The Squat

[emmanuel manolakakis]

The Squat

The Squat has long been considered the “King of all Exercises” .
If you were to pick just one exercise to condition yourself, the squat would provide the greatest overall benefit. This is mostly due to the fact that it is a free-body movement that requires use of almost every muscle in the body.

Proper form being critical to attaining its benefits, the proper squat is done with the head, shoulders and spine straightly aligned and the feet flat on the ground. The butt should be close to the ground but not touching. Make sure you go as low into the squat as you can without discomfort. To keep focused simply think of your breathing. Utilizing and incorporating various breathing patterns with the basic squat and you will start to notice the benefits quickly.

Add squats to your daily routine not just you workouts, start with 30 a day and build your way up. If you are unable to do 30 than do as many as you can in intervals throughout the day. This is an excellent way to energize your body and combat the effects of sitting. Many of you will start to notice that your breathing, strength, flexibility, digestion, elimination, energy, appearance and concentration all improve.

Body weight squats offer the following benefits:

Improved respiration of working tissues used in the squat. The squat used almost all the muscles in you body.

Improved pumping of body fluids, aiding in removal of waste and delivery of nutrition to all tissues, including organs and glands.

Spinal health

Improved movement of feces through the colon and more regular bowel movements

Beneficial physiological stress to your hormonal system. Properly performed breathing squats actually shift the body away from sympathetic nervous system dominance and encourage parasympathetic activity. This aids in tissue repair and cultivation of life-force energy.

The beauty of the squat is in its simplicity.
Like most truly wonderful things in life.

emmanuel manolakakis

[Eric Hansen]

Great post - I am inspired. They may see me squatting in the office today!

[Jeff Sherwin]

I've been doing squats regularly for the last few months and they have given me the following benefits:

1) Awareness of poor form/balance and physical strength to correct it This is probably the biggest benefit in my training as I am 6'7" tall and find myself hunching all the time.

2) Strengthening my knees. I used to have a lot of knee pain from a prior surgery and lots of running. The squats have strengthened my knees.

3) Ability to relax. I am able to use only those muscles necessary for the squat.

4) Increased flexibility. I can feel the stretch at the bottom of the range of movement.

5) Strengthened psyche. I've noticed when I use squats and duck walking as a warmup I shock myself out of whatever residual laziness my mind/body may have. I combine this with increased breathing to ensure I don't get lightheaded.

Just reading this post made me get up and do some squats right now!
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Jeff Sherwin

"The best is always the enemy of good enough" Mikhail Kalishnikov

[David Kim]

Short and sweet. I'd love to see one on the leg raise...

Thanks,
David Kim

[Mark Hord]

OK, I've tried to follow the Pavel "Naked Warrior" stuff lately and I'm still building up to the one-armed pushups. I can do a very shaky one-legged squat ("pistols") if I have something to hold onto to counterbalance my oversized mid-age belly .

Pavel's book talks about those two exercises being the most complete of any two you could master. Man - imagine if I could do 30 pistols! Maybe some day. Thanks for the motivational nudge to stick with it. I injured my knee a while back and that made the pistols out-of-the-question for a time but I think I'm ready to get serious about them again.
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Mark Hord - Systema Review
A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others. Ayn Rand

[Senai T]

the squat also releases testorine and hormones into yourbody, try doing it before anyother exercise, you will like it.

[Aran Dharmeratnam]

Very interesting post. Thanks for the clear insights. It seems so much is to be found within these grounding exercises. Also, I agree, it would be really interesting to see something similar about the leg raises. Of course, each time we do these exericeses they themselves teach something.

[Paul Hermanson]

When doing the squats, pushups, leg raises or what ever exercises, you want quality, not quantity, right? So if can do 50,100,200 quality squats, pushups, and there done with proper breathing, relaxed Systema way, along with the slow training is that to many? Should you mix it up?

Paul

[Senai T]

in weight trainig High Intesity is generally considered more effective.

[Mark Hord]

I meant to mention before and forgot -

Another reason for the one-legged squats and one-armed pushups are to involve more of the muscles. Pavel talks about the muscles that are typcally fired in exercise and then there are stablizer muscles that are fired to keep you balanced. He talks about machines (for instance) working the one group but ignoring the stabilizers - and that sort of training only increases the possibility of injury in the future because the stabilizers are not trained to kick in and work with the others properly. That's one of the reasons a lot of our systema workouts also challenge our balance at the same time. I noticed it in the other thread about Jim King's seminar - the one-legged stand while someone kicks your leg is also an exercise Pavel uses to force the stabilizers to kick in.
_________________
Mark Hord - Systema Review
A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others. Ayn Rand