Lower Body Weight Resistance - Squat

Now, the first one I'm gonna cover is the squat. Now, the squat is probably one of the number one movements across the world when it comes to body weight and movement. There's multiple ways that we can increase or decrease the tension when it comes to squats, but body weighted is probably one of the best ways to condition your lower body equally. Now, your body composition will play a huge factor in how easy it is when it comes to performing a low body squat. Now, a squat is basically flexion where your hamstring is pulling you down towards the ground, and then the extension is where your quad is contracting to push your body weight back into that upright position.

Now, one of the biggest things that people do wrong with squats is they lean too far forwards. Now, in the body weighted squat, you should be able to put your tension down through your heels, and you should be able to wiggle your toes. If you cannot wiggle your toes, it shows you have too much weight forwards, and not enough weight back on your heels. Your chest should be proud and pushed out from the body, and that will produce a nice straight line through the spine through the back. Your eye line should be neutral to your neck. Alright, so therefore, if you're looking naturally down towards the ground, and so as your neck, your eye line should follow that. So as you go through the flexion down towards the ground, your eye line should look down slightly but forwards, and then as you go for the extension, you should come back up in that upright position and your eye line should look forward, neutral with your neck.

So when it comes to making a squat harder, there's multiple things we can do. Now, when it comes to body weight resistance and not using any kit involved with that movement, one of the best things you can do is to control the tempo of the movement. What that means is, controlling the speed that you're performing the exercise. Now normally, when you refer to us doing it slower, you would think that would be easier, but actually using no momentum in that movement and purely relying on muscular performance just to perform that movement will actually increase that tension tenfold and make the tension on the legs, I.e., the quads and the hamstrings by a lot. So just by controlling that movement far more, you will make that movement far harder. Now when it comes to making it easier, one part in that squat is the depth position is where lots of people find it hard to get back up.

Now, one thing we can do to make that easier is have a chair underneath the body. We perform the exercise down towards the chair, we rest on the chair, and then we stand back up. What that will do is that will give you a target to aim for, so once you've touched the chair, you can either rest, or you'll know you've got your depth and you can stand back up into that nice upright position with a nice proud chest, okay, nice relaxed shoulder and making sure that your weight is still on our heels and there's no tension on your toes.