squatting

In this blog post, the fifth in our series scrutinizing popular home exercises, we are looking at squats. Is it a beneficial exercise, and how does it stack up—or not—against the principles of healthy posture?

Squats are a popular and effective exercise designed primarily to strengthen the quads, stabilize the knee joint, tone the glutes, and also work the back muscles. 

A squat is an essential baseline position for many athletic movements including this kettlebell snatch. Wikimedia

How low should they go?

Deep squats have become increasingly popular in recent decades, following a trend towards cross-training and exercise based on “natural movement.” Fitness and movement trainers have sought to emulate people in non-industrialized societies or traditional cultures who squat with ease, often for long periods.

Deep squats present challenges unless you grew up in a culture that routinely sits and squats on the ground. The challenge is not only in the muscles around the hips, knees, and ankles, but also in the bony part of the joints. When you are born your hip joint is made entirely of cartilage. By age 16, it is fully ossified. If you are not continually sitting and squatting low in your formative years the ossification pattern will not facilitate the angles necessary for squatting as an adult. It is therefore impossible for most westerners to squat low without tucking the pelvis and rounding the back, just like it is hard for them to sit crossed legged and relaxed.

 
Even though her high heeled shoes reduce the angle of bend required to squat, the woman on the left rounds her back to squat. The Indian villager (right) can squat with a straight back. Unsplash

The benefits of standing/partial squats

For this reason I highly recommend partial squats, which are a safer option and offer many of the benefits of a full squat. They are also a perfect exercise to focus on and develop healthy posture.

Anyone who has ever done a fitness or yoga class may also know this exercise as Chair Pose. In some schools of fitness training, it is regarded as a foundational exercise. In traditional yoga it is known by its Sanskrit name, Utkatasana. Utkatasana translates as intense, powerful, fierce, difficult—you get the idea. 

BKS Iyengar in Utkatasana, showing the challenge of the pose. Facebook

Squats can indeed be demanding. Lowering and raising your body weight into and out of the partial squat works the biggest muscles in the body (the leg and buttock muscles) hard, as they alternately contract (concentrically), and then release their length (eccentrically). 

When you start training with squats you don’t want to go down too far—better to do a shallow, more open zigzag squat that eases you into the exercise. This avoids the risk of injury and you can increase the intensity and demands on your body by going deeper over time, as you get stronger and more flexible. 

How to do a healthy squat

   1. Preparation

To facilitate a healthy amount of external rotation in the legs and hips, softness in the groin and nestling of the pelvis, we recommend doing the paper clip stretch or figure four as it is also known. This is a good preparatory exercise before squatting, and, done regularly over time, will encourage a healthy nestling of the pelvis and alignment of the legs.

In this video I am demonstrating the paperclip stretch, which prepares the legs and hips for healthy squatting. Clip from Gokhale Method Open University video.

   2. Start from a “Ready Stance”

A well-aligned standing posture is essential to maintain healthy form as you execute squats. The Gokhale Method teaches a position we call “Ready Stance” which aligns your feet, legs, and hips for correct movement. In this stance you will find the key characteristics of a squat, but in embryonic form:

• Stand with your feet hip width apart and pointing 10°–15° outward. Have a tiny bend at the hips and knees, as if you are about to play tennis or dance, bringing softness to the groin and back of the knees. 

Gokhale Fitness teacher Eric Fernandez demonstrates the Ready Stance. It is like an ultra-mini squat.

This ancient Greek statue captures the softness and depth you want at the groin even in everyday standing. To get there, take the Ready Stance and then stop short of locking your joints as you straighten up.  

   3. Going into a squat

• In the Ready Stance, rest your hands on the top of your thighs in your groin crease.
• Initiate your squat from your hips. As you fold deeper at the hips your behind will travel further back behind you. 
• Your knees will bend in response to your bend at the hips. Keep them wide and pointing outward and your thighs out of the way as you bend.
• As you squat, allow your torso to angle forward at the groin as your pelvis rotates on your thigh bones. Check that your stance has a zigzag shape.
• Focus on maintaining the straightest possible spine by using your rib anchor. 
• Keep your chin down. You want your neck and head to remain in the same orientation as the rest of your torso.

A healthy squat embodies all the points above.

• When you are confident with the above you can raise your arms smoothly as you squat. Maintain your rib anchor, especially if you have stiff shoulders and are more likely to sway to lift your arms. If possible, bring your arms to the same angle as your torso.

Raising your arms in line with your torso requires a strong rib anchor to prevent your back from swaying.

Gokhale Method teacher Cecily Frederick in Chair Pose, overlaid with SpineTracker™ snapshot. The SpineTracker gives real time feedback on the shape of the spine. Note that Cecily’s spine remains straight in the lumbar area and the J-shaped angle at the L5-S1 junction puts her behind behind her—she does not arch her back.

   
Detail of Cecily Frederick’s spinal shape in Chair Pose, overlaid with SpineTracker snapshot.

Common Mistakes: 

• Swaying the back. Fix this by using your rib anchor to remove the sway.

Swaying the back compresses the lumbar discs and nerves. Unsplash

• Knees and/or feet collapsing inward. Fix this by angling your feet outward.

Internal rotation of the legs (left) puts pressure on the inner knees and flattens the foot arches. Feet turned outward and knees and thighs kept wide helps support your structure while allowing the pelvis to settle.

• Lifting the chin. Avoid looking up or ahead. Fix this by softening your gaze and aligning your head and neck with the rest of your torso.

Lifting the chin risks putting pressure on the discs and nerves of the cervical spine. It is better to cultivate a long, tall neck. Wikimedia

   4. Increasing the challenge in squat

Once you have good technique and can perform squats smoothly with good form, you can increase their intensity in several ways—though not all at once!

• Increase the number of reps.
• Go deeper—take your thighs towards horizontal. Make sure your torso also pivots closer towards your thighs, your behind stays behind, and your knees do not go forward of your toes. 
• Hold a squat position for a number of breaths. Maintain a strong rib anchor so as not to flare the ribs and sway with each inhalation. 

Free Online Workshops

If you would like to find out more about how the Gokhale Method can help support you, whether through exercise or posture education, sign up to join one of Esther’s upcoming FREE Online Workshops.

This is the second post in our multi-part series on floor sitting. For Part 1 on floor sitting, click here.

Why squat? Squatting isn’t something we do much in industrialized societies beyond childhood, but if you can do it healthfully, it is an eminently practical posture for resting the body while keeping the backside elevated off the ground and the clothing clean, as this woman from Orissa demonstrates.

This woman from Orissa demonstrates a healthy, full squat with foot arches intact and a long, straight spine.

It is also the posture used for toilet activities in places with floor toilets, a trend which has recently made its way to the industrialized realm in the form of popular footstools such as the Squatty Potty. If you have ever gone camping in a place without Port-A-Potties, you have had good occasion to squat!

Using a simple footstool to sit on a toilet, supported with a straight back.

And women worldwide, especially in less-industrialized societies, have long used squatting during childbirth. Talk about ancestral posture.

Like mother, like child.

Women squatting in a tribal market in Orissa to sell vegetables. This is a very comfortable, sustainable posture they have grown up with.

The problem
Most people’s hip, knee, and ankle joints do not bend enough to allow the back to remain straight and the arches in the feet to remain intact.

People in modern societies usually don’t have the hip/knee/ankle structure to do a full squat without rounding the back and compromising the feet.

The fix
Raise the heels or resort to a partial squat or B squat (one heel raised, the other down). Do not settle down all the way down on your haunches.

For most people, squatting with raised heels makes it possible to have a straight back.

A partial squat or B squat, with one foot on the ground (not visible) and the other foot with the heel raised. This facilitates a healthy, straight back posture.

In conclusion, for modern urban people to derive the benefits but avoid the pitfalls of squatting, consider raising your heels, or doing a “B squat” or partial squat. For going to the toilet, a Squatty Potty or low foot bench is useful. We recommend on working on your calf and quad flexibility to get low to the ground towards a squat, but do not insist on a full squat because it will likely involve some unhealthy compensations. And enjoy people watching in cultures where squatting is part of daily living.  Every culture has its facilities and limitations and it’s fun that we’re all different!

This woman squats for hours to add slip onto her pots. Orissa, India.

Esther's note: Fredrik Prost, the Saami craftsman and posture student I wrote about in these past blogs:  Fredrik's Journey to a Pain-Free Back, Sleeping on Birch Branches in Samiland, Beauty, Art, and Posture, and Better Posture, Better Sleep, recently journeyed to Tuva. Here is an account he wrote for us about Tuvan posture, culture, and shamanism, including photos he took. It is a rare treat to hear about indigenous people from an indigenous person - one who speaks English well and knows our posture language too!

Tuva is an autonomous republic of Russia that lies northwest of Mongolia in the south of Siberia.

This summer I went there to explore the Tuvan traditions, in particular their spirituality.

Tuva is about half the size of France with only 300,000 inhabitants, most of them ethnic Tuvans. The Tuvans have traditionally lived as nomadic herders of sheep, camels, horses and even reindeer.

A group of children herding goats and sheep. The kids start to help out with the herding early - the youngest one here was just seven.

The culture is somewhat similar to that of Mongolia - for example, yurt dwellings, which are traditional in Mongolia, are also part of Tuvan culture.

I was interested in the Tuvan culture because I come from a similar culture myself, the Saami of Sweden. Traditionally we are a nomadic people mostly involved with reindeer herding and our traditional dwelling is a teepee. Our spiritual traditions are also similar to that of the Tuvans—generally known as shamanism. The shamanic tradition is surprisingly similar throughout Siberia all the way to Sápmi, which is the Saami area of northern Scandinavia and the Russian Kola Peninsula. For centuries, shamanism in both Siberia and in Sápmi have been under attack from the state governments and other religions. Soviet rule sought to completely eradicate religion in Tuva, and shamanism was driven underground. Despite this, shamanism flourishes once again and is practised openly in both Siberia and Sápmi. In Tuva it even has the status of state religion along with Buddhism.

The stunning landscape of the Tuvan steppe.

As a traditional Saami handicrafter, I have made many drums for Saami shamans. I am also a practitioner of this spirituality, so Tuva, with shamanism as a state religion, was very intriguing to me. Luck would have it that I have a friend in Tuva, a shaman working in their traditions. He invited me there, and naturally I accepted.

I am also familiar with the Gokhale Method, since I suffered from very severe back pain in 2014, and attended one of Esther’s workshops in Germany. So part of the plan for my visit was to also explore the Tuvans’ posture.

My girlfriend Inga-Wiktoria stacksitting on the edge of the boat while fishing on the mighty Jenisej river.

For almost two weeks we traveled around Tuva on dusty roads and in the wilderness. We met a lot of different people, both Russians and Tuvans. As we expected, a lot of people there have quite good posture, since they are involved in a lot of traditional work.

One of our new friends with shoulders back and rib anchor firmly in place.

What struck both my girlfriend and me was that almost all the Tuvans had good posture but the Russians did not. The Russians are a minority in Tuva these days, but historically they have made up as much as 30 percent of the population. So despite living alongside each other they have very different posture traditions—although it has to be said that it seems like the Russians in general have better posture than the average American or Swede.

A Tuvan carrying a heavy load with good back and posterior shoulder posture.

A group of Tuvans in a small village we visited was digging a new latrine; this man worked with really good form, and displayed excellent walking form with feet pointing slightly out and pushing with the back leg and toes.

They took turns digging and the resting position was of course squatting.

In the first week we went to a holy spring not far from the Mongolian border. There are a lot of springs where Tuvans go, which they find healing for various types of illnesses. There are many different springs for heart disease, rashes, and even back pain! These springs are also popular places to visit during summer, and whole families go to camp and relax together. At the spring we visited, there were a lot of Tuvans there and it was immediately clear that Tuvans in general have pretty good posture.

A visitor at the holy spring, stacksitting with thighs angled down and legs slightly open to receive the anteverted pelvis.

We went to a lot of places all across Tuva, which easily could be described as a land of extremes. There are mountains with pine trees, glaciers, as well as deserts where camels live. In summer it can get as hot as 105˚F and in winter minus 60˚F. Back home we rarely experience 85˚F in summer so we really did suffer the summer heat!

Endless roads through the mountains (Esther’s note: Fredrik has made great progress with his posture. When I first met him, he had been doing his carving round-shouldered; he took the instruction of the course to heart and here you see him with very nice posture indeed).

In the mountains we felt more at home both with the temperature and the terrain, and we even met some fellow reindeer herders! There is actually a minority in Tuva working with reindeer in the mountains. They speak a different dialect than the other Tuvans and just like us Saami they live in teepees not yurts.

Our new friends, the reindeer herders of Tuva, and our guide on the right.

Nadeshda showing us one of their skins; the conversation naturally was about reindeers! Shoulders back and good glidewalking.

The connection was instant despite several thousand miles between our two peoples. It really felt like meeting our long lost cousins. We received an invitation to visit them and their main camp, which we unfortunately did not have time to visit on this trip since it was four days away on horseback.

One of the many nomads of Tuva, with really good riding form - straight back and chin angled slightly down.

In the capital of Tuva, Kyzyl, there are shaman clinics where people go to find remedies for all sorts of ailments. At the clinics, which are run by different shaman organizations, shamans work on a daily basis with patients much like an MD in a hospital in the US. At one of the clinics we met Hurugay, a shamaness working for Dungur, the largest and oldest of the Tuvan shaman organizations. She was very welcoming and open about her work and the Tuvan traditions.

Inga-Wiktoria and I with shamaness Hurugay at the clinic in Kyzyl; Hurugay had really good posture, here tallstanding with shoulders back.

We camped for the two weeks of our trip and slept on the ground for most of the time. This was something I did a lot when I was younger but later on learned to fear because of my back issues. Since regaining the posture health I had lost, my back is really a non-issue and two weeks sleeping on the ground was no problem. Tuva gave us a lot, both spiritually and posturally.

Esther's note: A huge thank you to Fredrik for sharing these marvelous experiences and observations with us! Please feel free to comment and ask questions here.