Tuesday, April 23, 2013

The King of All Exercises

By Dustin Aaron


Plenty of people discuss what the king of all exercise movements is. Most fitness professionals will probably agree that the squat is one of the best exercise movements for building muscle on your entire body. There is no doubt that lifting heavy weight in this exercise will turbo charge your results, but first you will need to learn how to effectively perform the movement.

Start by placing your legs shoulder width apart. There are multiple variations of the squat. You can execute the exercise with your thighs and legs spread wider like a sumo wrestler to put more focus on your hamstrings and lower back, or you can perform the movement with a very narrow stance to put more focus on your quads. Training with a shoulder width foot position will ready you for any version of the movement.

Right before you step under the barbell, you should arch your back as tight as you can. Holding a firm back arch through the entire movement will help to avoid injury to your lower back. With a strong back arch, you should put your hands slightly wider than shoulder width on the bar and then step below the bar so that it is resting on your trapezius muscles.

Grasp the bar as hard as you can, and think about arching the bar out of the rack. Once the barbell is out of the supports you should actually sit back with the weight instead of squatting down with it. This sitting back movement will activate your hamstrings and also take most of the weight off of your knees and put it on the more durable hip joints. You might have to lean forward somewhat to maintain your balance, but as long as you sustain a strong back arch a little bit of leaning will not harm you.

Proceed to sit back up to the point your thighs are parallel with the ground and then push hard into the floor with your feet until you are standing fully vertical. Be sure you keep your entire body tight for the duration of the exercise. This can easily be accomplished by just gripping the barbell as hard as possible and maintaining a hard back arch for every repetition. A tight stomach and arched back muscles, will help to stop injury.

The squat can be performed with heavy weight for low reps to build strength or lighter with greater reps to boost your endurance and conditioning. Always remember to limber up before you set about to hoist heavy weights, and for the sake of your safety it is better to use at least one spotter when you perform the movement.




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