 In this episode of Mind Pump the World's Top Fitness, Health, and Entertainment podcast, we talk about a great subject, one that there's a little bit of controversy around on the interwebs. We talk about the squat and in particular why everybody should do squats or if you can't do squats, why you should get to the point where you can do them. It's the best exercise for beginners to learn. It's phenomenal for building real world strength. It builds muscle like no other exercise. It's phenomenal for fat loss through the metabolism boosting effects. And all the other exercises people like to do in replaceive squats, leg presses, and hack squats, for example, they're all terrible, terrible substitutes. Now in this episode, we talk about mobility a little bit because some people can't squat because they lack the mobility. Okay, that's not an excuse to not squat. If anything, work on your mobility so you can squat. We have a free class called, it's a primeprowebinar.com. So if you go to primeprowebinar.com, you can take the course. It's totally free. Adam, my co-host, takes you through mobility movements that will help you get a better squat. Now this episode is brought to you by one of our sponsors, Olipop. Olipop is a drink that is good for your gut. No joke, it's a gut tonic. So it has the benefits of prebiotics. It's got plant fibers that feed healthy bacteria. It's got botanicals in there that help coat and protect the gut from inflammation. It's a really, really good drink, but here's the best part. It tastes like soda. For example, I'm holding my hand right now, strawberry vanilla, and it literally tastes like strawberry soda from when I was a kid. It's not artificially flavored. It's super low in sugar. The one I'm holding my hand right now, in fact, the whole can has three grams of sugar and nine grams of fiber. The whole can is 35 calories. So it tastes good, but it's also good for your gut. Because you listen to Mind Pump, you get a discount. Just go to drinkolipop.com. That's the word drink, and then olipop.com. And use the code Mind Pump for 15% off your first order. And by the way, those of you that are paleo, keto, low carb, non-GMO, this drink checks all those boxes. Go check it out. We've addressed, I think in quasi many times. I don't know if we've done a single episode related to this, but I get tagged on posts like this all the time. And so I think that we should lay this out one good time, very thorough. And then we can reference this episode going forward so we don't have to continue our stance. Have this conversation. And so the title of this episode is Why Everyone Should Squat. Now, what motivated you? Why is there controversy? Yeah, what was the post or motivation? Did you get one recently? Yeah, so I got tagged in a good buddy of ours, Eugene Tao. Oh, he's a good guy. Incredible guy, very smart dude. Very smart dude. Great coach. One of my favorite dudes on Instagram. And so of course, when we have crossover of audience, right? So this happens a lot when our good friends, you know, whether it be Pokolski, Greenfield, Pac, if any of these guys, Lane Norton, Lane Norton, if any of these guys say something that is like doesn't align perfectly with Mind Pump, we get tagged like fucking a thousand times. And it's like, what do you guys think? What do you think about this? So a couple of things. First of all, so addressing Eugene's post, he's very good at Instagram. He's very, very good. He's better than we are for sure. Yeah, and that's kind of a weird award to have. Yeah, first place. Good job. Hey, well, I mean, it's all joking aside. He's a smart dude too. Yeah. He's a very good trainer. This is what makes him really good at this is he's he's very and and here's what I and I love about someone like this is they do a good job of putting something out like that. And I don't think he is a zealot about it whatsoever. He does it because he knows it's going to stir up some controversy and some conversation. And he also knows how to make a case. Absolutely. And he knows how to intelligently argue his point the same way we're going to argue ours. So his post, is this the one I got tagged on to where he's basically saying essentially why squats are not the best exercise or why everyone doesn't need to squat or something like that? Yeah, not only that was why it's not the best exercise for all these people. And he lists beginners, strength athletes, powerlifters and some I forget what all the lists were, but basically making the case. And then in fact, he penned a comment that somebody said, well, then why even squat and, you know, he penned that comment. So that's a great question. So basically making the case for, you know, why, why should anyone ever squat if we can accomplish many of the things that people claim that you can accomplish from squat from other movements? Yeah. And I think, okay, so it's important to say this first. They're because training, there's everybody's an individual. So there's always exceptions to most rules and fitness always, but some exceptions are far more rare than others. For example, there may be an exception where I'd say, you know, everybody should have at least some fruit and vegetables in their diet. Are there exceptions to that? There are. I know people who follow very strict carnivore diets, who have autoimmune flare ups when they eat fruits and vegetables, but they're not, they're definitely the exception. Okay. So are there people out there where squatting may not be right for them? Yes. But they are very small exception. Very, very small percent. In fact, of all the clients I've ever trained, I can't think of a single person who would fall in that category. I mean, I did have a client that was an amputee. That's obvious. But everybody either squat, did squats or worked towards doing a squat and we got, you know, phenomenal results. So when we're saying why everyone should squat, we're referring to the vast majority of people, you know, 97% of the people listening to this podcast. Now in my experience, when people say they don't like squats, there's always the same, there's always the same reasons. It's either one, they don't have the mobility that allows them to squat properly. And they don't want to work on the mobility to be able to squat. So they, they say squats don't work for me. Well, yeah, they don't work for you right now. But can you get to a squat? And should you be able to? You should. But that's why they don't like them. Oh, squats hurt my knees, my back. They don't feel comfortable. That's always one of the reasons is that they have poor mobility and rather than working on the mobility, they just say, I shouldn't squat. Here's, well, here's, here's why this is a dangerous argument, in my opinion, to defend why you shouldn't squat. And so I do like having this, this debate back and forth, because I think it's a healthy conversation. But look what's happening right now. And this is happening in our generation. Okay. In a short period of time, we have been able to literally sit on our ass at home and work, order something that gets to us within 24 hours, call a car that can come pick us up right from the spot that we're at and not move. We don't have to walk. Yeah, we don't even have to walk now. We've got these little, you know, scooter, electric scooters all over town everywhere. We've got these little, what do they call? What are those? The two wheeled ones that are popular now. The Segway. The Segway is all over the place. I'm all bicycle. No, too much work. Too old. So we're not far from, you know, having a potential society that looks a lot like that, that cartoon. Wally. Dude, when I watched Wally, I actually, great movie, very touching, but that part, part of me was a little bit like, oh. But where I'm going with this is that really soon here, walking may not become mandatory anymore. And people will say, why should I try walking? Why? Why should I even? It hurts. It's difficult. Yeah. It's too much work. It bothers my hover chair. Yeah, it bothers my knees. It doesn't bother my knees to sit in my hover chair. And so, and now, mind you, and I need you to be a little creative listening to this, right? This is an extreme analogy to make this point. But at some point, we've lost this fundamental skill to sit down and squat. I'll back you up right now. Okay. People think walking. No, we're never going to lose that ability. Okay, we've lost our ability to run. The average person right now, because, okay, running is a fundamental human movement. Running is something that humans do exceptionally well. In fact, it's widely agreed upon that the way that humans, for most of human history, caught their food was by injuring the animal and then running after it until it got too tired to keep running. That's no joke. In fact, if you look at modern hunter-gatherers, they still hunt this way. They will run an animal down. They out endure them. They out endure them. There's been races, long distance races, where humans beat horses. We're exceptionally good at long distance running. We evolved to do so. Now, is that true for the modern person? No. If I go outside right now and go take pick out 100 people, I guarantee not one of them will be able to run properly without pain, without terrible dysfunction. This is why I recommend people don't run these days, because we grow up not doing it. We grow up not practicing it. We lose the skill, and then people think they can go outside and just run all the time. We've lost that fundamental human movement. The same thing will happen to walking. The same exact thing will happen to walking. Squatting is also a fundamental human movement. If you go to a third world country or you watch modern hunter-gatherers, this is how people rest. This is how they eat. This is how women give birth. This is how we go to the bathroom. This is how we go to the bathroom. We sit in a squat. It's very comfortable. Old people do it. Young people do it. It's a fundamental human movement, and why are fundamental human movements good to maintain? Because your body evolved to do them. When you lose those fundamental movements, there's a lot of carryover in terms of just general movement. It's a big deal. I'm more prone to looking at carryover for real life situations versus just trying to focus completely on muscle development and being happy with walking around with excess muscle versus being able to actually use that in certain situations and be able to pick things up properly, being able to sit down, being able to do all the things you described. Why not do that with strength attached to it? I talked earlier about one of the number one reasons why people say they don't like squats is because they lack the mobility, whether they're aware of it or not. The second reason that I see people say they don't like squats is because they're hyper responders. They build a lot of muscle very easily in their lower body. To them, it's like, why should I do that difficult challenging exercise when I've got these great quads and hamstrings from doing leg presses and hack squats and leg extensions? You hear this from bodybuilders all the time. Oh, I don't squat. It hurts my whatever. I just leg press and I look phenomenal. Look at my legs. I get that. Okay, great. You've got these great genetics and all this stuff. So in spite of the fact that you're not squatting, you've developed good muscle. Does that mean, however, that you won't benefit from squatting yourself? Absolutely you will. Everybody will benefit from this again, from this fundamental human movement. There's other ones too, throwing, throwing with accuracy. This is a very exclusive skill to humans. Climbing, humans are supposed to be able to climb. And if you don't practice these things, you lose them. And when you lose a fundamental human movement, a lot of things happen. So let's go back to walking for a second, because that's the one that people can still do. Thankfully, we still practice it. If you lost your ability to walk, we are losing it. We are. If you lost your ability to walk, imagine the rest of your health and what would happen to the rest of your health. Even if you, let's say you didn't walk and you were in a hover chair or whatever, but you use a lot of other equipment to exercise your body. Would that replace just basic, simple walking? No, it wouldn't. You, you know, we know that walking circulates the, your blood and lymphatic system. We know that walking helps with digestion. We know that walking has far reaching effects on the brain because it's something that we humans evolve to do. Squatting is up there. And if you don't do it, you lose the skill. And the longer you lose the skill, the more difficult it is to gain it back. So it's something that everybody should do. But along with that, because it's a fundamental human skill, there's so much potential that comes off of it. In my experience, nothing comes close to the muscle, strength, and functional ability I gain from squatting. It's like the best exercise for all of those things. I can't think of another exercise that even comes close. And I remember when I first started squatting as a 16, 17 year old kid. And I remember like I would add 20 pounds to a squat. And it did more for my legs than adding 70 pounds on a leg press. It just blew me away. This is the same thing with my clients. When I first started my career as a personal trainer, I kind of fell into this, you know, believing these myths. And so my clients, rather than teaching them how to squat, working on mobility, we would do leg press, we would do hack squat, we would do leg extension. Later on in my career, as I understood the importance of this, I stopped doing that. And so I'd get a client, I'd look at them and we'd try to do, okay, you can't do squat. Let's work on mobility. We'll work towards squats. Oh, now we can squat. Let's practice without weight. Okay, now we can add weight. And the progress that the clients would make through that process blew everything out of the water that I did before. To speak to all those skills, I mean, you start like losing that skill by not using it. You start building up a lot more dependencies. And so what you're going to see now is you're very limited in anything in real life with what you can actually apply, because you're susceptible to just, you know, the slightest angle that you're not familiar with. Now, I don't know how to properly stabilize in this position. I don't know how the strength really to, to dig me out of this position, I'm more vulnerable and dependent on things being in a perfect track. And that's just not the real life. So let's, let's, let's address beginners first. Since I think that's kind of the, the go to case that people like to make for like white by beginner shouldn't squat. Yeah, why a beginner because it's a high skill movement, right? It's a very high skilled movement. It takes probably years and years of practicing to get really good at it. So why would I ever have a beginner do something that that's that high skill, because the potential of risked it? So why, why not do other machines and other movements while they're a beginner and then transition maybe later to squat? You know, I want to, before we even get into that, because I think this is connected to that, I do want to say that a lot of the reason why this is even a debate or discussion has to do with the influence of bodybuilders in training and in fitness. And bodybuilders have brought a lot of amazing things to fitness. But as bodybuilders started to change their focus, because originally bodybuilders, they, when they would first bodybuilding shows, by the way, included a physical performance, you know, feet, like you went on stage, you didn't just pose, you also had to show that you were strong or that you could do something, and then eventually turned into just looking at me and then steroids came in. And then it became all about just developing my body in the easiest way possible. And it really doesn't matter how I move or whatever. But bodybuilders used to squat all the time before they moved away from squats. And the, and here's the influence that we have now on beginners. Bodybuilders say you can develop nice looking legs without squatting. This is what beginners hear is, Oh, I just want to look good. So why do that hard complicated thing when I'm just going to develop my legs doing this other exercise? This is a very bad way of thinking. It's not a good way of thinking. And again, here's your example, look at bodybuilders, look at a bodybuilder, watch them walk, watch them move, watch them throw a football, watch them throw a punch, watch them run. What you are seeing is a muscular, dysfunctional person, very muscular, unable to move and function properly, easily able to hurt themselves as a result. Unless you're Juju Mufu. Yeah. Well, he practices fun, you know, functional movements and stuff all the time. Well, that's an example of what, what, what, if you actually were a bodybuilder who put that much energy and effort towards mobility. He does back flips. Right, right. You know, but that's rare though, you don't see that you rarely see somebody who's built that way that's put so, I mean, this one, it's this conversation I'm very passionate about because here I am now with a, a one year old child. And I can't tell you guys, uh, how much of my day is in the squatted position. I mean that I, I rest what's awesome though, is I have the ability now, which I didn't have just five, six years ago. I did not have the ability to rest in a complete deep squatted position. That was not a resting position for me. My hips were so tight. My ankle mobility was so poor that if I trust, first of all, I couldn't even get that low without my heels rising up off the ground. So my quads and shins would be on fire trying to say that I couldn't sit in that position for longer than maybe a minute, maybe two minutes at best, where now I can take my son out to the park and we can be running back and forth in grass. And I can be down with him and in that rested position for 20, 30 minutes at a time comfortably. And I wouldn't have been, if I had not started to work on the depth in my squat and work on my mobility to be able to do that. Otherwise, if I would have just stuck to machine exercises, and here's the problem that I have with this is that if, if, if you can't squat because you're limited because of your mobility, what makes you think when you get into a hack squat, a leg press or a machine, a machine that that mobility is going to improve. It's not, you're just, you're just going, it's just easier to cheat. It's easier to cheat on a hack squat. You're actually strengthening your immobility. Exactly. So you just, and so, but you build muscle so maybe your legs get developed, but then you lose this ability to sit down in a deep squat. And this, why this, this argument is, is tough for my buddy Eugene is because he has great mobility. So if he was a client of mine, right? If he hired me, and he said, Adam, I don't like doing squats. He also seems to look like he developed some amazing legs. Yeah, no, 100%. Right. And, and, and if I saw his ankle mobility, his hip mobility, performing his hack squats, and he likes doing that, and he didn't want to squat anymore, I probably wouldn't push the issue. Okay, we don't have to. You don't need to, you can build great legs, you've got great ankle mobility, you've got great hip mobility. As long as we continue to do movements that promote that, I'm all for it. But if you give a kid the out or even an adult who's just getting into fitness, you give them the out that they don't need to squat because it's hard or it's hurt or it hurts them or they don't have the mobility, you definitely are not helping them out by pointing them in the direction of a machine because they're still not addressing the root cause of why they couldn't squat. No, they're not. And with beginners, this is extremely important. Now, here's the deal. When you're training a beginner as a trainer, it's like building a house. The way you build a house is you start with the, with the foundation. You don't build a house roof first or walls first. You have to start with a good foundation. I don't take a beginner and throw them in a high intensity workout type class. I don't throw them in max PRs. It would be inappropriate. It doesn't make sense. Doesn't develop their body properly and sets them up for injury and failure. What do you do with the beginner? You focus on the base. We look at mobility. We look at stability mechanics and mechanics. And can I get you to the point where you can do a few movements stable and strong, a squat and overhead press. Can I get you to do a proper row? Can I get you to do a proper, you know, horizontal press? Can I get your core stability good? Can you rotate well? Like you got to do all that. Do you even have control of your body yet? Honestly, like there's all these machines are basically masking a lot of, they're taking over the job and responsibility of a lot of the stabilizing muscles your body has. So what you're going to do is you're going to shut those off and teach them not to respond. To me, that's just not something that I would promote towards a beginner. That's one of the first things I want to establish and teach them is the proper way to get your body to respond and be harmonious in your movements because your body is a whole. It's not segmented. Yeah, it's a bodybuilder. It's literally a bodybuilder mentality. Well, if I can look this way, then it doesn't matter. But here's the other side of that. By working on these things, you will be able to utilize the most effective exercise there is for developing an aesthetic lower body. So it's not like you're trading. So it's not like I'm taking a beginner and saying, we're going to sacrifice muscle building. We're going to sacrifice the way you look because I think squats are great. So we're not going to do these other exercises that are going to develop better muscle. That's not true. It does both better. So it's not like you're sacrificing one for the other. You're just sacrificing, you're sacrificing one when you don't do squats. So you might develop some muscle, but you don't get any of the mobility. But if you squat, not only do you get the mobility, but you also build more muscle and you build more muscle. I have another example like besides the house analogy was like when I went through music and I was trying to learn, you know, the proper way to play guitar and I taught myself and I was all proud of teaching myself and I could hear things on the radio and I could kind of figure it out and mess. I built so many bad patterns because I didn't go through the process of music theory. I don't know, you know, exactly the chord structure. I don't know how to, you know, create all this myself. It's just, you know, I was trying to jump to the parts that I found, you know, the most sexy. I want to see if I can do this, but I never really learned the level I know I could learn. So I look at it the same way with fitness. I really am passionate about like learning it the proper way first and then building on top of that. It's funny to me too that someone would say it's not the best for beginners when in most certifications I've taken, most courses that I've taken, designed for trainers, right? These are courses that are approved. They're nationally certified courses, even ones that are not nationally certified, but ones that have lots of respect and value almost every single one. In fact, I'm having trouble thinking of one that doesn't have a squat as part of the assessment for a beginner because it doesn't tell you everything, but it tells you a lot. If you watch someone squat, you can start to see, you can see the issues with the upper spine. You can see issues with the lower spine. You can see issues with the hips, the knees, the ankles, and the feet just from doing a squat. So the fact that someone would say it's not best for beginners is very interesting. Well, that's another great case for why it's so valuable because what a great place for a mark, right? I mean, for me, this is how I gauge my overall progress is always going back to my squat and seeing has it improved? Has my strength improved? Has my movement improved? Has my depth improved? Has my control improved? And if I've been doing a good job programming and putting my consistency in and my work in and addressing my mobility and addressing all my postural deviations that I got going on, like everybody else, if I've been doing that, every time I come back to the squat, it should be a little bit better, a little bit better. And better doesn't always translate into, I can squat 100 more pounds. It's, there's a lot more that goes into having a really good squat. It's not just about how much we'd load and that we lift. That's not the idea. To be able to perfect a deep, good, controlled squat with stability and control, that in itself is a great marker for beginners to always refer back to to pay attention to the progress. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with training body parts and trying to connect to body parts and develop body parts. That's, that's an important aspect of training. But when you're a beginner, when I'm training beginners, unless I'm doing correctional exercise where I need to get them to feel a particular muscle just because they don't feel it at all. Aside from that, most of my training revolves around movement and not muscles. In other words, I'm not, like working your quads, working your hands. I'm like, can we get you to do a good squat? I'm not saying, do you feel your lats or your rhomboids? I'm saying, can we do a good row? I'm not saying, can you feel your delts? I'm like, I'm trying to say, can we do a good overhead press? So when it comes to beginners, especially to beginners, squatting is extremely valuable. And the way you start a beginner is you train them to be able to squat, then you get them to be able to squat and then you progress from there. It's one of the most important exercises. The squat is the target. It's the bullseye, right? And you could break apart firing a gun into a bunch of different things, the cocking of it, the squeeze of it, what hand, the way you look with your eye, and you could have no target in sight. And you could teach all these things and get great at it. But if you don't have a mark, if you don't have a gauge for them to aim at and fire, it's really tough to tell if they've gotten better at firing that fucking gun. The same concept goes when it comes to training. You can break it up and segment it in all these isolation exercises and all these different machines to help develop and to get better at all that, right? Understanding the gun, understanding how to squeeze, understanding how to hold it, how to look, all those things. But if you don't have a marker, if you don't have a benchmark, if you don't have a target, that you can go back and reference and see like, oh, wow, all these things that I'm doing, I'm getting closer and closer and closer to that perfect straight bullseye, it's really tough for you to gauge how well you are improving in your overall mobility and function, which I think the squat is the key. Yeah, absolutely. And to go back to the whole segmenting at first and then it's not for beginners, what you're going to do is build all these compensations and all this mess that you're going to have to unwind once you really decide to dive into learning the squat. Good luck fighting your own tendencies that are hardwired because you decided to jump ahead and didn't do the due diligence to start where you need to start. That's right. Now the next thing that squats are great for is strength. In fact, it's one of the best exercises for overall strength that you can possibly do. And what I mean by that is, if you get stronger in your squat, you almost always see carryover into either other lifts or into any other kind of physical performance. It's so powerful in fact that a 30 pound increase on a barbell squat, a good barbell squat is worth more than 100 pound increase on a leg press or a hack squat. No joke in terms of real world strength in the carryover. Studies show, especially with beginner to intermediate athletes, this is before you start to get real specific and technical with them, that getting them strong in their squat makes them faster. It just makes them faster. They just, they can take off quicker, especially in the beginning and intermediate stages. It's one of the best exercises for strength. In fact, you know, I love deadlifting, right? Deadlifting is one of my favorite exercises. If my deadlift goes up, sometimes I see my squat go up. Sometimes I don't. If my squat goes up, I almost always see my deadlift go up almost every single time. It's one of those exercises with carryover is just, in fact, when my squat goes up, I oftentimes see other exercises that don't even seem connected going up. I've actually seen my bench press go up. It's one of the few exercises that literally gets everything from your neck down to your toes. I mean, it literally touches everything in a single movement. And an exercise like a leg press, a hack squat, I'm sorry, the machine, like to Justin's point earlier, is doing a lot for you is doing a lot. It's taking over a lot of those stabilizers and muscles that you would have to activate when you're in a squat. It's also, I mean, we've talked on this show at Nauseum about there's many times when I go to the gym and all I do is squat because it's that valuable. It's such a great exercise that I know like, you know what, I'm not in the mood to do a 50-minute hard workout today. It checks all the boxes. At the bare minimum, I'm going to get in there and I'm going to squat. I know if I can do five sets of squats, I'm going to walk away having a pretty damn good workout and get everything from calorie expenditure to strength building to everything of fat loss. There's all this and then mobility, all these things that I get from one single movement. There's nothing else like that. You know, they do these studies on exercises where they're measuring, they measure anabolic hormone response. So you'll do an exercise and then they'll test things like testosterone and growth hormone to see what the response is. Now, this isn't the be all end all. So it doesn't necessarily mean that because you got the greatest response, you're going to build the most muscle whatever. But if you're comparing apples to apples, so all exercises performed in similar ways, it does tell you something, right? So if you do an exercise and you see a 200% increase in testosterone, you do another exercise and you see a 50% increase in testosterone, I think it tells you something about that exercise. No exercise compares to barbell squats. Barbell squats in almost every study I've ever seen causes the greatest anabolic hormone response, which just, you know, confirms kind of my experience with squat with barbell squats, that they're just the great strength and muscle builder. It sends a very loud strength building signal. Very, very loud. Like I said, 30 pound increase on a squat is more value. You talk to any lifter. You ask them, what's more valuable? 30 pound increase in your squat, 100 pounds increase on your leg press. And almost all of them will say, Oh, the squat, well, why 30 pounds on a squat means a lot more muscle, 100 pounds on a leg press, doesn't mean that much more muscle. Think about the CNS, right? We don't talk enough about that. I mean, I've referred to your now in this podcast, we've done this so many times, you know, your analogy of the speaker and the amplifier, I just think it's such a great analogy. And here it is again, you know, it's like, you, when we train and we lift weights, we, you know, everybody thinks about the muscle all the time building and developing the muscle and the muscle getting worked. And the role of the central nervous system is it is such a big part in your overall success and building a physique to and to not talk about that and to not talk about what the squat does for training the CNS. There's there is nothing that is going to wake up that body like a like a squat. It increases the capacity to generate more force. And that's that's what gives you more strength. Not only that, you have to be able to stabilize all of your joints in order to allow more of that force to be produced. And so working with machines limits that substantially. So your potential is way lower than being able to go through something where everything has to you have to check all those boxes. And now all of a sudden I my whole body is involved. I'm going to generate a much louder signal, which then I can it bleeds into almost every other lift. Yeah, one of my favorite aspects of the squat is one of the few lower body exercises that simultaneously encourages good posture. Yeah, you know, you have to if you're doing a good squat, a good, especially with the barbell, right, where you have to hold it on your back and you have to sit there with your chest out while you're squatting. In fact, if your posture breaks down while you squat, that's a mobility issue and can cause problems, right? That's one of the one of the core things to look at when you're doing a squat is can you maintain good posture as you do it. So here you are building and strengthening the lower body, but supporting it with good posture. This is phenomenal. Not a lot of lower body exercises do this. A leg press definitely doesn't do this. In fact, a leg press may actually encourage poor posture as you're getting stronger with your legs. Now, why is that important? Because in the real world, when you're exerting force through your legs, your body tends to put itself in the position that you strengthen it in when you're working your legs. Do you want to exert force in your legs in a leg press position in the real world? Or do you want to exert force with good posture? Think about all the things that you do in the real world that require your legs to be strong. Do you want to have that? You'll be good at shin kicks. Good job. Exactly. That's about it. The squat encourages good posture and here's a funny thing. I've trained clients. Sometimes that's what I have to work on to get them to do a good squat. It's not hip mobility. It's not ankle mobility. Oh, it's your posture. Your posture is killing the squat. So we work on the posture in order to get them to squat. This is a great part of the barbell squat. It also builds the most muscle. It just does for most people. Maybe not for everybody, but for most people, you do good barbell squats. There's no other exercise that's going to develop your legs. One of my favorite examples is Adam. Adam was a professional physique competitor. You had to develop his body. It was his job for a second there. And he went off gear, went off testosterone, retired, started getting really good at barbell squats. His legs actually developed better after all of that, just through the barbell squat. And the irony of that too is that I had to lighten the load to work on my mobility. So that was one of the things that blew me away was, okay, I had squatted a half squat or two parallel squat, heavier weight than what I was doing when I came off of testosterone, worked on my ankle and hip mobility, and worked on a deeper squat with lighter weight. So regressing back on the load and working on mobility and depth ended up developing my legs more, even with less weight. And I think that's something that you have to take into consideration. I think, and that was your point you made earlier, Sal, about, you know, beginners avoiding it because they think they have to sacrifice learning to squat in order to build muscle. But the reality is if you learn to deep squat with good form, you'll end up building more muscle with less weight. That's the beauty of it. Oh, dude, I can, if I don't squat, I can, I can feel it in the muscles of my legs. If I squat, I feel it like within two or three days, it's like my legs just respond for women who want to develop nice hamstrings and glutes. Those are popular muscles for women. With my female clients, it was like, all right, we're going to get really good at squatting. And they would always get blown away. Whoa, my butt's getting really round. And I'm like, well, yeah, it's a barbell squats. It's one of the more effective exercises for your butt if you do them properly. You know, to that point, too, like we didn't really address this very much. And we should because one of the things as a trainer, you, we end up having to teach a lot is the, the importance of hip hinging, the importance for the ability for someone to hinge at the hips. We tend to lose this, we tend to, we tend to become so anteriorly driven where we're on our quads. And this is another reason why I don't like the hack squat is because we're already already driven that way. And we have a, and we have a hard time teaching a client to know how to hinge at the hips. When you get into a hack squat, you just, or a leg press, you eliminate that. You completely eliminate that function. And so you just getting strong in that, in that position, you're not helping, you're not helping what's going on at all. It's so crazy to like, you know, towards the end of my career, I started training a lot of people in advanced age. And the, the mobility strength and muscle that they would get from squats, there was no machine that came close at all. If I could get an older person to be able to do, you know, and I'm saying older, like over 70, you know, 10 good body weight squats, that was better than the, than leg pressing and hack squatting and legs, way better. They would come to me and be like, Oh my God, I can move more. I feel so much stronger. I'd watch them build muscle. You know how hard it is to build muscle on somebody who's, you know, over 75. It's much more challenging, but we would measure it. We would test it and I'd see them build three, four, five pounds of muscle just from practicing this, this movement of this, this fundamental human movement. Now you're the average person. You're not set decondition in 75. If you're listening to this right now and you like to, you want to build muscle, try getting to the point where you can barbell squat properly. Watch what happens. Watch what happens to your body. And now indirectly that leads to the next one, which is fat loss. Now resistance training, we've made the argument many times on this podcast that resistance training is one of the best ways to burn body fat, not because it necessarily burns the most calories for the time spent doing it, but rather because it's the best form of exercise to speed up your metabolism so that you burn more calories on your own. Now because the barbell squat or the squat builds the most strength and the most muscle, it also simultaneously speeds up the metabolism the most. I have seen this with clients firsthand, just getting them to get stronger at the squat while reverse dieting. I have seen the greatest increase in metabolism boost just through that exercise alone compared to any other exercise. Now as far as calorie burn is concerned, you ever do a 20 or 30 rep set of barbell squats? Yeah, feels like cardio. Name one more traditional strength training exercise that burns more calories than that. And I'm not, I'm not talking about the other, you know, people like to say like burpees and that's, I'm not counting. Those are all cardio exercises. I'm not about traditional resistance training exercises. I can't think of another exercise that gets you breathing as hard or burning as many calories as a barbell squat for high reps. And honestly, I mean, you compare it to burpees, but I'll take that challenge still. Do 20 burpees, do 20 full body weight squats. I mean, that are barbell squats. I mean, and tell me which one of those gets your heart rate going just as much. You're incorporating as many as many muscles as you are, if not more than what you do inside of a burpee. So just because you could do the burpee faster and maybe elevate that heart rate, I would still challenge on which one ends up burning more calories. And you can, they measure to the after calorie burn effect. Not a huge effect, but still barbell squats are, it's always at the top. It's like barbell squat and the next will be like a deadlift and then, you know, other compound movements underneath. But the squats always at the top. It's always at the very top. And there's not, there's not a lot of movements, maybe four or five that I could honestly say that like can be a workout all by themselves. It's like, this is the squat is that a squat is one of those exercises that I would have some clients that that's all we did. The entire hour was dedicated to working on their mobility so I could get them to perform the squat and having them squat on the back half, right? So the first half, we're working on ankle mobility, hip mobility, shoulder mobility, posture, all the work that goes in to make sure that when we get into the squat, they have good form and then we squat the rest and that's a workout. I, so I had, I had gotten met. So when you did the prime pro webinar, which I think is still available, right? Doug, the prime pro webinar.com. Okay. Yes. Okay. So it's a free, it's a free webinar and Adam takes you through mobility moves that will help you with general mobility, but we're talking about the squat. Specifically, there's a few movements in there, if not all of them, that'll help you get a better squat. And back when you did that, I actually got messages from people who they said, I never squatted because it hurt my back and it or it bothered my knees and I didn't squat. Even though I heard you guys say on the podcast and whatever, then they did the prime pro webinar, which it's a free class, right? They followed that, then they started practicing the movements. Then I got these messages like a month later, I'm finally squatting, you're totally right. I'm, my body's developing and it's all because, it was all the mobility, right? That was what prevented them in the first place. Once they fixed that mobility issue, the messages I was getting was. And that's the, the real beef that I have with, with statements like this, that, you know, people, not everybody should squat is that it gives, it gives a lot of kid, because I was this kid. I didn't like to squat. It was hard for me. It hurt. It wasn't, and if, if some bodybuilder or some guy that I looked up to that I respected that was intelligent, that was fit, was telling me that I don't need to squat, that's all I needed to hear. That's all I needed to hear to get me to go, I don't need to do this. And I heard shit like that. And that's what kept me from, from focusing on it. And it wasn't until later on. You wanted to hear. Yeah, it is. It's what I wanted to hear, because it was hard, because they're hard, they're hard, they're hard to get good at. They are high skill. And it does take me having to work on a lot of issues. I had a lot of issues, like most people do. It's very rare. I get a client and we do a squat assessment. And they're, I go, oh, wow, you have a beautiful squat. I got nothing. I got, I got nothing to help you with. Yeah. And in terms of like fat loss, if, if you're working on your squats and you're, you're really like strengthening your hips, you're strengthening your entire body through that, it promotes more movement. So a lot of times like you're just not motivated to do certain movements and exercise in different directions where you're going to have to, you know, that's your focus right there. You need to do the work and get your body strong, which then is going to promote you even more to do more. Dude, I tell you, if you're listening right now, and you're like, man, but squats are really hard for me, do the prime pro webinars, primeprowebinar.com, do that class. And then in the movement, it's totally free. There's nothing in there that's that costs money or whatever. Follow that class and then practice those movements every day, practice squatting. Most people listening right now who have issues with squats, you're looking at a couple months of that kind of mobility work where you'll see some pretty drastic improvements in your, in your squat. You know, for those that are like, you know, the muscle thing, right? Like a good example. And I love to use them because he's a beast is Ben Pollock. That dude literally did like two exercises for like fucking 10 years. Like deadlifting squat is like, I don't think I've ever seen him. I think I've seen him once do a bench press. I think I don't think I've ever seen him do an overhead press like literally squatted and benched. And go take a look at that physique that has been built. I know, I know. Absolute gorilla. It's crazy. All right. So let's talk about some of the exercises that people like to replace with squats and say, Oh, just do this instead. Let's start with the leg press. That's the most common one. And there's a couple of reasons why the leg press is so popular. One, a hundred percent. I will, this is, I will bet money on this all day long that people like the leg press because it makes your ego feel good because it's an easy one to add a lot of weight. You talk to anybody who has a little bit of experience working out and they'll, and if they bring up the late, oh, I used to be able to press 400 pounds. I could throw five plates. My friend wouldn't even sit on it. Yeah. And I was crazy. It's, it's one of those exercises. It's really easy to get strong at, but the carryover isn't that huge. The range of motion is limited. Your body's already folded in half. What a weird position to work the legs. I'm not saying it's a totally worthless exercise, but if you compare it to the squat, it is your, the range of motion is not, even if you do a deep leg press, you are still not getting a full hip extension. You're still not getting that full range of motion that a squat provides. It just doesn't work the body in the same way. And you're in this, you're in this weird seated position, the things on a track, by the way, I've seen more back injuries, serious back injuries with the leg press and I have the squat because when you have poor mobility and you're trying to do a leg press and you put a lot of weight on it and you come down with the weight, you know that, that, that, what is it, but wink that people see with the squat, way worse with the leg press. Yeah. You still got that issue. Oh, right. Hips come up off the bench and now you're loading it like crazy. And it's compressed and the rest of your body is supported by, you know, a pad and you've got, I don't know, 800 pounds on a thing. I've seen more slip discs and bulging discs from leg press almost. So that's the problem I even have with the hack squat is that I would put a client in the hack squat that has, that has like lower cross syndrome and you'd still see that the winking happened. Yeah. So I mean, and when you watch, you know, Eugene has a video of him doing that. He's had a beautiful hack squat. He has, he has, he has great technique. He's got great angle. He's also got a great squat. Yeah. And, and so when he does it, it looks great. But when you put a client who's a beginner, who doesn't have good control of their pelvic at all, and you put them in there and you see the, the winking all day long where you see the butt drip off the back of the pad. It's terrible. Or, you know, here's, okay, here I'll make this statement right here. You can find people that are good at leg press and good at the hack squat who are not good with barbell squats. It's hard to find someone who's good at barbell squats who can't do a good leg press or a good hack squat. Right, great point. That's, that's, that's a hundred percent, right? Now I know why a lot of people like to hack squat. It's easier and it doesn't require as much ankle mobility. Okay. This is me, right? I have ankle mobility issues, something I always need to work on, but I can put my feet up on the platform with a hack squat and it turns into an exercise where now my ankles, my mobility doesn't need to pass 90 degrees and I can go all the way down and go all the way out. You just bypass it. And you just bypass it. So it's a much easier exercise. It does not build muscle in the legs like a squat. It doesn't require the range of motion. It doesn't require the mobility. It doesn't send the same signal. The next exercise, this one's silly, but that I even have to make this point, but a leg extension, leg extension is not going to do. It's not even going to come close to building your legs. Remember those, remember those studies where they use the, not the E-stem, but the EMG. Was it, what's the, that measures the Yeah, the muscle activation. Yes. Yeah. It's EMG, right? I think so. Or it was like, I think it was active MRI, but anyway. Yeah. Yeah. But you remember all those that would come out and then try to make the argument that leg extension activated more. Yes. Yeah. Terrible. No. So leg extension. In fact, I, for the last, I don't know, 15 years of my personal training career, I never did leg extensions with clients, but my studio didn't have a leg extension machine. It was an exercise that was largely a waste of time. Unless you're really trying to add volume and frequency to your workout. You've already done the great exercises. You're a bodybuilder. You can handle lots of volume. Okay. I'll throw in a leg extension, but for most people, I never, did you guys do leg extensions with clients? I almost never did that. I pretty much eliminated it just because, you know, I was just more prone to doing it. If I'm going to do that, I'm going to do lunges. I'm going to do step ups. I'm going to do front loaded squats. Like if I'm really trying to target, you know, the anterior, which we're already like very anterior driven like to your point earlier. It's just, it's one of those things. I'm trying more to consider the post here chain and incorporate that to really like help support everything else in the body. I did, but I admitted that I was a terrible trainer when I first started. I did it because it was lazy. It was easy. You can sit them down. Yeah. You can sit them down and make their legs burn. Yeah. Make their legs burn and do four or five sets of it and then kill 15 minutes of your session. I mean, being completely honest, not because it was the most beneficial thing from, I mean, honestly, if you, you want that exact, exact, exact focus, do a sissy squat. Oh, that's for sure. You know what I'm saying? Now you've got, now you've got a leg extension that builds muscle. Right. And it requires, of course, more, more, more stability and more skill. Leg curls. That's a hamstring exercise. You know, it's funny about that. You're, you're going to develop your hamstrings better from doing things like deadlifts, stick, stiff, like a deadlifts curling the legs. It does work one part of the hamstring a little more. You know what I used to do with my clients over a machine leg curl, physio ball leg curl, way more valuable for the average person, requires hip extension. You got to keep your core stable. And I would get them to be able to work their hamstrings a little better with that anyway. I think, you know, talking about the hip extension, you have to keep in mind as a trainer and a coach that when we're training clients that come in and say, want to build muscle, they want to burn fat, that we're also a big part of our responsibility is to, you know, help them with their posture, work on longevity, address the health and their joints and mobility. Like that's part of the job. Even if they don't know that, even if they come to you and say, Adam, I want to build 30 pounds muscle. That's all I care about. Like my job is to help that person in all those other categories, even if they don't realize how important that is for themself. And because of that, that's why I'm not okay with letting people get away with, you know, you don't need to do squats. Because of course you could build a physique without ever doing squats. But it is such a fundamental movement that has so much carryover and benefit to all aspects of health and fitness. Right. And because it's not a trade-off and because it'll get you to build muscle faster, burn body fat more effectively, get stronger more effectively. It makes no sense. It's a win-win situation. There is no trade-off when you're talking about the barbell squat. It is one of the best exercises that there are. It's definitely, it's either number one or top three. For most, I'm talking about 90-something percent of the people listening to this podcast right now. And I do, again, I'm going to say this again. If the squat is challenging for you, if you're one of those people that doesn't feel like you get value out of the squat, go to the PrimeProWebinar.com. Take the free class. If you just want a full-on mobility course available with videos and demos, with all kinds of mobility exercises, we have a, we have a, what's called a, what is it, a prime bundle, which includes Maps Prime Pro and Maps Prime. You can find that at mapsfitnessproducts.com. And Mind Pump is recorded on video as well as audio. Come check us out on YouTube if you want to see our faces. You can also find us all on Instagram. You can find Doug at Mind Pump Doug, Justin at Mind Pump Justin, me at Mind Pump Sal and Adam at Mind Pump Adam.