Why You Can’t Deep Squat (And the Benefits You’re Missing)

Matt Hsu fought his own battle with chronic pain from the age of 16 in his feet, knees, hips, back, shoulders, elbows, forearms, wrists, hands, and head. Seeking answers, he’s spent a career in corrective exercise, posture alignment, structural integration, orthopedic exercise, sports medicine, and has more certifications than we care to list. In short, he knows his stuff.

Yes you can (with some work)

The deep squat, also called Asian squat, Slav squat, sitting squat, resting squat, primal squat, and various other names, is an important way of sitting that has implications for a lot of aspects of health.

Why it’s so important: it preserves the mobility of our hips, ankles, and everything in between, and maintaining especially the hip mobility makes a big difference not only to general health, but also to reducing the risk of injury. It also maintains lower body strength, making falls in older age less likely in the first place, and if falls do happen, makes injury less likely, and if injury does happen, makes the injury likely less severe.

An important misconception: there is a popular, but unfounded, belief that the ability or inability to do this is decided by genes—or if not outright decided, that at the very least Asians and Slavs have a genetic advantage. However, this is simply not true. Westerners and others can learn to do it just fine, and on the flipside, Asians and Slavs who grew up in the West may often struggle with it. The truth is, the deciding factor is lifestyle: if your culture involves sitting this way more often, you’ll be able to do it more comfortably and easily than if you’re just now trying it for the first time.

Factors that you can control: you can’t change where you grew up, but you can change how you sit down now. Achieving the squat requires repeated position practice, and the more frequently you do so (even if you just start with a few seconds and work your way up to longer periods), the better you’ll get at it. And, on the contrary, sitting in chairs weakens and shortens the muscles involved, so any time you spend sitting in chairs is working against you. There are many reasons it’s advisable to avoid sitting in chairs more than necessary, and this is one of them.

10almonds tip: a limiting factor for many people initially is ankle flexibility, which may result in one’s center of gravity being a bit far back, leading to a tendency to have to change something to avoid toppling over backwards. Rather than holding onto something immobile (e.g. furniture) in front of where you are sitting, consider simply holding an object in front of you in your hands. A book is a fine example; holding that in front of you (feel free to read the book) will shift your center of gravity forwards a bit, and will thus allow you to sit there a little longer, thus improving your strength and flexibility while you do, until you can do it without holding something in front of you. If you try with a book and you’re still prone to toppling backwards, try with something heavier, but do use the minimum weight necessary, because ultimately the counterbalance is just a crutch to get you to where you need to be.

For more visual advice on how to do it, enjoy:

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Want to learn more?

You might also like to read:

• Train For The Event Of Your Life!
• Building & Maintaining Mobility
• Avoiding Later-Life Falls

Take care!