What is your favorite exercise in the Gym? Most of us do have our favorites, be it a favorite body part or workout type or any specific Exercise or Movement. The agenda or the goal of this article is to share with you the importance of a natural movement of the Human Body – Squat. By the end of this article, I will try to convince you to fall in love with the king of repertoire of the Exercise Arsenal i.e. A Squat.Squat is the BRAHMOS missile of the Exercise artillery.
We gain the ability to squat at a tender age of 1-2 years the time we start walking on our two feet, walking is an amazing skill set to balance our body on two feet. We balance our body weight and perform various kindsof activities like walking, turning, running, jumping, squatting etc. with ease. Isn’t that amazing? But we fail to appreciate this fact, because few things are given to us by nature as default or as our inbuilt ethos of being a human being. Anyways why am I talking about walking or standing or turning on two feet when the article is about Squat? I am just trying to create a framework for the article.
Squat is a natural movement of sitting down and standing up. Make a child perform a squat, child will automatically sit and stand with ease. I have seen lot of people in villages, sitting comfortably in a squat position for long. The time when the chairs were not invented, English toilet seats weren’t there. How the hell ancient human used to sit? Mostly in the Squat position or Cross Legged position right? Major amount of Human Existence, chairs haven’t been used but somehow we have gotten scared of sitting down in a Squat position due to some unknown fears put into our head by some people. Have we changed some few 100 years? Have we become some other specie? Has there been a total genetic or structural modification of our joints, rendering us to not being able to sit in a Squat position? Nothing as such has happened, then why fears? Why do you Half Squat or perform a sissy Squat? What stops you from going down and standing up? I want to ask you all these questions because I see people fearing this lovely movement which is so much beneficial for a Human Being. Without eradicating that fear, there is no point even if I mention 10 reasons to Squat;it is not going to motivate you to Squat.
Overthinking is bad right? Do you think of driving while you drive or walking while you walk or do you carefully measure your each step while you walk, you don’t right? I bet every step is equidistant and this happens when we don’t overthink and let the movement take its course. In this world, many things go wrong if we overthink and complicate matters unnecessarily wherein things are to be kept simple and rational. Hence, Squat is a simple activity of sitting down and standing up, period.
To refresh our ability to perform squats, let’s go through some of the must have’s for a Squat. While doing Squat, keep in mind:
- Maintain Neutral Spine Curvature, throughout the movement. If you can’t consult a good trainer, who knows what he preaches.
- Take comfortable stance, depends on person to person (Toes out)
- Sit down with Knees Tracking in Line of Toes and stand up the same way
- Keep your Foot Planted on the floor, throughout the movement
Above are the major queues which I could mention here, we can have another article to How to perform an efficient Squat, wherein I will mention all the nitty-gritties of a Squat.
Just a small paragraph about Human interaction with the Environment to understand the concept better, Humans interact with the external environment with their Muscles and Bones. Muscles are small/big motors acting over Bones to cause the Human Movement. Humans interact with environment using Force Application in the Environment they physically interact with. We walk so we propel our body weight forward by pushing against the earth surface; hence we generate force against the ground and cause the movement to happen. Similarly in a Squat, we sit and stand. So, we generate force with our Legs (Bones + Muscles) and we stand up. In Body weight Squats; we generate force to lift our body weight against the action of gravity. Force generation involves working of our entire Legs Musculature and Core (which has varied number of muscles, whose evolutionary function is to keep neutral spine while subjected against the load for efficient force transfer). When we perform weighted squats, effort required from the Legs and Core Muscles increases, hence our force production capacity of the body increases and hence we get stronger.
Why should you Squat?
- Strengthens your Entire Body: Force applied against a load efficiently, strengthens the entire body. Strength is the basis of life and is the most applicable aspect of Fitness.
- Improves Bone Density: Provides a stimulus to Bones to get denser, as the Bones need to work against an external force. With increased loading, Squats provides Bones a stimulus to absorb more nutrients to cause the Bones to become denser. It is a Physical Insurance against degeneration or ageing.
- Core Strengthening: No Exercise or Movement works on core as hard as Squat does; Core musculature is evolutionary made for stability and not for active function like most think. As you start squatting heavier, your core starts getting stronger and stronger due to normal physiological adaptation principle of the body.
- Saves Time: Apart from providing all other benefits, squat saves time. It works your entire body, hence saves you time from leg extensions, leg presses, abductor machines etc. You don’t need them, what you need is a Squat; please don’t waste your time doing them.
- Rejuvenates the most fundamental movement of the human body, the ability of the human to sit down and stand up whilst maintaining balance is a skill set which should be kept alive as long as you are alive.
- Uses Maximum Joints and Muscle Mass, hence called as a structural movement. Gives more bang for the buck. Makes body perform a task as a unit, in day to day life every task is done with body working as a whole unit. Time is limited, utilize it doing the best.
- Bonus Benefit: Squat makes you mentally stronger, it gives a feeling of accomplishment that you did a tough task today (happens when the weight goes up). The same feeling goes to your entire day and spreads across all the work you do throughout the day until never giving up becomes your habit. It gives you that never giving up attitude trust me that matters a lot in life.
Hope with this I have generated some interest or pushed you towards doing the most beautiful yet in your face movement “The Squat” and you will start doing this movement on a regular basis. One more thing, in day to day life we generate force on a stable surface not on an unstable one. Kindly, refrain from squatting on an unstable surface; it gives you nothing except from time waste and a pseudo feeling of accomplishment.
PS: Squat is the BRAHMOS missile of the Exercise artillery, but uses it more often ;)
About The Author
Harsh Arya is a certified Master Trainer, Sports Nutritioinist, and trained to train Special Population. He is an IMT Ghaziabad and BITS Pilani Alumni. Having worked in Aviation..
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