THE MIRACLE OF SQUATTING

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.