But performing high-intensity, compound movements like the squat can also crush some serious calories. For example, according to Harvard Medical School , a pound person can burn approximately calories doing minutes of vigorous strength or weight training exercises, like squats. From getting out of bed, to sitting down in a chair, your glutes, quadriceps, hamstrings, adductors, hip flexors, and calves are responsible for almost every move you make.
Strength training exercises like squats can help strengthen and tone the muscles in your lower body. When these muscles are in good condition, you may find that you can move more comfortably, with less pain, and that everything from walking to bending to exercising is easier to do. If you compete in a sport, adding jump squats to your workout may help you develop explosive strength and speed which, in turn, may help improve your athletic performance.
A study investigated the effects of jump squat training done 3 times a week over the course of 8 weeks. Based on the results of the study, the researchers concluded that jump squat training has the ability to improve several different athletic performances simultaneously, including sprint time and explosive strength.
Once you master the basic squat, there are many different types of squat variations you can try. Changing up your squats can help keep the exercise interesting, while also activating different muscle groups.
Squats can be done with just your body weight. They can also be done with weights, like dumbbells, barbells, kettlebells, or medicine balls, or with resistance bands or yoga balls. All you need is your body and enough room to lower your hips into a sitting position.
As you get stronger, add 25 to the afternoon. Changing up the basic squat allows you to target different muscle groups. Before moving on to squat variations, make sure you have mastered the basic squat movement. These exercises are more challenging and require more strength, flexibility, and core activation. The back squat takes the traditional squat motion and adds resistance to the shoulders with a barbell. This variation engages your core, especially your lower back.
In addition, it works the muscles in your upper back, shoulders, and arms. Your range of motion will be slightly different with this squat, so pay careful attention to your form. The jump squat targets the glutes, quads, hips, and hamstrings while also increasing your heart rate.
While generally a safe exercise if done with the right form, there are some safety precautions to keep in mind when doing squats. Developing strength and power are just a few of the many benefits of including squats in your workouts.
When performed correctly, this functional exercise also boosts your calorie burn, helps prevent injuries, strengthens your core, and improves your balance and posture. To stay motivated, consider swapping out the traditional squat with different variations.
Although the movements appear relatively simple, squats can take time to master. Squats are a compound, multi-joint movement, Hardwick explains, which means they exercise several muscles groups.
Other examples of compound exercises include rowing and deadlifts. As you age , they help you retain mobility by keeping your body strong.
The steps are relatively simple:. Although the squat may seem intuitive, it can take some work to perfect. Hardwick recommends staying mindful of how tight your muscles are, as well as whether your body has weaknesses or imbalances. Common squat mistakes involve posture, he says. Avoid rounding out your back during the motion, and keep your knees above your heels.
Once they go past your toes, you are placing weight on the wrong parts of your body and are at greater risk of injury.
As you begin a new routine, Hardwick says, you can practice squats with a chair to improve your form. What about free weights vs. Most of those with superior thigh development prefer free-weight barbell squats. Many trainees feel that they have more control when they use a machine, which puts less stress on the knees.
I used to use a special squat bar that combined the best of free weights and machine squats. It forced you to use good form yet also permitted you to use heavy weights. I stopped doing the exercise only when the squat bar was removed from the gym for unknown reasons. Frank Zane used a special squat apparatus that he designed that makes it easier to maintain perfect form throughout your set.
Zane feels that it contributed greatly to his thigh development. Another bodybuilder from that era, Dave Draper, squats using a special device of his own design that lies across his back and helps support the bar, thus favoring better squat form and increased exercise focus. Another typical method of doing squats involves changes in foot position. Studies show that doing wider-stance squats does produce more adductor activity. Doing narrow-stance squats, however, does not work any of the thigh muscles more effectively than if you use a normal foot stance of about shoulder width.
While some suggest that doing full squats involves the hamstrings more, meaning the muscles on the backs of the thighs, the truth is that squats provide minimal hamstring involvement. For full hamstring development you need to do at least two basic movements: leg curls and stiff-legged deadlifts. That way you work the hams at both the knee and hip areas.
Steve Reeves favored front squats. The screen Hercules believed that doing heavy regular squats would increase his hip and glute size, and since he was blessed with small hips and glutes, he wanted to keep them that way. His basic thigh workout consisted of front squats, hack squats and leg curls. He did it three times a week as part of a whole-body routine. Knowing that the thighs are the largest muscles in the body and required more energy to be trained effectively, Reeves trained them first.
Front squats, as the name implies, are performed with the bar held in front, usually resting on your front delts and upper chest.
One advantage of them is that they make it more difficult to lean forward. That has the duel effect of lessening the possibility of lower-back strain and placing less stress on the hips and glutes. Another problem is the way the bar rests in your hands, often bending back the fingers excessively.
That can also be painful. One possible solution is to attach lifting straps to the bar and hold the straps rather than bending your fingers under the bar. Reeves did the exercise with his arms crossed over his chest, holding the bar in his crossed arms.
Hack squats are another useful variation, although they are not a replacement for barbell squats. On the other hand, famed bodybuilding trainer Vince Gironda was a strong proponent of hack squats done on a machine and even refused to allow squat racks in his famous Studio City, California, gym.
Vince suggested that doing machine hack squats with varying body alignments would produce full thigh development minus the big ass and hips that he said would result from heavy barbell squats. Read the Iron Man magazine review here. In one hack variation that Vince favored, you move your hips forward as you come up out of the low position.
He said that would train both the lower and upper thighs, whereas hack squats normally focus on the lower part of the front-thigh muscles. Bodybuilders often use too much weight on hack squats. The angle of the typical hack machine places a lot of stress on the knee joints, just as leg extensions do, since the large glute and hip muscles are not heavily involved in the movement which is why Vince liked it.
Piling on the weight and doing the exercise with a narrow foot position is guaranteed to result in bad knees eventually. I know, because I did hacks that way for more than 20 years. I wound up shearing away most of the cartilage in my knees, leaving me with arthritis today.
There are plenty of us who would love to squat really heavy and certainly have the hip and thigh power to do so but also have lower-back injuries that make it impossible. You can indeed make pounds feel like and make it stimulate just as much muscle growth. Slowing down your reps, pausing at the bottom and using higher-rep ranges are a few neat tricks.
The main part that intrigued me about his leg workout was that he supersetted heavy Smith-machine squats with lighter barbell squats for 15 reps each.
Then, when you move directly to free-weight squats, the quads are temporarily weaker, relatively speaking, than the spinal erector muscles of the lower back and can be blasted into oblivion. I warmed up with one pound plate on each side of the Smith machine for 12 reps, then did the same on the bar for Next, I added a second 45 to the Smith and got 15 reps.
Luckily, the Smith machine was right next to the squat rack, where I did a mere for
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