Imagine not being able to sit down into a chair, walk up a set of stairs, or get something out of the bottom cupboard in your kitchen. That could be the case if you don’t practice squats regularly, experts say. ‘Squats aren’t just an exercise, they’re a movement you do every day,’ sports scientist and strength and conditioning coach explains.
‘Whether you’re aware of it or not, you’re practicing squatting every day.’
Though he acknowledges it’s a ‘bit of a simplistic view’, he says squatting is essentially just ‘bending at your ankles, knees and hips’ – it’s a ‘fundamental pattern of movement’ that you do multiple times a day, so by practicing squats more formally in a workout setting, you are training for daily life.
Squats are something you do every single day,’ ‘When you sit down onto the toilet, or on to a chair and back up again, or when you walk up a flight of stairs and come back down. Your ankles bend, your knees bend, and your hips bend – that’s the fundamental squat pattern. The only thing that’s very different is the degree of range of motion you go through, or the degree that a part of your body moves around your joints.
By performing squats in a workout setting regularly, you’ll train your body to move through a deeper range of motions at different joint angles. The next time you come to squat down to your cupboard, then, you should be able to go lower without feeling any discomfort. Likewise, you might be able to take two stairs at a time the next time you go upstairs.
In even more encouraging news, for any squat haters, there are ‘hundreds of squat variations that most people wouldn’t qualify as squats, and that you can still reap the rewards from’.
So the moral of this post is "don't be afraid to squat there are heaps of benefits"