so the lower back handles far less leverage than in a bent-over or bar-loaded position. That is exactly why it suits beginners and anyone easing back in after time off.
Widen your stance slightly and turn your toes out a touch, that usually frees up the ankles. If heels still rise, squat to the depth you can hold flat feet at while ankle mobility catches up, or put small plates under your heels.
