If I ask you to think about lower body exercises, I'm willing to bet on the fact that one of the first exercises you'll think of is the squat. But if you want to really raise the bar and make your squats even harder, starting a squat and staying there is a surefire way to burn your legs. It's not easy to maintain low squats. And it's really hard to hold a low squat for 3 minutes. I found that out when I added it to my workout routine every day for a week just for fun.Read on to find out what happened
Benefits of continuing to do squats
Squats are great for working your lower body muscles, especially your quads, hamstrings, and glutes. Focusing on pushing through your heels as you rise from a squat will work your glutes especially hard. Don’t just take my word for it — the study He states that squats help strengthen the muscles in your lower body.
Squats not only train your lower body, but also your core muscles. This is because you need to engage your abdominal muscles to keep your torso upright as you engage in the exercise.
When you continue to squat low, you spend more time under tension (TUT), which forces your muscles to stay taut longer and work harder. As mentioned in previous challenges, it is time under tension that elicits muscle growth. Holding the muscles under resistance loads them in a way that regular bodyweight squats cannot. If you continue to squat, it is normal for your leg muscles to tremble. In fact, this indicates that your leg muscles may not be used to meeting resistance for long periods of time.
Resistance-based training has also been shown to help build bone strength, which is essential as we age. the study I also discovered that squats can help improve bone density.
How to do a squat hold
Ready to get started? Here's how to perform squat holds with perfect form.
- Stand upright with your feet hip-width apart.
- Bend your knees and push your hips back as you lower your hips. While doing so, keep your back flat and your gaze forward.
- Pause when your thighs are parallel to the ground, then push up through your heels to return to standing position.
- When holding a low squat, instead of pushing up to stand up, simply keep your feet firmly flat on the floor, keep your gaze forward, and tighten your back and core to avoid slouching.
Of course, you can make this even more difficult by holding one of the adjustable dumbbells in each hand, or by holding two dumbbells, one on each shoulder, to add some resistance.
I choose to do low squats for 3 minutes, but you can shorten this time to simplify the movement, or lengthen it to make it more difficult.
I did 3 minutes of low squats every day for a week – this is what happened
3 minutes goes by so quickly.
You might think that 3 minutes is a long time to do a low squat, but in my experience it goes by in the blink of an eye. His first minute was lazing, his next 30 seconds started to feel intense, and he spent the rest of the time moving a little more while continuing to stop to swing his legs out. By the end of the week, I decided to challenge myself by increasing it by 1 minute each day, and found that he was able to hold a low squat for 5 minutes, even though he was shaking a lot.
My quadriceps!
Oh my quad! If there was one muscle that I felt burned more than any other, it was my quadriceps. I have pretty strong quads thanks to years of exercise, strength training, and running, but this simple bodyweight exercise made my quads cry out in pain.
This week-long challenge reminded me that times under stress never get easier. That said, I'm pretty confident that by the end of the week, my quads will be more capable of low squats than they were at the beginning.
Added pulses for butt burn
My quadriceps were the ones that burned the most during this challenge, but after a few minutes my glutes also worked. I added some small pulses to really feel that my glutes were working twice as hard as he did. As someone who focuses on maintaining strong glutes, I knew I needed to give them a good workout with this lower body challenge. Strong glutes, the largest muscles in your body, are extremely important for everyday movements, but they're especially important to me as a marathon runner.
my form was bad
When performing regular up and down squats, it's important to keep looking flat at your back and forward. why? This is primarily to prevent muscle soreness and potential injury, especially when taking on extra weight in dumbbell or barbell form. As I continued to squat low, I could definitely feel my back starting to arch. This exercise required me to contact my body with the base at regular intervals, realign my back and core, realign my hips, and keep my gaze forward.
As always, if you're unsure of your form when practicing an exercise for the first time, we recommend checking with a personal trainer.
took regular breaks
After a minute of doing squats, the burn got worse. After 90 seconds, I had to stand and shake before going back to the squat. After this, we took two more short breaks before the 3 minutes were up. So you could say I cheated a little. Needless to say, by the end of the week I was taking fewer breaks as my legs were getting a little used to the lower squat holds.
I did 3 minute low squats every day for a week – here's my verdict
Should you take this challenge? 100% yes! Tensioning your lower body muscles makes them stronger, which is useful not only for common daily movements, but also for other sports and exercises. Additionally, as mentioned earlier, any weight-bearing exercise, such as squats, helps maintain strong bones.
Doing low squats may sound incredibly boring, but time flies when you're fighting the voice in your head telling you to give up and stand up.
If you have trouble holding a low squat for 3 minutes, start with 2 minutes and increase the time. To make this even harder, throw it in as a finisher to your next leg day workout, or try adding weights if you're feeling brave.
