By in Yoga & Pilates

The Problem with the Squat

The Squat, an exercise that takes you through a sitting to standing and standing to sitting motion, is probably one of the most popular exercises in the gym today. It is one of the Personal Trainers basics, found in almost every workout. Variations of it are used in heavy weightlifting, CrossFit, HIT classes, Aerobics, Yoga and Pilates.

It is easy to see why the exercise is so essential. The squat might just be the most obviously functional movement we can practice, to keep our body able to easily get out of a deep chair or to pick things up off the ground without hurting our back or knees. It is a crucial ability in order to keep our independence and mobility when we get older. Once we lose the ability to squat we lose a significant part of our independence.

So it is obvious why it is so popular and why we practice it a lot. And yet there is a problem with our squats.

We live in a Squat Already

We may not realise it is the same thing, but our bodies have, over time, developed to be pretty much in a permanent, mid-range squatting position. We sit in chairs a lot. How many hours in the day do you spend sitting, when you count them all together? Sitting is a big part of our lives. If our body is spending a long time in the same position it adapts to this position. In this case, hip flexors across the front are gradually shortening, gluteus at the back are lengthening and becoming more and more inactive, our lumbar spine is compressing. Our hamstrings get squashed underneath our weight and glue down the sciatic nerve between them. So we have to ask ourselves how much we want to practice this very pattern when we are not sitting own but in the gym, where we work on conditioning our body to compensate for all the sitting.

We practice our Dysfunctions

Taking the body through the same movements and positions we have embodied passively all day we expect to get better at them. To a degree, we do, as we are now doing the movement actively and not just passively supported by a chair. However to do an active squat we need our hamstrings, gluteus, and pelvic muscles to do their job in combination with the hip flexors, which also need to have their balanced elasticity, recoil and function. I see a lot of people forcing themselves repeatedly through their squat repetitions, struggling to squat lower than their usual sitting position and feeling their quadriceps, at the front of the thigh, work hard. Many of us think if it feels difficult that is great because we don’t improve unless we really push ourselves. Unfortunately, the reality is a little more complex. Squatting feels difficult because our body is not getting the balanced support from its muscles and fascial network it needs to perform a balanced and efficient movement. Instead, we further shorten and tighten our hip flexors until they start pinching. We make our quadriceps even more dominant and our back can suffer too from the imbalances. So what we really do by practicing squats is reinforcing our imbalances and dysfunctions that we got from all the sitting down.

What to do instead:

#1 Analyse Your Squat

Simply avoiding squatting is of course not the answer. What we need to do is analyse the quality of our squat. Is everything working in balance and supporting the movement or are some muscles struggling under the task while others are not doing much at all? We also need to identify the subconscious strategies we are using to squat. This means essentially, we need to find out how we achieve the movement. Once we have the information we then need to walk away from the squat for a moment.

#2 Return Muscles and Soft Tissue to Good Function.

Based on the results of the analyses we then need to do some other exercises to improve the health and function of our hip extensors. This can be done by doing movements that isolate the function of hip extension, so the brain can really reconnect with this activity and coax the relevant muscle tissue to do its job.

#3 Change Your Squatting Strategy

When the extensors have returned to better function we need to come back to more complex, dynamic movements that are similar to squatting and yet feel different. It is useful to go through this movement in a different orientation to gravity for example, or with some support. If we just go back to the challenge of the squat, the body is likely to resort to its old strategies as that is how it has gotten used to doing the movement.

If we change the orientation to gravity by lying on our back, like on the Pilates Reformer, not only does the brain not identify the movement as a squat and therefore won’t resort to its old habits, it also is a lot easier to go through the movement of a squat with our back supported and some weight taken away. This means our brain has the capacity to adapt changes of how it organises the body to do the movement. Here we can integrate the improved muscle function into the functional movement pattern and make it the new way of how we squat before we come back to the real thing.

#4 Now Revolutionise Your Squat

It is time to experience a new kind of squat. Bring all your new balanced function and what you have learned back to the good old upright squat and experience it new. It will take a few repetitions of concentration but with a little practice and focus your brain will soon accept the new strategy as its own, so you can sit down, get up, do a deadlift at the gym or intense pose in yoga in a balanced functional way, without having to think about it anymore.

#5 Make it Real

And if you are responsible enough to continue with your practice, where ever you do this, vary your squats! How many varieties of the squat do you normally practice? How often, for example, do you practice squatting all the way down, until your heels lift and your butt is inches from the ground?

We are creatures of habit, and we do as we are told. This often leads to us practicing the squat as one or two variations of an exercise. We squat with our legs parallel or maybe we keep our legs wider as in a sumo squat. We keep our heels grounded, push the hips back and try to keep our back straight. And typically, that’s how we are told to squat.

However squatting is a natural movement, remember? This means we do it however we do it, depending on where it is supposed to take us. We will do a fairly different movement when we are in a rush, drop our phone on the floor and quickly need to pick it up, versus lifting a heavy box off the floor, versus squatting down on a French toilet. If we practice squats we should do them in all sorts of functional variations. We are not robots, each squat movement we do in real life will be slightly different. Our body needs to remain resourceful and variable in its performance.

We need to remain able to squat in different ways with ease, healthy function, and effective strategy. Simply counting your repetitions in the gym won’t do the job. On the positive side, acknowledging your bodies struggle and addressing it kindly, intelligently and specifically can be a very rewarding experience and the results surprisingly magic.

If you would like some help with your Squats, contact Kristin at The Body Matters on 01702 714968.

Kristin Loeer
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