An Introduction to Squatting

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Whether you are training to lose weight, increase size and strength or for sports - you should be squatting! Squats are a compound exercise, this means that they use more than one set of muscles. In fact squats are the most important compound exercise you can do. The main muscles used are the quads, glutes and hamstrings, but squats do a lot more than build lower body strength. Squatting correctly uses muscles over the whole of your body.

The Body Weight Squat

• Stand up straight with your feet shoulder width apart.
• Bend your knees and lower your upper body until your thighs are parallell to the floor (you can go down further into a deeper squat but make sure you go to at least parallell.)
• Ensure that your knees do not extend past the end of your toes.
• Look straight ahead. This will help keep the correct form and stop your back from arching.
• Push up through your heels to a standing position.
• Breathe in as you go down and out as you push up.
• Repeat!

It is a good idea to practice body weight squats for a while before adding weight. This ensures you are using the correct form and will help prevent any injuries.

Once you are comfortable with the body weight squat and can perform 20 reps quite easily - try it with an empty bar across your back.

• Place the empty bar (no weight plates) across the top of your back (not your neck!).
• Grip the bar with wide grip, palms facing forward.
• Squat! (remembering the flat back, knees not past the end of your toes and to push up through your heels.)

Adding Some Iron!

Once you are happy with your form with the empty bar it's time to add some weight. You will need to use a squat rack. If you don't have access to a squat rack, you can squat with dumbbells (see below).

• Step into the squat rack and set the bar a few inches below shoulder height.
• Check that the safety bars are low enough so that you can squat deeply.
• Duck under the bar and grab it with a wide grip, palms facing outwards.
• Rest the bar across the top of your back.
• Unrack the bar by standing up, whilst breathing out and then take a step back.
• Squat!
• When you have finished put the bar back onto the rack by stepping forwards and dropping it back down.

The Dumbbell Squat

If you don't have access to a squat rack you can still perform squats using dumbbells. Hold a dumbbell in each hand with your arms down by your sides and perform the squat using the same technique as above.

Following this guide and squatting correctly won't just help you sculpt those Olympian legs - you will find that more iron on the squat bar will put a few extra kilos on your bench press, deadlift and other exercises too.

Early Morning Training

"The heights of great men reached and kept,
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept, 
Were toiling upwards in the night."
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I have never been very good at getting up early, however the early morning is (in my opinion) by far the most beautiful time of day. It is also the perfect time of day for exercise, so I have spent the past few weeks conditioning my mind and body into getting up early and fitting some training in before breakfast.

The most important step in getting up earlier is going to sleep earlier. It doesn't have to be a big change - I have brought my bedtime forward by about an hour, so I now go to bed at around eleven o'clock. Losing an hour at the end of the day hasn't affected me greatly at all. The final hour of the day is the least productive - it has just meant reading a few less chapters of a book or watching a shorter film (possibly Predator instead of Scarface).

The extra hour or so gained at the start of the day however has made a huge difference. I now set my alarm for 5:30 and by 5:45(ish) I am out of the house, having donned my training gear and downed a protein shake.

Variety is important. If I had been getting up early and doing the same thing every day I think the monotony would have beaten me. My early morning training is usually one of the following; 

• Aerobic endurance (either a steady paced run or intervals).
• Plyometrics followed by sprints (I have to do plyometric training early, when not too many people are about or I get some very strange looks as I jump around my local park).
• Weights session.
• Yoga.

One of the benefits of early morning training is the freeing up of time later in the day (the time after work spent in the gym or running can now be used elsewhere) and I don't know if this is true for other people but early morning training sessions seem to be a lot more effective than sessions later in the day. This has to be purely psychological and I put it down to the fact that training early in the morning makes me feel like Rocky!

Say Hello to Mr Bunn

I'd like to introduce you all to my Mr - Matthew Bunn. He's going to be doing some regular posts on here covering general fitness and weight training as well as, well, anything else he fancies writing about!

So, give the gorgeous chap a warm welcome, comment on his posts and enjoy reading.