10 Cast Iron Reasons Why You Should Do Squats
- full body workout
Squats are a “multi-joint” exercise, which means that when you squat, you engage many muscles, especially your lower body, in unison to build real-world strength. As you squat with free weights, you’re also building stability, and potential imbalances between your left and right sides are revealed, allowing you to identify, correct, and strengthen any weaknesses.
- Improved core strength
When you squat, you’re loading from top to bottom using a loaded bar, so your core has to work overtime for you to maintain your posture and balance the weight correctly. Heavy compound exercises like squats are a must for strengthening your core, as they bring all the muscles in your midsection into action and work them hard.
- Boost the release of hormones
Full-body exercises like squats are a great way to release muscle-building hormones like testosterone. The more challenging the weight, the more anabolic hormonal benefit you’ll get, helping you build that all-important muscle almost everywhere on your body.
- improved flexibility
As we’ve already discussed, the squat is a multi-muscle, multi-joint exercise, and requires a full range of motion to perform correctly. Squats, especially deep squats, allow for greater mobility and are particularly beneficial for achieving flexible ankles, hip flexors, and knees.
- injury reduction
There is nothing more frustrating than getting injured while wanting to participate in an exercise or sport. Squats have the power to stimulate the muscles around key areas used in many sporting activities, namely the muscles around the knees and hips, as well as the glutes, hamstrings, and quadriceps.
- increased efficiency
Full-body exercises, like squats, do exactly that—work out your entire body. Many people don’t realize that squatting will eliminate the need to jump from machine to machine doing isolation routines to work a particular muscle or muscle group. This allows you more time to get the correct and beneficial exercise that your body really needs to stay strong and healthy.
- tones the body
Lifting heavy weights means building more muscle. And with squats, you can lift really heavy weights. The more weight you lift, generally, the more muscle you will build. The more muscle your body has, the more calories you’ll burn to fuel that muscle, so if you eat right, the more calories your muscles use up and less will be stored as fat.
- improved athletic ability
Building strength around the hip area allows you to not only produce more power in athletic activities like jumping and running, but more importantly, absorb it as well. This, of course, means fewer injuries from the rigors of sports.
- grow your confidence
Engaging in an exercise routine that includes squats on a regular basis helps you increase your body strength, improves the appearance of your body, reduces the time it takes you to look and feel strong and healthy, and helps you overcome and reduce the possibility of injuries. How can you feel nothing but confidence?
- get your ass up
Yes! Doing squats will work the glutes, so getting that all-importantly shaped booty comes down to using the humble squat!
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