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Training the legs is often seen as an arduous and painstaking task. To be honest, people generally overlook training their legs, and on the other hand fitness trainers emphasize training legs. It is no surprise, because our legs constitute the strongest muscles of our body and hence, they need to be worked extra hard. However, leg exercises such as deep squatting can always be done from the comfort of your home; hence you have no reason or excuse to skip a good leg day workout. Not many people know that squat plays a major role in burning that stubborn lower belly fat and is a major exercise that cannot be skipped to get a slim and lean physique.
How Do Our Legs Work?
Before straight away hitting the squat machine or picking up a barbell or dumbbell set, it is better to understand the anatomy of the legs and learn about the various muscles group. The legs include the feet, thighs, hips, and glutes. The main bones in the legs are the femur, tibia, patella, and fibula. A quadriceps is a group of muscles that are responsible for moving the legs and are located in the thighs. The hamstring exists as the antagonist to the quadriceps to reverse the motion. The movement of the feet is performed by the tibialis as well as the gastrocnemius and soleus muscles. Needless to say, it is important to have strong lower limbs and every one of us should train all these muscle groups and joints.
Our five squats cover a spectrum of effective ranges. We will start from the easiest ones and move up the difficult ladder to a normal full squat.
Jackknife Squats:
This is the easiest variation of squats. Although it may seem too easy to most people, less intensive exercises are useful for people undergoing physiotherapy treatment, and those trying to build proper basic form. It is also ideal for people who are overweight and cannot maintain proper body balance when bending their legs. The right way to do it is to keep your legs at shoulder width, place your hands on the chair, then slowly go down on your legs, until your calves touch the hamstring and you feel like you can’t go any lower. Then thrust upwards using the force of your legs. The benefit of this exercise is that by using your hands you can take the pressure off your legs. Start with reps of multiples of tens and progress to the next workout when you can comfortably perform 3 sets of 30 reps.
Assisted Squats:
These are very similar to jackknife squats but are a little advance and more effective. The difference here is that instead of a chair we use a railing or bar that reaches up to the level of our hips or above. By elevating the positioning of the hands, the weight load taken by them is reduced. Thus, greater force is put on the leg muscles. Assisted Squats help in getting familiar with the motions of a full squat when you bend your arms a little and go down while maintaining your center of gravity. You can move on when you can comfortably perform 3 sets of 40 reps.
Half Squats:
Finally, we can move onto the unassisted varieties of squats. This is somewhat difficult than the above-mentioned exercises but it is the first step to train for full squat. The half squat is an easier variation of the full squat. As the name suggests you only go halfway down to the ground. With legs shoulder-width apart, raise your arms straight out. Now squat down until your thighs become parallel to the ground. Your body posture would look somewhat like you sitting straight up in a chair. The initial goal is to complete 2 sets of 30 half squats. Further progression from half squats can be done by moving an inch lower than the half-squat position and increasing the inches as your strength builds. The only thing to remember here is that you should try to hold your position and maintain proper posture. Once your muscle group becomes habitual of half squats you can proceed for full squats.
Full Squats:
This is the ultimate and complete basic squat. Full Squats also known as deep squats are some of the best hip exercises out there as they work out a compound group of muscles, and the range of motion for deep squatting is very natural to the human body. After working your way up from the progressions of the half squat, the full squat is completed when your hips completely come to the level of the hamstrings and can’t go any lower. Your aim should be to comfortably perform 3 sets of 50 squats, as a long-term goal. Full squats can be performed with various leg widths but you should not approach the advanced level before mastering the basic full squats.
One-Legged Squats:
This is the ultimate leg training exercise you can do to build your leg muscles. By stripping away one leg, from the equation, the weight load on a single leg is essentially doubled. When doing one-legged squats, the unused leg should be raised parallel to the floor. Extra care should be taken to maintain balance in one-legged squats, as the risks of injuries are greater. So until you have fully developed leg muscles don’t go for this exercise just for fun because the chances of injuring ACL, MCL, patella, meniscus are high.
Concluding this guide, we have learned that squats are an excellent way to build leg muscles! They can be done by absolute beginners and people seeking a challenge can do crazy difficult variations by adding extra weights. The best part of this exercise is that you can do it in any limited space at any time. If you look at most athletes be it a soccer player, tennis player, baseball player, basketball player, you can see that they have strong leg muscles. So keep squatting and see the results!
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This content is brought to you by Nehal Khan.
Photo: Shutterstock
