To squat or not to squat?

    Often you can hear such stereotypes about physical education and sports (and without physical education you can’t talk about any health of a modern person, especially a geek) that performing such an exercise as squats is dangerous, harmful, and leads to back injuries. Some information for reflection on this issue.



    We take a video from the wonderful Muscle & Motion channel with an analysis of the anatomy of the squats:



    The video shows perfectly and easily which muscles are involved in squats: quadriceps extend the knee, buttocks provide extension in the hip joints and allow you to tilt, back and press muscles provide a stable position of the trunk, calf muscles - extension of the foot and stabilization of the knee.

    From about 40 seconds, it is clearly shown how the spine works, absorbing the load due to small changes in the lumbar lordosis and elastic deformation of the discs:



    There are four bends in the spine, two of them are called kyphosis (backward bend) - thoracic and sacral, and the other two - lordoses (respectively, arching forward) - cervical and lumbar; due to this property, it has high elasticity and strength - it is estimated that without these shock-absorbing sections the spine could withstand loads 10 times less.

    So squats occur in a person who knows how to squat and for whom all the muscles mentioned in the video are developed and work harmoniously. And what does the overwhelming majority of sedentary-office people look like squats? Something like this, this is even in the best case:



    As you can see, the lumbar region no longer has lordosis, and Madame has only completed the quarter squat and has not even reached her working chair (I still don’t even touch my knees, shoulder girdle and distribution of the center of gravity). What happens to disks in this case? That's right, they experience uneven compression - the front section receives a large load, the rear one is smaller.

    Why is lumbar disc protrusion (they account for up to half of disc protrusion in general) - one of the most common diseases today? Probably because all people are heavy? Because from childhood in the weightlifting sections they squatted and squatted?

    Or maybe because they sit from childhood for 8-10 hours a day, move a little, have weak muscles and do not have the skills to use them? And because dozens, and even hundreds of times, every day, people sit on a chair, on a bench in the subway, on the toilet (in general, dozens, although in some situations it happens and only so much on the last item), and they also bend, walk, run and jump (well, this is very rare, but it happens) - and all this is done with a violation of posture and chronic overload of the discs, as well as small joints of the spine and ligamentous apparatus? A rhetorical question.



    We will not talk about the rehabilitation of back pain - with regard to prevention. The first thing that comes to mind is that you need to strengthen the deep back muscles and abs to avoid such irregular movements in the lower back. In general, it is necessary. But there are two problems.

    The first - a typical posture disorder is just hyperlordosis in the lumbar spine, which appears as a biomechanical compensation of the malfunctioning large muscles (although the result is more damage because it increases the amplitude of flexion in the lumbar spine). To strengthen here the deep muscles of the back and there is no big sense - they are already constantly tense. But you still need to know how to “pump” the press correctly - a lot of people do not know how to turn off the work of the leg muscles and even more injure the lower back due to contraction of the lumbar-iliac muscles.



    But even if you take up the strengthening of these muscles, but your leg muscles do not have enough strength, especially the buttocks (many people who sit a lot cannot even contract these muscles normally) - in the end, you still can’t squat with a normal amplitude and stable back position. And this is without extra weight. And when you try to lift something heavy (a battery for a car from the floor, a closet or sofa during a repair, a child who happily jumped onto your back) for years, the tired structures of the lumbar spine can make themselves felt and there will be a cross, sciatica, and others troubles. Although often for this simpler reasons are enough - for example, tying shoelaces (pay attention to the lower back at this moment).

    What is logical to do? Learning how to squat correctly, and then it's best to train a certain supply of muscle strength so that there is an excess of resources for squats in any situations. For this, squats with weight are already used - in physical education these are metered and careful squats.

    If an old-school doctor who doesn’t really follow the physical training periodical says that only a pool is useful for back health (forgive me for sticking to this pool - they really do not mind anything, a useful thing, but for most people it’s simply not enough, and also it is necessary to explain what is worth doing and what is not), and squats are horror-horror as harmful, then you can agree and argue with the last thesis. If you squat like in the picture with a girl, or even worse round your lower back, then squats on an office chair are harmful, not to mention weight.

    And if you squat correctly? Can I have a chair? And with 12 kg of weight during a physical break? Yes, women drag children in their arms - it will be harder. And with 20 kg? Etc. - You can not discuss the question of squats with weight without dosing the load. Paracelsus said, “everything is medicine, everything is poison - and only the dose determines what is what.” So with physical exercises - there are no absolutely useful and absolutely harmful, the first thing that determines the benefit is the technique, the second is the dosing of the intensity of the loads, the third is the correct construction of the training process as a whole.

    By the way, you can watch the lower back in the video of the favorite TV channel of all Yougifted fitness equipment - you really don’t need to squat like that:


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