Squats: love them or hate them, but do you have to do them? 

While no one should feel they have to do anything in the gym if they don’t want to, we do have a good argument for why squats should be a part of everyone’s routine. 

First of all, squats are not just for the heavy lifters. From the casual gym-goer to the expert bodybuilder, anyone can reap the benefits. 

One of the most critical benefits of squats, when performed correctly, is that it keeps your body functioning properly by supporting better balance, stability, and mobility—something everyone needs. 

Of course, there are benefits if weight loss is your goal, thanks to the squat's calorie-crushing abilities. After all, the squat is one of the more challenging exercises. Hello, it's you vs. gravity.

Yet, just like with any exercise, you first need to know how to do them first.

So let's dive into the health benefits of squats and how to do them!

How to Squat Properly 

As we said, squats have a lot of benefits, and as it turns out, there are just as many squat variations! However, first and foremost. knowing how to do a basic, bodyweight squat is essential. 

1. Begin with your feet slightly wider than hip-width apart.
2. Keep your chest up, engage your core muscles (your abs), and shift your weight onto your heels as you push your hips back as if you are about to sit in a chair.
3. Inhale and lower your hips until your thighs are parallel or almost parallel to the floor. (If you're not familiar with performing a squat, having a low chair behind you is a good idea, just in case you lose your balance!)
4. As you lower yourself into the squat, you should feel it in your thighs and glutes (your butt!). Also, neither your heels nor your toes should rise off that ground as you squat. 
5. Pause with your knees over, but not beyond, your toes.
6. Exhale and return to the starting position, squeezing your glutes as you come up.

Benefits of Squats #1:

Strengthens Muscles and Reduces Chance of Injury

Incorporating squats into your workout helps strengthen your bones, ligaments, and tendons in your lower body. When you maintain your lower body in this way, you can perform full-body movements with better balance, posture, and mobility. Reinforcing your ligaments, bones, and tendons also help reduce the chance of injury during exercise and in day-to-day activity. 

Benefits of Squats #2:

Serious Calorie Burning 

It's a common misconception that you need to do cardio if you want to burn calories and lose weight. While cardio does burn calories, it's exercises like the squat that can stoke some serious calorie burning, help build muscle, and have a more prolonged thermal effect than cardio.

One study from Harvard found that a 155-pound person can burn around 223 calories from performing 30 minutes of weight training, such as the squat. But it's that aforementioned thermal effect that makes compound movements like the squat the winner of calorie burning. When you perform vigorous weight training, you can still be burning calories as you go about the rest of your day for upward of 36 hours after your workout. In contrast, with traditional cardio, the thermal effect lasts only a few hours. 

If your goal is building up your booty, then squats are your new best friend. 

One of the prime movers (the muscle doing most of the work) in squats is your gluteus maximus, aka, your butt. The gluteus maximus is the largest muscle in the human body and is also a principal player in many day-to-day movements. Working it out contributes to strengthening our daily activities. The rest of the glute muscles also get worked out during the squat, helping establish better stability overall. 

But all that gluteus work results in, as the saying goes, "buns of steel." By performing squats, you not only are helping your body with better stability and reduced injury risk, but you're also working to sport a rocking butt.