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To solve problems caused by sitting, learn to squat (2017) (qz.com)
109 points by pr0zac 19 days ago | hide | past | web | favorite | 59 comments



For people who want to improve their bodyweight squat:

1) Heels should be firmly planted on the ground. This can seem impossible: many people will feel like they can't even get to parallel, let alone ass to ground. My favored solution to this is adding elevation to the heels. A plank or two can add an inch or more to heel height. This gives your foot the support it needs in a squat and helps form good habits. When you rise from the squat, most of the force should be being applied through the heel. Over time you will decrease the heel elevation.

2) Body weight distribution can add to the difficulty of it if you're "back heavy." For my body fat distribution, losing weight enabled me to balance over my heels, while before I would fall backwards.

3) Practice every day, even if it's just a set or two of squats.

4) Hip flexion and ankle dorsiflexion are the key components to a squat. I find the former easier to improve than the latter. The supplementary exercises I've found most useful are Cossack squats, horse stance, and training my pancake split. For the pancake, you want all the folding to come from the hips and not from the lower or upper back. This transfers well to working on squats, because folding from the hips instead of the back brings your center of mass forward more effectively.


To add to this, there are a slate of classic mistakes noobs make while squatting that impact depth and cause pain:

1. Your feet should not be pointing straight ahead while squatting, regardless of stance width. This is by far and away the biggest noob mistake. Most people never hit depth / develop knee pain because they squat with their feet straight forward. You should set up with your feet rotated ~30 degrees outwards from parallel (ie your feet should be forming a V with the vertex behind you).

2. When you are squatting down, you should project your knees in the direction that your feet are pointing. Your knees should be out over your feet at all times. Your knees should not go straight forward.

3. Squat (and really all other powerlifting movements) are full body exercises. Your core should be tight; your back should be tight; etc

4. Don't squat in running shoes. If you must squat in running shoes, use a board as the OP stated. Running shoes tend to have a very squishy sole which is great for running but not so great when you are trying to establish a stable base to balance on and push off of. Try to squat in shoes with a hard sole.


This sounds consistent with the advice from my trainer when I was going to the gym. One thing you don't mention is knee position relative to your toes. I was admonished that the knees should never be allowed to go forward of the toes -- they will get excessively loaded if they do. Is that true in your experience?


That is true, but knee position relative to toes is more of a diagnostic for other form issues rather than something to try to optimize for in it's own right if that makes sense. If you are breaking at the hips (ie pushing your butt backwards to initiate the movement as opposed to sitting straight down on your ankles) and also breaking at the knees (ie pushing your knees apart to start the movement) properly, then your knees will usually not go passed your toes. If you find that your knees are going far passed your toes, you probably aren't doing at least one of those things correctly. It also usually means that the bar is not over your heels so you are moving it inefficiently.

It's similar to when people say "chest up" for squatting which actually has nothing to do with your chest directly and is instead a diagnostic for if a person's back and core are tight. If your back and core are tight then your back won't round and therefore your chest will appear "up".


Where your knee ends up in a full-depth squat depends on the relative lengths of your tibia and ankle. If you have long tibia and short ankles (relatively) the knees will inevitably go past the toes when squatting.

If it hurts excessively don't do it, or proceed with extreme caution. It's probably not a big issue otherwise.


Most people who can't do an ass to grass squat have lordosis and externally rotated hips. If you have someone tuck their stomach (transverse abs/rectus abdominus) and squeeze their inner thighs (adductor magnus) while sitting back, it should force them to engage their glutes and fold in a natural way.


Slant board is great for Ankle Mobility


This article has nothing to do with bodyweight squats or olympic lifts...


"Bodyweight squat" often refers to the practice of squatting without additional weight - which is exactly the movement the article discusses.


No it doesn't It discusses humans naturally squatting to pick things up and how over time we have started to sit down, it has nothing to do with exercise. I know what body weight squats are and theyre not what the article is about.


From the article:

">At best, we might undertake it during Crossfit, pilates or while lifting at the gym, but only partially and often with weights (a repetitive maneuver that’s hard to imagine being useful 2.5 million years ago).<"

A repetitive maneuver with weights is hard to imagine 2.5 million years ago? So they're going to bash getting yourself strong and healthy because they can't imagine anyone doing a repetitive maneuver 2.5 million years ago? Either you're supporting that people should squat more or you don't. This article wants you to squat but not in any way which will improve your strength and chances of getting off the toilet when your 95.


Maybe what they're referring to is the idea that doing a wide variety of different motions can be really useful. This is why cross-training is important for athletes who want to be their best and healthiest.

For example, if you're into running, this strengthens your legs, but it focuses on certain specific muscles and neglects others. So you want to do some other things like biking or ideally something with lateral movement like playing soccer or tennis.

And it's not just strength and endurance to consider.

The body also needs to learn to do certain motions correctly, because part of fitness is the habits your body has to activate certain muscles in certain sequences. When you walk or run, it's important how your foot lands, and it's important how your knees bend (so your muscles can absorb shock, not your joints), etc. Movement is a skill to be learned that requires practice until doing it properly becomes second nature, a lot like playing a musical instrument.

And of course there's also flexibility.

Anyway, maybe their point is that merely doing strength training is better than nothing, but it's not a substitute for including squatting into your daily life so that you do 100 different variations of squats and squat-like movements. For example, if you unloading the dishwasher by squatting down, extending your arm and leaning over to grab some forks, and then twisting around and standing up partially to put them in drawer to your other side, you're going to trigger different muscles than if you do squats in the gym.


This comment is like the exercise equivalent of bikeshedding.

Someone who can squat twice their bodyweight is not going to have any problems doing any of the things you mentioned.

The strength and mobility required to do so with good form will still be available to you for more varied everyday movements which are generally unweighted.

(And it'll definitely be more effective at building leg strength than any kind of running. That's why high level sprinters all do strength training including squats and cleans.)


So, about 10 years ago, I'd seen a few articles on the prevalence of the "squat-down-to-your-feet" stance in Asia, and the ease with which this stance could be reached by those who'd been doing it their whole lives, and its benefits as a low-energy sitting-position where chairs are unavailable & the ground is unappealing. But, I could get nowhere close without extreme ankle-knee-hip tightness & then, if I pushed, pain.

I thought, well, maybe I can gradually get that range-of-motion back for my adult body, with occasional tries/stretching.

After a few weeks of trying squats for a couple minutes most days, I was playing a typical game of basketball with friends, and landing from an unremarkable jump for a rebound, when my knee ACL snapped.

Quite possibly a coincidence! But even now, long after the recovery from ACL-replacement surgery, I can't muster any interest in trying those particular exercises again. And I wonder if ACL injury rates vary based on people/cultures where this stance is prevalent. (I could believe that actually achieving such squats involves longer ACLs, which might in the end be either positive or negative for sports-related ACL tears.)


I think you may be overthinking it - basketball is to blame for your ACL misfortune.

I can't find any details regarding the 3rd world squat, but here's an article on ACL force during a regular squat:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11528346

My wife doesn't have an ACL in one of her knees, and has no difficulty with any of those motions. The ACL is there to stop when something goes funky (sudden sheer forces), not when it's running through it's usual range of motion.

This article says that the forces on ACL are greatest when you're just starting the squat movement, not at the end of the range of motion:

https://squatuniversity.com/2016/01/22/debunking-squat-myths...


I suspect there are some differences between the exercise deep-squat, and the sit-squat where, at the end, you're essentially sitting on your heels, with little-to-no ongoing exertion.

Obviously, a basketball action was the key and triggering event. But I'd been playing similar basketball on similar concrete courts for 25 year before the injury, and plenty since. My games aren't that intense. Yet that's the most serious injury I've had. (Others were milder ankle & foot injuries.)


it's still probably due to basketball, where ACL tears are one of the most common injuries (after ankle sprains of course). many tendon and ligaments can't easily repair themselves (and where they can, it's slow), so the tears accumulate over time.

the ACL is absolutely crucial (ha!) to stabilizing the knee (especially front-back motion on the horizontal plane) and keeping it from falling apart (hyperextending along the tibiofemoral axis).

(took a dissection class in grad school, where we cut an ACL to see how it affects motion and stability.)


Sounds like you just had bad luck, I can't imagine your own body-weight affecting the ACL in any sort of negative fashion. This article rates a full 140 degree unweighted squat - much like you were doing, at 66N, which is 1/5th of just walking, and in the < 2% range of maximum ACL strain.

https://www.jospt.org/doi/pdf/10.2519/jospt.2012.3768


Unlikely that ACL tightness is relevant. Most people aren’t limited by knee mobility in squatting, but by hip and ankle mobility. For those few limited by knee mobility, I would imagine it’s generally the quadriceps limiting range of motion, as opposed to the ligaments of the knee.


I'm average BMI, raised with western desks & toilets. I've got no problems getting the thighs parallel to the ground, for a typical exercise-squat.

But getting the rear any lower than the knees forces my heels off the ground, via ankle resistance (& pain-against-forcing). That puts me on my toes/forefoot/balls-of-foot. I can get quite low that way, but without heels-on-ground and butt-on-calves, the stance is effortful, and thus can't be held for long.

Earnest attempts to force heels-to-ground face resistance from ankle & knee/quadriceps-just-over-knee (but not hips), such that if heels do reach ground, ankle & knee can't flexion enough to keep my center-of-gravity forward, forcing a fall backwards.


Sure. Your currently lack the mobility to get that low. Lots of people do. The recommended cure is unsurprisingly to spend more time in a deep squat. You can either work on simply getting as deep as you can or go deeper holding something for support (so you don’t fall over backwards), but the end goal would be to deep squat without support.

My mobility isn’t nearly as good as it should be and I can’t deep squat well either. I can get deeper with weight on my back because it helps to counter the tendency to fall backwards, plus it provides additional force to encourage the connective tissue to stretch. I should probably spend time working on squat mobility, but it’s frankly just not that high on my list of priorities right now.


As a 50-something 'within the accepted BMI range' adult, I can't help but wonder if your ACL issue and the inability to squat are both symptoms of some common issue, rather than one causing the other.

I don't squat, but I just tried it and although it feels weird from never having really done it, it was quite simple. I'll probably start doing it daily.

> nowhere close without extreme ankle-knee-hip tightness & then, if I pushed, pain.

Isn't even in my reality. To the point I almost don't believe you.

But, people are different, so there's that.


Were you able to keep your bare feet & heels flat on the ground, while your rear descends to below your knees – deeper than a typical exercise squat? Ultimately, sitting atop your feet in a position that can be held for, say, 15 minutes or more (because there's little strain or effort holding it)?

That's the 'asian squat' that a lot of us can't do.


Yes, without any pain that you describe. I'll admit I need some balancing help (by putting my arms out), but I think that may be because my achilles/hamstrings may be a bit tight and I can't quite pull my toes up towards my knees QUITE enough; although I do stretch them 30sec every day.

I need to try splaying my feet apart a bit more and see if I can get my center of gravity a bit more forward.


I'm not the parent, but I can almost do the Asian squat. If I have shoes with a heal, or I'm on a slight downward slope, it's not much of a problem. I can get way past horizontal and hold it for quite a long time (very useful when gardening).

I can tell you that there should be no stress in your knees at all. The feet should be pointing about 30 degrees outside of center and your knees should be pointing in the exact same direction. Your ACL doesn't get involved at all, and if it does, either your knees are going outside of the plane from where your legs are pointing, or you are having problems with balance, or you have some other structural problem in your legs.

Now, there are a couple of key points. I am Caucasian and grew up in Canada, but have lived in Japan for more than 10 years. I can sit in seiza (formal kneeling position) for something like an hour. This means that I can kneel down, extend my feet (so that the tops are flat on the floor) and sit back so that I'm sitting on my own heels. This requires very good flexibility in the quadriceps. To do the "asian squat", you need to be able to do that, otherwise you won't be able to bring your bum down to your heels. Because you are heavy, if your quads are not loose, you can stress the insertion points around the knee. It is possible that when you were practicing, you were getting discomfort there, which caused you to move your knees out of the correct plane. It took me years to work up to where sitting seiza is a comfortable and normal position for me (and oddly, I'm happier in seiza than I am cross legged). We don't have chairs in my house, and I eat all my meals in seiza :-)

Another thing is that unless you have insane ankle flexibility, you have to keep your legs apart (again facing out to the sides about 30 degrees) and lower your torso between your legs. That's because there is a fairly large moment due to much of your mass being around your chest and shoulders. You have to bring that forward of your centre of gravity, but if you keep your legs together and your feet pointing forward, then the only way to do it is to lower your knees towards your feet. If you've got great ankle flexibility it can be done, but most people can't do that (even those that can easily do the "asian squat").

Finally, as I've said, you need to have good flexibility in your ankles. For me, that's the limiting factor (broke my ankles a few times playing soccer when I was young). But it's worth working up that flexibility because it will pay off when you are older. It's one of the first thing that stops people being able to walk because they can't handle uneven surfaces due to lack of flexibility.

I'm really sorry that you injured your knee. I also think it's unlikely that the training you did for squats was the direct cause. Ligaments don't work that way. If you stretched them funny, you would end up with a dislocated knee, not a torn ACL (talk to literally any woman who trained gymnastics seriously as a child -- virtually every single one of them dislocates their knees at the drop of the hat). It is, however, possible (in my mind, anyway) that you injured your knees in the training and this caused you to overcompensate somewhere and land awkwardly. I think your warning is well taken because it is an extreme position and you should be careful when working up to that kind of thing.


The injury rates amongst amateur sports are actually pretty high... pro athletes spend a lot of time training to avoid injury which we don’t necessarily hear about. I’ve seen some of the off-season training programs, and they are highly sophisticated and tailored to assessing and tackling the weaknesses that lead to injury.


It sure seems like a lot of people could save a lot of time and trouble if we could easily replace these easily-injured human joints with superior artificial joints.


Time for a squatting desk?


I've been using a self-built prototype floor-sitting desk for the last month. I can sit cross-legged, on my heels, or with my legs to one side, as well as squatting.

It's 2 shelves: one about a foot off the ground for the mouse and keyboard and another a little more than a foot above the first for the laptop to sit on. I look directly into the screen.

An improvement would be better adjustability and possibly taller supports so that it could be used while standing as well.

Either way, I'm very happy with sitting on the floor. Now, when I sit in chairs I notice misalignments arising quickly.


Furniture in general is detrimental to people's general fitness. I'm convinced its primary purpose is class signaling and generating unnecessary business for the economy. Sells bigger homes and office spaces, you need to haul all this junk around whenever you buy it or move it, and it needs to be manufactured and bought in the first place.

If you think about what furniture actually does, it's pretty obvious. It deprives you of an entire range of natural movements and postures a life without furniture forces you to experience regularly.

I've lived without furniture or even a bed for over a decade, and am now middle-aged, and the difference is very obvious when I socialize with folks especially when we're playing board games on a floor or hanging around a campfire.

My flexibility and comfort at squatting and sitting indian style or really any position on the floor is equivalent to that of a child. Most american adults I know can't comfortably sit indian style if they can even get into the position at all, and often need help getting up from the floor or at least let out quite a grunt in struggling to get back up.

In any given day I'm getting up and down from the floor dozens of times. Go do some burpees and see how significant that can be vs. using a chair. I leap up from the ground like it's nothing at all because it's the normal.

Another thing I've learned from one of those investigations of regions with the most oldest living people is many of them have cultures without furniture, where everyone uses the floor primarily and preserves the ability to squat and get up from the floor independently into old age.


I get your point, but "furniture in general" might be too broad. For example, I can't see how bookshelves nor kitchen cabinets are detrimental. I think the point of most furniture is to enable people to take better advantage of the vertical space they have available.

Your comment makes a good point of chairs, beds, and other furniture you can sit on, but I don't think it applies to all furniture in general.


You're right, I tend to not include cabinets and bookshelves in my mental model of furniture, just elevated objects people sit/rest on/at.

Though one can argue even those forms of furniture are problematic, using vertical storage space more efficiently can encourage hoarding of unnecessary junk. I'm certainly guilty of hoarding books I rarely touch, but it doesn't seem as harmful to one's health/fitness.


Without furniture, how exactly do you propose that I use a computer workstation with 3 large monitors? Sit it all on the floor? That sounds like an ergonomics nightmare.

Some of the furniture we have now is because pre-technological humans simply didn't do many things we do now.


Yeah, saying no furniture kind of distracts from their point, which is that not getting frequently up and down from the floor probably causes our loss to easily do so as we get older.

As to being able to have a computer workstation that lets you work as you're sitting on the floor, the japanese seem to have many options[1]. I imagine newnewpdro is not against furniture like this. You can have good posture while sitting on the floor, too.

[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=japanese+floor+computer+desk&t=ffa...


What do you sleep on if not a bed? Do you have a floor cushion or yoga mat?


Nothing really, just a clear spot on the floor, preferably carpeted or with an area rug so there's some thermal barrier.

One of my ex's liked the rigid ~2" thick tatami mats you can find on Amazon. It would be neat to have an entire room's floor covered with them wall to wall, but I've never lived with such a setup. Spills and such mishaps seem like they'd be unnecessarily costly, but I do believe that's a conventional Japanese style of interior flooring, which they'd traditionally sleep directly upon.

Personally I favor an area rug on a hard, finished floor. It's easily taken outside and shaken clean/hung in sunlight for a day, and can be trivially rolled up out of the way, to make the durable floor space available for other uses. They are also very affordable, so replacement cost is minimal for the inevitable spills/stains etc. The thick rigid Tatami mats are large and cumbersome to stow and transport, more costly to replace, etc.

Another advantage to being acclimated to this sleeping style is you can sleep anywhere with some clean floor space as comfortably as if it's home. Folks who are accustomed to cushy beds tend to be miserable on camping trips for the bad sleep alone. Edit: Full disclosure; I've found myself frustrated in hotels with filthy carpeted floors on multiple occasions, where I caved and slept miserably in the bed only to wake up with a stiff neck and back pain, so it's no panacea. I now strongly prefer camping in my clean tent and sleeping bag to hotels. YMMV


Do you sleep well on floors made of stone, concrete or ceramic tile? They feel way harder than wood. A lot colder, too.


It makes no difference with a substantial area rug, I'm currently using one with a grippy porous rubbery backing which forms quite the thermal barrier.


I've actually mostly lost my ability to squat now which I kind of regret. A lot of places, especially China despite its breakneck speed growth, still use squat toilets. When you have an upset stomach from that breakfast stall you last ate, it then becomes a matter of survival. Not being able to squat is a weakness


> I've actually mostly lost my ability to squat now which I kind of regret.

How? In what manner?


The article said:

> “Every joint in our body has synovial fluid in it. This is the oil in our body that provides nutrition to the cartilage,” Jam says. “Two things are required to produce that fluid: movement and compression. So if a joint doesn’t go through its full range—if the hips and knees never go past 90 degrees—the body says ‘I’m not being used’ and starts to degenerate and stops the production of synovial fluid.”


From the article:

" >These positions—which, in addition to a deep passive squat with the feet flat on the floor, include sitting cross legged and kneeling on one’s knees and heels—are not just good for us, but “deeply embedded into the way our bodies are built.<”

But several of my friends suffered heart attacks (embolism) after long periods of kneeling to worship and/or to garden.

I conjecture that, contrary to the article, kneeling on one's knees is not only not "good for us" but bad, as it may inhibit blood flow in the legs, promoting the formation of clots which are later released upon standing and moving around.


Maybe you should conduct a study into you garden/worship hypothetis and test if it can be replicated.

https://geriatrictoolkit.missouri.edu/srff/deBrito-Floor-Ris...


ability to sit and rise from floor does not mean you should focus on sitting and rising from the floor in a regimented manner in hopes of a long capable life. Grip strength is also correlated with a capable old age. Does that mean you should start doing grip strengthening exercises? Not really. It's an external indication of something else going on.

Too much of anything is bound to cause complications.


Actually low squatting accidentally helped me with some back problems I had in the past. Accidentally in this case is because I was just trying different body positions that I don't normally use. My general rule of thumb is to gain back lost mobility for a better health.


The article says "learn to squat", not "squat for hours".


Tangentially related...I know it may not be for everybody but I recently started skateboarding at age 36 while looking for something to do during the PG&E blackouts last fall and haven't stopped since.

It's definitely been a great way to get out and just explore around town while also building up my leg and core muscles.

Because I've been wanting to improve as much as possible I've started doing squats and calf raises as well and it has been helping a lot with my overall control and balance on the board.



Want to do something for your fitness but full squats scare you? Start doing quarter squats while brushing teeth, 2x couple minutes every day. Simple, easy to do, doesnt steal time from other activities, and you will feel the difference.


I played basketball for almost 20 years and my knees can't handle this type of position anymore. Also I am basically 2 meters tall so its a long way down and up.


B.S. I'm the same height and have no problem getting down to parallel. Unless you have major structural issues with your knee, which you should be fixed regardless, your knees can't handle the position because you don't get in the position.

Get a pair of 7mm knee sleeves that are kind of hard to put on, because they are tight, and start squatting. The sleeves will keep the knee warm and provide some additional support until you get the surrounding structure of the knee stronger.

I would highly recommend either Starting Strength or Strong Lifts 5x5.


> “But if you go to the restroom once or twice a day for a bowel movement and five times a day for bladder function, that’s five or six times a day you’ve squatted.”

Ancient man squatted to take a leak? That's not what I do in the forest...


I've tried squatting (a la home-made squatty potty type thing) at home, and while it works ok with #2, #1 while sitting... nope. It reorients my plumbing to not point in the right direction for capture.


Old people in the developing world often have knee or back problems. I don't think significant squatting is a good idea.

The article buries the fact that "there are studies to suggest that populations that spend excessive time in a deep squat (hours per day), do have a higher incidence of knee and osteoarthritis issues."


Don't those old people tend to have a history of hard physical labor? I would expect that to overwhelm the squatting-or-not effect size...


Knee and back are universal problem areas for old people.


That was my reaction, too. Old people in the US certainly aren't known for their knee/back virility.

Hell, the top Reddit comment on a recent image of an adult woman sitting on her knees was "my knees and back are killing me just looking at that!" with hundreds of people weighing with their stories of bodily problems and how they can't even jog. Presumably a demographic much younger than what we're talking about.

I remember thinking "wow, we are dying."


> there are studies to suggest that populations that spend excessive time in a deep squat (hours per day), do have a higher incidence of knee and osteoarthritis issues.


They linked to one study. Here's the method they used:

"We recruited a random sample of Beijing residents age > or =60 years. Subjects answered questions on joint symptoms, and knee radiographs were obtained. Subjects were also asked to recall the average amount of time spent on squatting each day at youth (25 years or so)."

The full text of the paper is unavailable (404) so I can't say whether they controlled for factors such as family income, occupational history, weight issues etc. Relying on people in their 60s to remember how much they used to squat daily 30+ years ago doesn't seem like it will give necessarily accurate or reliable data (though I also can't think of other methods that don't involve time travel).

I think more studies, with better quality data, are needed to definitively state that prolonged squatting leads to knee issues. And in the Western world, many can't even do a full-depth squat, let alone prolonged squatting, so maybe start with that before worrying about knee issues.




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