Bodyweight Squats:
Strength, Flexibility, and Health in One Exercise
Bodyweight squats are a simple and profoundly effective exercise.
They not only strengthen the legs and core, but also keep the back, hips, knees, and ankles functioning through their full, natural range of motion.
When we think of flexibility, we often think of a ballerina putting her leg behind her head, or a yogi with legs crossed in lotus posture. But did you know that olympic weight lifters are some of the most flexible atheletes around?
By performing the squat properly through a full range of motion, you can strengthen and gain flexibility through the lower back, hips, knees, and ankles.
Bodyweight squats are the starting point for truly useful strength and flexibility for daily life.
Check out the demonstration below:
Bodyweight Squats Guide
Start
- Start with your feet around shoulder width apart, toes pointed out slightly.
- Keep your head up, looking slightly up throughout the squat.
- Keep your lower back engaged, arched slightly.
- Keep most of your weight toward your heels.
Squat
- With your weight towards your heels, sit back, keeping the slight arch in your lower back.
- Continue to keep your head up, looking slightly up throughout the squat.
- Send your hands up for balance as you squat down.
- Your knees should move in line with your feet. Don’t let them track inwards, which stresses the knee joint.
- Don’t just let yourself ‘fall’ into the squat, keep muscle tension as you descend, under control.
- Stop descending before you lose the arch in your lower back. In the photo here, my back is beginning to flatten out in this bottom position, as I reach the maximum depth for my current level of hip/hamstring flexibility. Don’t let your lower back round forward (see photo below for what NOT to do!).
Press Back Up
- Flexing and activating your hamstrings and glutes, pushing through your heels, press back up to a full standing position.
- Keep your weight and pressure toward your heels while pressing back up to the top.
- Fully extend your hips, standing up as tall as possible at the top of the squat.
Don’t Round Your Lower Back!
Don’t do this!
Here you can see that my lower back has rounded. This is a compromising position for the spine, and it’s happening because I currently lack the ankle, hamstring and hip flexibility to execute a deeper squat with good form.
If I had a weight on my back in this position, I would be asking for a lower back injury.
People who have developed flexibility in their hips, hamstrings, and ankles, such as olympic style weightlifters, can squat incredibly deep while maintaining a neutral (not rounded forward) spine. This allows them to support tremendous weight overhead without risk of back injury.
I have been working on squatting deeper for the last few months, just getting as low as I can while hanging on to a support to keep proper spine extension. You can really feel a good stretch in the uppper hamstrings, hips, and achilles tendons in this position.Westerners like ourselves who spend so much time sitting in chairs typically have hip and hamstring flexibility issues, which can lead to lower back problems.
This position allows you to stretch your hips, groin, hamstrings, achilles tendons, and feet.
This stretch has helped me to get much more flexible in these areas during the last few months.
Doing this stretch barefoot targets foot and ankle flexibility even more.