Bri­an Chin Le­ung

With­out a doubt, the free squat is con­sid­ered the num­ber one weight train­ing ex­er­cise by most fit­ness ex­perts. Note that I did not just ac­knowl­edge it to be the best weight train­ing move­ment for the legs, which it is, but rather I stat­ed it is the best weight train­ing ex­er­cise. Sci­ence has shown, that the free squat does not on­ly have a pos­i­tive ef­fect on your legs; it al­so seems to have an an­a­bol­ic ef­fect over your en­tire body, which is ex­cel­lent if you are look­ing for over­all mus­cle growth and tone.

The bio-me­chan­ics of the squat

On clos­er ex­am­i­na­tion, it is not dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand how the free squat can af­fect your en­tire sys­tem. From the mo­ment you go un­der the bar­bell, you have to tight­en your core mus­cles, push your chest out, and keep your shoul­ders back in or­der to pre­serve prop­er pos­ture. Your arms will al­so have to tight­en to en­sure sta­bil­i­ty of the bar; then as you be­gin your de­scent, there is go­ing to be con­trac­tion of your hips, thighs, glutes and calf mus­cles. Push­ing back up (the pos­i­tive part of the rep) is now go­ing to re­quire max­i­mum ef­fort from all the above mus­cle groups that I men­tioned. In ad­di­tion to the ef­fect on your mus­cu­lar sys­tem, the free squat will al­so serve to strength­en your skele­tal and your car­dio­vas­cu­lar sys­tems. Any­one who squats reg­u­lar­ly can con­firm how high their heart rate is el­e­vat­ed dur­ing rep­e­ti­tions of the squat.

How to squat cor­rect­ly

Some id­iots will tell you that the squat is not a nat­ur­al move­ment. What do you think our an­ces­tors did when they had to an­swer an im­por­tant call from na­ture? They al­so had to squat in the tall grass, in or­der to hide from prey that they might be stalk­ing. What could be more nat­ur­al than that? The main rea­son why the free squat does not yield re­sults for some peo­ple is due to bad form on their part; that's the bot­tom line. The first rule in squat­ting is to en­sure that you warm-up your body prop­er­ly, with spe­cif­ic at­ten­tion be­ing paid to warm­ing up your low­er back, on the back ex­ten­sion bench, and to warm­ing up your knees by do­ing a few reps of leg ex­ten­sions.

To be­gin the squat, place a bar­bell with the ap­pro­pri­ate poundage to rest on your shoul­ders (be­hind your neck); then note the fol­low­ing tips.

• En­sure your feet are spaced hip-width apart, with knees and toes point­ing in the same di­rec­tion.

• Push your chest out, as it will help you main­tain good pos­ture, and at the same time keep your low­er back flat.

• When you be­gin your de­scent, do so slow­ly and with con­trol. Drop­ping fast in­to the squat can pop your knees.

• Stop the de­scent when the back of your thighs are par­al­lel to the floor and then be­gin your as­cent by push­ing with your legs back in­to the orig­i­nal, start­ing po­si­tion.

• Use poundage suf­fi­cient to stim­u­late your mus­cles, not your ego.

If you are con­cerned about your low­er back, there are al­so many vari­a­tions of the squat, which in­clude Swiss ball squats, dumb­bell squats and Smith ma­chine squats.

Keep Train­ing.

Bri­an Chin Le­ung is ac­er­ti­fied per­son­al train­er