Why they call The Squat the King of Exercises

If you could only ever do one exercise to increase your strength and to gain some real muscle, you could do a lot worse than pick the squat. Thankfully, you don’t have to make that choice. You can do any exercises you like, provided you’re fit enough to handle them. But if you’re fit enough to squat, you’d be a fool not to! The squat employs some of the biggest muscle groups in your whole body. And most of the ones that aren’t directly involved are lending their support. And it makes you focus intensely on what you’re doing, since you’re in such a precarious position. You’re carrying a substantial weight, and supporting it on your shoulders, and you’re squatting down and forcing yourself up again, time after time. It’s a tremendous muscular effort, and a terrific battle of the will. After 5 or 8 squats with a fairly heavy bar the only thing you want to do is put it back on the stands and walk away (okay, stagger away!). Your whole body screams out for mercy. It knows you’re putting it under tremendous strain and, being the sensible creature it is, it just wants you to quit right now and let it be. It knows it’s not only under pressure, it’s actually in danger. That weight is bearing down heavily on your shoulders … on your chest, making breathing painful … on your joints … and it’s in danger of falling victim to a loss of balance, in which case you could suffer a serious injury. Your body knows this, and it wants out! It screams at you to STOP! It just wants you to be sensible, and to let it relax and breathe easy again. But if you want to get to the end of your set and make a difference, you have to try to overcome that urge to quit. No matter how enticing is the thought of putting that weight back on the stands, you have to try to finish the set … even if you can only manage one more rep … and then maybe just one more … and who knows (take a quick breath), maybe even one last one.

Squatting is a battle of wills!

Doing squats isn’t just a physical exercise, it’s a battle of wills. There’s you, wanting to shy away from doing squats completely, even though you know you’re capable … and if you go ahead, desperately wanting to keep the sets short and sweet (well, short anyway) … and then there’s you (the other you) … the one that’s prepared to sweat and grunt under a weight that you can barely cope with, and prepared to push the reps past five and six … steadily creeping up to nine and ten, maybe even one more … and relishing the feeling that you’ve conquered the never ending urge to quit early. Squats make you gasp and sweat like nothing else. They make you question your own dedication. They make you focus harder than you ever thought possible, visualising yourself triumphing against the odds and completing a few hard and painful sets, the kind that make you want to throw up … but the kind that make you proud you got stuck in and kept at it.

You don’t want to do squats every day of course, or even every session. Don’t lose sight of the fact that your body needs rest, your muscles need time to recover, and if you constantly batter them with gruesomely heavy sets they won’t thank you for it. If you want to experience growth, then by all means put your muscles under severe strain, but don’t overdo it or you’ll not only miss out on the growth, you’ll pick up a few injuries on the way.

Don’t make excuses – just squat!

But don’t let this be an excuse not to squat. There are other leg exercises, of course, and some of them allow you to handle huge weights, notably the leg press and the hack squat. And these are great exercises in their own right. But don’t forget to come back to the squat occasionally, if you’re not doing it regularly. Even if you only do squats once every week or ten days, squat if you’re able. Put yourself to the test. Put yourself under pressure. Face what can be the hardest exercise of all. Get under that bar and take the weight. Take a deep breath and sink down slowly and in a controlled way. Don’t bounce at the bottom, just use pure strength to push that weight skywards. Take a quick, gasping breath and do it again … and again. Know that you’re putting in the hard work and you’ll be rewarded for it. When others in the gym are hogging machines and sitting there, staring at their iPhone screens, you’re the one putting in the real work. This is what you came here for … not to chat, not to listen to music, not to pass the time … this is the place for truly hard work.

That’s why you sometimes do short workouts. Sometimes you might only be in the gym for 30 or 40 minutes, and some will think you’re a bit of a part timer, but if they knew what you’re actually going through in that half hour … they’d understand. Half an hour of real training is worth more than the two or three hours some put in, and regularly too. Because that kind of ‘training’ isn’t much more than socialising, while exercising. Twenty or thirty minutes of real training, including a few hard sets of squats … that’s where it’s at. That’s what it’s all about. If you’re not squattting, think about it … what’s stopping you? What’s your excuse? If you’re physically able, get squatting. And feel the difference!