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Archimedes, they say, had a revelation in the bath, leaping from the tub to run starkers though the streets of Syracuse. Newton got an apple on the head. My Eureka moment came one morning as I tried to pick up some dog poo from a south London street. I was cold and stiff, and crouching down seemed the hardest thing in the world. Squatting had become a struggle, I realised, and I needed to do something about it.
A good squat, after all, trains and tests everything from balance to coordination to mobility; your hips, your knees and your ankles; your quads, your glutes and your calves; your bones, your tendons and your muscles. If you can’t squat, you’re pretty much stuffed. Laura Kummerle, a Georgia-based physiotherapist and online coach, puts it more politely, but the gist’s the same. “The squat is a fundamental movement pattern,” she says. “It’s foundational for everything we do, from getting off a toilet to standing up from a chair.” And as far as keeping fit goes, “it gives you a good solid base for a lot of lower-body exercises”.
At 61, I’m old enough that I should have realised this long ago; maybe I would have if I lived somewhere other than Britain. In most of the world, squatting is part of public life. As the movement coach Daniel Zivatovic points out, if you’re chatting with friends in the street in much of Asia, Africa or continental Europe, there’s a good chance you’ll be squatting to do so. Zivatovic grew up in Croatia and, though he now lives in London, he’ll still squat to wait for a bus. “I always get odd looks,” he says, “though it’s the most beautiful position you can have.”
“You say that now,” I think, “but you haven’t seen mine.”
I’ve been working on my squat in the couple of years since Dogpoogate, first in exercise classes and home workouts, then as I struggled with a torn meniscus. Physios love to prescribe squats for knee problems – with your feet side by side in classic fashion; with one foot in front of you, one foot behind you; with one foot raised on a bench or a step; with one foot hovering in midair; with weights and without weights – but despite months of these, you wouldn’t describe even my basic bodyweight squat as a thing of beauty.
I’m sure I should be able to go deeper. And I never know quite how wide my feet should be, or where my toes should point. Straight ahead? Turned out? So I’ve come to Zivatovic for some advice.
His first tip is to cut myself some slack. “No one is going to squat the same way,” he tells me. “It’s wild how many variations there can be because of the way we are put together. If have a shallow hip joint, for example, your squat is always going to be deep. If you have a deeper joint, you’re not going to have that much mobility. A lot also depends on the length of your femur – your upper leg – or even the length of your torso.”
So what can you work on? Here’s how Kummerle teaches the squat: “As a general rule of thumb, stand with your feet about hip width apart, toes facing forward or turned out about 30 degrees – whatever’s comfortable. Keep your chest up nice and tall, your stomach engaged and ribs tight. Sit your hips back to start, then quickly bend your knees and drop down to the depth you feel comfortable with. Your heels should stay on the ground as you do this. Then think about driving and pushing the ground away from you as you stand back up and squeeze your butt.”
In other words, you need to be able to bend your hips, your knees and your ankles. Which is most likely to limit your movement? Usually it’s your ankles, Zivatovic says. There are exercises to increase ankle flexibility, and the more you squat the better it will get, but you can speed things up by raising your heels an inch or two, using anything from dedicated wedges to a couple of books. “Some people will tell you using wedges is cheating but it’s not,” he says. He has another trick to help with balance and coordination. “Sometimes you just give someone a small weight to hold in front of them and then suddenly, oh, they’re doing perfect squats.”
Does “perfect” mean deep? Not necessarily. But most people can ignore the common warning not to bend their knees beyond about 90 degrees – if they work up to it. “The key word is ‘gradually’.”
You also need to experiment with where you put your feet – how widely they are separated, and how much they are turned out. There’s a reason Kummerle uses the words “general rule of thumb”. One size does not fit all, though that’s often the way squats are taught, especially when trainers are giving cues to a whole class.
“If you have super-deep hip joints, say, you might have to go super-wide to get a really good squat,” Zivatovic says. Playing with my own squats, we find that I go deeper, and more comfortably, when my feet are turned out and slightly further apart than the usual suggestion of “hip width”. “For you,” Zivatovic says, “this seems natural.” For some reason, it had never occurred to me to listen to my body.
My squat looks pretty symmetrical, he says, and although my dodgy knee has a slight tendency to knock inwards as I go up and down, it’s mostly staying where it should in relation to the foot – roughly in line with my second toe. But for me and most people with injuries, this kind of quirk is a reason to embrace movement rather than avoid it.
Zivatovic is also a physio. “We used to assess people and talk about imbalances,” he says. “I don’t think that’s a good approach, because unless you’re so imbalanced that it’s causing you severe issues – which is rarely the case – you don’t need more fear. If anything, we need to motivate people to be more active, to get closer to the floor, to work on their lower body mobility and flexibility and strength, because that’s one of the main factors of longevity.”
If you struggle to get started, remember that you can ease into squatting by holding on to a support on your way up and down, or opt for “box squats”, lowering yourself just far enough to rest your bum on a bench or something similar. Once you’ve built some strength and confidence, you can experiment with more demanding moves such as goblet squats (holding a dumbbell or kettlebell to your chest); split squats (one foot in front of you, one foot behind); cossacks (one leg out to the side); even one-legged squats like the pistol, where you hold the leg that’s not supporting you straight out in front of you.
As Kummerle points out, “Single-leg squats are going to be a lot more challenging than double-leg squats because a) you are essentially doubling the weight, and b) there’s a balance component.” Still, Zivatovic says, “Don’t be afraid to load the squat at some point, because it will be incredibly useful, especially as you age. Lots of people think, ‘Oh, I need to train less.’ No, as you age, you need to train more.”
Me, I’m sufficiently inspired that I book into my first ever weightlifting class, for an hour of back squats – up and down about 100 times with a 40kg (90lb) barbell on my shoulders. I make sure I’ve got a wedge for my heels, and that I spread my legs wider than I used to. Forty kilos is not a lot – there’s a woman with me who’s lifting almost as much just weeks after giving birth – but it feels like a good start, and I quickly book another lesson. Then I take out a gym membership so I can do lots more. And the next time I’m walking the dogs, when the moment comes, I fish the poo bags from my pocket and squat like a champ.
Fit for ever: An evening with Phil Daoust, Chris Van Tulleken and Nahid de Belgeonne
Join Phil Daoust, Chris Van Tulleken and Nahid de Belgeonne on Wednesday 12 February, 7.30pm-9pm, as they talk about how to live a strong, happy and long life. Book tickets at theguardian.live.com
