Be Smart when You squat

      Very famous workouts may not be exactly all they are put out to be. I grew up playing football. Naturally, as a dedicated football player, I was very committed to gaining muscle mass through resistance training (weight lifting). One lift that was heavily stressed as a need for improvement by my football coach and others was the good ole’ full squat. However, do not confuse it for a body weight squat. I am talking about the one where you slap a 45 pound bar on your back and add weight as you improve. 

Now before I begin my rant, let me start out by saying based on my observations the full squat exercise can serve to be very beneficial. However, it is the way most go about this work out that makes it so dangerous. 

    

     Anyways, my coach always made it a big deal for us to improve how much weight we were able to lift on our squat. 

By squatting you are able to target your:

                                                               -quads

                                                              -hamstrings

                                                               -Gluteus

                                                                -gastrocnemius ( a muscle of your calf ).

This access to multiple muscle groups one is able to cover by performing a squat is the reason for its popularity. It is the unique ability of the squat that makes it a great exercise compared to other workouts because it is viable to improve your body in multiple ways. I would personally consider it the most versatile exercise for its benefits outweigh the negatives when using this exercise.

After performing sets of maximum weight squats it was clear to me that my back was starting to tense up. This could really be easily due to a bunch of different factors. firstly i think that this is because i may have been standing in a wrong stance, causing one side of my body to be doing more work than another side of my body. another possible factor that could influence me in getting back pain is the actual option of the squat as i was going through it. i may have been putting too much strain on my muscles as i was moving up and down. Those are all factors of the reason why I say that the squat is a danger to us. A smarter way to go about it would be to perform sets with a higher amount of repetitions and lower weights. This way you still gain muscle while also putting less stress onto those muscle groups as well as your back.