THE
SQUAT
Today I am going to cover
the king of exercises the Squat. It
is an exercise which will benefit us for a full life time; more so as we become
old. For those of us who watched the last Olympics one of the best memories for
Indians was provided by the wrestler Sushil Kumar. His powerful build with
strong shoulders and tree trunk legs left one truly impressed. To those of us
who visit an old style Indian gym the “AKHARA” the visualization is that of
young budding wrestlers squatting (Uthak Baithak) or doing a push up variation
(the dand or Hindu push up).
It is said the Gama the
legendary wrestler used to squat over 4000 times a day. He used to squat for
3-4 hours a day to develop phenomenal endurance and lower body strength.
Today every sportsman
acknowledges that the squat is the most important component of his strength
building training routines. Even sportsman who look slim and are involved in
high mobility sports like tennis often squat close to 300 pounds.
Have you ever seen a child
squat? He makes it look so natural. When did we lose that ability.?
See the basic villager wait
for a train at the platform. She is squatting on her haunches.
So what are the benefits of
squatting? Let me enumerate them.
Squatting
tones up the leg muscles. The Squat exercises all our leg muscles which include
our quads and hamstrings.
Squat
exercises tones up the butt muscles. We also engage our ass when squatting. When
done regularly, you’ll notice that your butt will become firmer and tighter
than what it used to be. In old age this muscle is the most important as it
enables us to rise from a chair or bed without help.
Squatting
develops the abdominals, too. Squatting help develop the six pack. The abs
contract when you engage your core to do squats.
Squatting
exercise helps burn more fats. We develop muscles and muscles burn more
fats.
Squatting
exercise improves day to day activities.
Squatting
exercise promotes strong bones, joints and muscles.
Squats
help prevent injury by improving your flexibility and balance in old age.
Squats
develop sexy asses.
Why Squat for Strength?
I’ll put it simply: physical
strength is your best defense against illness, injury, and — ultimately —
death. Furthermore, squat based strength training seems to accomplish most of
our appearance based goals in addition to improving our physical health. Women
tend to get lean and toned while squatting for strength. Men develop sculpted,
natural muscles. Whether you’re looking to perform like an elite athlete,
handle the stresses of challenging work, or simply “get healthy” … squatting
will get you there.
There is no doubt that
squats are one of the most beneficial exercises that you can perform. A proper
squat can hit almost every muscle in the body. It’s a favored exercise whether
you’re looking to increase muscle mass or burn fat – or indeed both. Recruiting
so many muscles means the squat has a much more significant calorie burning
effect than almost any other resistance training exercise. It can massively
increase lower body and core strength, as well as improving the upper body tone
too. Importantly, it’s also an exercise that
can be performed without any equipment at all.
Never
do a partial squat. If you want good knees squat as deep as you can, without
losing form and that’s the key. Don’t worry too much about the load that you’re
squatting. Straight away, one of the benefits you’ll notice in performing
deeper squats is the dramatic increase on the recruitment of the glute and
hamstring muscles. These muscle groups simply don’t receive a proper workout
when performing partial squats. You have to go deep. As you find your balance and get used to the
movement of deep squatting you’ll soon be able to start increasing the
resistance as well, making your muscles work a lot harder.
