 What muscles should you feel when squatting? So, big ones, the legs, the things that are, let's look at the things that are loaded, right? So, I'm moving the hip joint and the knee joint and even the ankle joint. So, big prime movers there. The planar flexors, the calves, the quads to extend the knee, and the hamstrings and glutes to extend the hip. Outside of that, you also have some low back musculature that is keeping you from collapsing over. And you'll even have some upper back musculature, kind of doing the same thing, making sure that my chest doesn't cave, right? So, all of those are involved. Now, what should you be feeling? Well, you only feel muscles that are moving under contracted load, because the isometric hold, the isometric means a contraction that doesn't change the length of the muscle, right? So, if I stand right here, I'm in an isometric contraction. But if I move through here, I have eccentric and concentric movements. And those movements fatigue my muscles more. There's more fluid changes inside the muscle. You deprive the muscle and the nervous system of these ions that help these contractions go and you start to get fatigued. So, towards the end of a set, what should you be feeling? Primarily with the squat, you're feeling quads, right? Because this squat exercise is a very quad-focused exercise. You will also feel glutes and potentially, hopefully hamstrings. You might not feel as much hamstring. You'll generally feel that more at the bottom or finishing at the top. You'll feel this like glute hamstring up in my junk area kind of contraction. Big thing is quads. Now, other muscles that I listed before, I listed upper back, I listed like low backs, spinal erector muscles, and I listed calves. Those ones, you're generally not feeling quite as much. Why wouldn't I feel a calf? Well, ideally, if I'm squatting correctly, I'm keeping my heel firmly planted in the ground and I minimize the leverage on the calf, on the ankle joint there. So if I do calf raises, I'm gonna put the pressure on the ball of my foot, not on the heel, because the ball disadvantages that muscle so that I can load it. You don't have that when you squat. You keep your heels down and the calves kind of work to just guide your foot placement, hopefully allow for ankle mobility so that your squat can be deep enough. Moving up the chain. So we got the glutes. You'll feel a lot at the top as well. They're active at the very bottom as well. And then this low back, right? So same similar idea. When I come down here, I don't wanna collapse my low back and those low back muscles help prevent me from doing that. So if I look back to the quad, right? Why do I feel the quad? I feel the quad because it's loaded and it's moving. The back might be loaded, but it's not moving, hopefully. If your back starts to get sore when you're exercising, generally that tells me that you've started to collapse in that area. A lot of times you look at big yoke dudes, the most unstable position of my body is right about here. And so when I do my squats, like a front squat, for example, because the leverage is so big, I will come up and I'll collapse right here like this. My chest caves a little bit because I can't maintain the stability here. And so I'll get sore here and I'll even get pain here, but most importantly, you guys can kind of see my middle back is more developed there. And so the shape of my back, when you look at me from the side, looks a little weird. Now I've got other stuff going on, but that's the premise there. So if you're feeling that soreness, if you're getting that huge spinal erector development, some of that might be okay. I don't wanna say that it's not okay for your spine to move a little bit, but I do want you to be aware of it. If that's the only thing you're feeling, you probably need to re-evaluate how you're doing your exercise and try to stabilize your spine a little bit. And I've got a ton of other exercise. We talked about a ton of different squatting variations. All sorts of stuff can help you with that. Moving up, upper back. So similar kind of thing, right? That is isometrically contracted. It's not this concentric, eccentric. It's not like a row, right? So when I get a row, my upper back should get much more fatigued than when I squat. It might still get fatigued when I squat, but I won't feel it as much as I feel my legs, okay? So quick summary. What muscles am I using when I'm squatting? Well, I'm kinda using my calves, I'm using my quads, I'm using my hamstrings, I'm using my glutes, I'm using my low back, I'm using my upper back, right? But big things I should be feeling all of the quad. I don't want you biasing towards the inside or towards the outside, or maybe one or the other on each respective leg. And even hamstring, hopefully, as well. And then glutes. Last one I wanna talk about, not every squat, especially like super intense stuff, you're probably not gonna feel this, but if I'm doing a mobility type of squat where I'm trying to train depth and I'm trying to train the control of all of my joints, I might actually feel some abs, right? If I get a good reach and I get a good exhale, that pulls all of this stuff back and allows my abs to turn on to stabilize my hips and let me use my muscles. In that case, you're gonna feel more hamstring there than you would in a general, heavy squat. So keep in mind, it depends on what you're doing. Everything always changes. It just depends on what you're looking to get out of it. So if you're just looking for pure size, you want to fatigue as many of those muscles as you can and you probably need to use a little bit more extra weight, but you can get away with doing some back-off sets or some accessory work with more of a mobility type of squat to really hammer down quad, to start getting extra hamstring, extra glute, and even turn the abs on a little bit. I like to end workouts with that because people find it really relaxing, but do as you please. I give you the information, it's your journey to take.