5 REASONS TO TEACH YOUR CLIENTS TO BACK SQUAT

Today I am going to share five good reasons you should teach your clients to back squat like a pro. The squat is a real powerhouse of an exercise, considered one of the best; strength building, muscle building, and toning moves of the lower body. As I am focusing on the “why” you should teach your clients to back squat in this post, I will cover back squat technique in a future post.

If the Hulk from Marvel’s Avengers chose a variation of a squat, it would definitely be the back squat, have you seen his quads? The back squat is not just for building mass, done right, you can build muscular endurance, speed, power, tone, and burn fat! These are just some of the main fitness related benefits of the back squat, here’s five reasons YOU should teach your clients to back squat

1. Confidence Builder

How amazing do you feel when you’ve achieved something you once thought impossible? Amazing right? For a new member or client, squatting is for the elite gym goer, personal trainers, or athletes. What they might not realise, is that, the back squat is one of five of the best confidence boosting exercises in the gym. From squatting with a 20kg bar to squatting up to three times that weight in 6 weeks, your clients will grow in confidence and want to train more often with you!

2. Muscle Builder

The back squat primarily focuses on the gluteal muscles, and the quadriceps, making the back squat an ideal compound exercise. Dependent on the client goal, the back squat can be used to build muscle, tone muscle, burn fat, develop power or build muscular endurance. A very well researched; athletic movement, the back squat is not just for sport. Instragram is full of weird and wonderful ways to train glutes, and a very popular muscle group for many female clients, the back squat beats every single one of them.

Strong really is the new skinny, the next generation of fitness client coming through is more fitness conscious than ever before. Being able to give your millenial, generation Z & X clients what they want from an effective, powerhouse of an exercise will grow your client waiting list.

3. Perfect Posture

The back squat is a primal movement pattern we have learned over thousands of years. Our pelvic and associated joints are perfect for squatting down to the ground. As a baby you do this naturally as you learn to walk for the first time. The back squat teaches your body to function correctly and as it was mechanically designed. Standing tall with your back squat will engage three braces in your body, the shoulder girdle, the trunk, and the hips. The starting phase will fire up all of your postural muscles to hold the weight, with correct function, the eccentric phase will begin the athletic movement of your prime movers, quadriceps and gluteals. As you stand back up (concentric phase) with correct technique your postural muscles will work hard to keep you up right. As the benefits transfer to daily life your client will have a stronger, taller physique as their body functions correctly through learning to back squat correctly.

4. Burn Fat Faster

As you now know, the back squat fires up muscles across your body as it performs this HULK busting move. Muscle activation requires energy and, energy production requires energy. The more energy you need to produce the more calories you will burn from your body’s reserves. The back squat is a lower body dominant exercise but the upper body is also required to stabilise the shoulder girdle and trunk as it holds an increased amount of weight. This makes the squat a whole body exercise, switching on more muscle fibres than an exercise such as the leg extension, which has a lower level of muscle fibre recruitment. The more fibres you turn on, the more energy you use, the more fat you burn, with the right training principles in place. Help your clients burn fat by teaching them to squat correctly and build the back squat into a high rep, calorie burning workout.

5. Reduce Joint and Muscle Injuries

Squatting is, as we now know, a natural movement. The nature of the typical non-sporty gym client’s daily life requires walking, driving, sitting on trains, buses, at their desks, or on the sofa. Clients with sporting hobbies will be conditioned to specific movements for their sport, potentially, tightening, weakening, and shortening some muscle groups. What both types have in common due to the movements they will carry out are reduced ranges of movement. Typically tight hamstrings, calves, lower back, and hips, done correctly with light weight the back squat can, through movement, improve the range of movement in these joints and associated muscles and tendons. Joints with unrestricted, normal ranges of movement will work more efficiently putting less strain or tension on their associated muscles and tendons. Your body is a well tuned machine and any tight area is a cause for reduced performance or “breakdown”, like a piston in an engine, if it is to tight, it will reduce performance and run inefficiently, ensure the piston is running smooth and at the right tolerance, performance will increase and produce more power. Your client’s body is no different.

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Through this post you have now learned five reasons you should be teaching your clients’ to back squat. We have also briefly touched the benefits of the back squat for your clients. Knowing the benefits of an exercise will help you as a trainer communicate to your clients why they are doing it and what they will get from being able to perform the exercise. Building a client up to perform an exercise through correct progression and coaching is important to help them achieve good technique, as a result, they will be more confident and become a real advocate of your training, helping you as a trainer to attract more clients. Effectively helping you sell your services through the success of your current clients.

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