Why squat?
This is a squat.
It’s not an exercise.
It’s a natural resting position that should be accessible to you. I also feel it’s a natural springing position to enable you to be the human jungle gym you’re meant to be but we’re talking the first step in owning this basic of basics superpower!
This natural resting human position should be accessible to you with ease. It's not your proportions, it's not your age, it's not your injuries - it's the fact that you stopped doing what humans have evolved to do - MOVE. We sit 24/7 and we do very little to improve our mobility. Because modern life has engineered movement out of our bodies and now we must build it back in!
The good news is that to enable your natural resting position, you can simply sit in the position, eat in it, resting in it. By simply implementing a simple resting routine into your day you’ll do wonders for your mobility without your even noticing!
We can site chronic sitting as a killer that’s slowly robbing us of our human movement abilities we’ve had from the time we were born but we just need to look to cultures where squatting is the norm - none of them have issues with squatting even at 80 years old!
You can get it back, you have to put in the work. A daily commitment.
Side note:
I remember two occasions in my studies when the squat as human movement was mentioned as essential for survival:
Nutrition and exercise physiology studies: when we sit in the lowest squat, our hips, knees, ankles are under their most flexed etc but there’s also an elastic band like structure in our lower bowel that simply relaxes in this position and doing number twos just releases, no pushing, no pressure. Being able to squat is a given digestive-easy result!
Exercise physiology studies: the USA army changed their physical entry requirements for soldiers who couldn’t squat because less and less entrants could! Meanwhile, as Gray Cook lectured, the opposition armies could still squat, and when you’re engaged in warfare and one side can get into a low crouch while the other are forced to stand, one side has a clear hidden advantage?!
