No matter what your fitness goals are, some primal movements are essential to everyday function.
At the top of this list are squats.
You squat to sit in a chair. You squat to pick a pen off of the floor. You also squat in the gym to build muscle and strength.
As you’re about to see, there are a wealth of benefits to be had from implementing squats into your daily routine.
Here are a few reasons why you should consider doing squats every day.
8 Benefits of Squatting Every Day
Increasing Strength
This benefit should come as no surprise, especially to those of you who regularly hit the gym.
When it comes to building strength in the lower body, as well as toning and tightening your glutes, quads, and hamstrings, squats are a must.
Few exercises provide the muscle-building bang that squats do for the lower body.
Many people are under the misconception that to build strength in their legs, they must perform the traditional barbell squat.
While this is an excellent exercise for building raw power and strength, there is no hard and fast rule saying you have to squat with a bar across your back to gain strength or build muscle. Furthermore, some individuals just aren't made to squat with a bar across their back either due to how their body is built or their history of injury.
The squatting pattern is essential for building strength, which can be accomplished in many different ways.
Some of our favorite alternatives to the conventional barbell back squat are:
- Front Squats
- Goblet Squats
- Kettlebell Squats (held in the front rack position)
- Split Squats
- Bulgarian Split Squats (which are essentially one-legged squats)
- Landmine Squats
- Hack Squats
Progress on these exercises just as you would with back squats (increasing reps and weights when possible), and you can build massive amounts of strength, all the while building a tighter, firmer, more toned lower body.
Increasing Range of Motion
We spend more time sitting in front of screens these days than ever before.
As a result, we develop overly tight hip flexors and weakness in the glutes and hamstrings, leading to chronically tight hips and a lack of mobility.
Doing squats every day can improve the overall range of motion while also strengthening the muscles throughout the lower body, including the glutes, hips, adductors, and ankles.
If you’ve gotten out of the habit of performing deep, full range of motion squats, gradually work your way down deeper and deeper. Using an exercise such as the goblet squat is perfect for teaching proper squatting mechanics as it forces you to remain upright and sink deep into the “hole.”
You should notice improvements in your lower body flexibility and mobility with regular practice, especially if you're someone with chronically tight hip flexors from sitting too much during the day.
Improving Your Posture
Building upon the previous point, another byproduct of spending too much time being sedentary and sitting in front of screens (TVs, laptops, smartphones, etc.) is developing poor posture -- shoulders hunched forward, neck pulled ahead, etc.
Regularly doing squats with good form (i.e., maintaining a tight core and upper back) helps strengthen the muscles responsible for keeping the body in proper alignment and maintaining correct posture.
Build Core Strength
One of the underrated benefits of regularly performing squats (as well as other compound movements like push-ups, pull-ups, deadlifts, rows, etc.) is that they also help forge an iron midsection.
While we tend to think of the squat as a lower body exercise, the reality is that it is a total body exercise. You have to maintain a tight core if you want to perform the exercise with any reasonably challenging weight amount safely.
And, if you’re performing a front or back squat, you have to maintain proper upper back tightness to ensure you don’t cave forward, causing you to dump the weight and risk injury.
Burn Calories
This benefit isn't a shock or surprise at all. Any exercise, even leisurely walking around the block, burns calories and increases your total daily energy expenditure.
It’s just that some exercises burn more calories than others. The reason for this boils down to a few factors, such as range of motion, amount of musculature involved, and weight lifted.
Since squats are a compound lower body exercise, they involve a tremendous amount of musculature, go through a fairly large range of motion (especially compared to something like bicep curls or calf raises). They can also be loaded up with very heavyweights.
All of these factors contribute to squats generating a tremendous calorie burn.
Furthermore, squats can also be implemented into bodyweight circuits where they serve as a conditioning tool. If you’ve never tried doing max reps of bodyweight squats for a given time limit, get ready to experience a burning in your lungs and legs like never before!
Increased Jump Height
For those looking to boost your "ups," one of the best things you can do is strengthen the muscles of the lower body.
Building stronger legs allow you to generate greater forces, which translates to an increased vertical jump.
The research found that individuals performing deep, full range of motion front and back squats improved their vertical jump performance more than individuals using a partial range of motion squats. [1]
Boost Confidence
Anytime you see improvements from your training, be it in the form of increasing reps and weights in your logbook or physical improvements in the way you look, you get a welcome boost in confidence.
You're also becoming more athletic, more resilient to injury, and improving your mental and physical toughness by continually challenging yourself to squat more weight for more reps and sets.
Support Joint Health
Our joints are meant to be used frequently and put through a full range of motion. Squatting regularly strengthens not only the muscles of the lower body but also other important structures, including joints, ligaments, tendons, and connective tissue.
Doing squats every day also forces your legs to move through various ranges of motion, which can help them become accustomed to handling forces in different angles and positions and ultimately serve as a measure of injury prevention.
Takeaway
Squats are a movement pattern that is essential to the human form. You do it every day in some way, shape, or form, and the more often you squat, the more proficient you become at it.
Now, squatting every day doesn't mean that you have to load up a barbell with many plates and try to squat a new 1-rep max (which we don't recommend).
Squatting every day can mean squatting with heavy weights 1-2 days per week, and the other days could be bodyweight squats, deep yogi squats for mobility work, or higher rep, lighter weight squats for more metabolic stress and muscle building.
Regardless of which way you choose to squat, make sure to keep it in your programming in some form or other.
And, for those days when you know you have to get up for a heavy squat workout and need some extra motivation and strength, mix up a serving of Steel Pump®.
Steel Pump® is our top-rated pre-workout supplement formulated to increase energy, boost performance, and delay fatigue.
References
- Hartmann H, Wirth K, Klusemann M, Dalic J, Matuschek C, Schmidtbleicher D. Influence of squatting depth on jumping performance. J Strength Cond Res. 2012 Dec;26(12):3243-61. DOI: 10.1519/JSC.0b013e31824ede62. PMID: 22344055.
