To solve problems caused by sitting, learn to squat (2017)

For people who want to improve their bodyweight squat:<p>1) Heels should be firmly planted on the ground. This can seem impossible: many people will feel like they can&#x27;t even get to parallel, let alone ass to ground. My favored solution to this is adding elevation to the heels. A plank or two can add an inch or more to heel height. This gives your foot the support it needs in a squat and helps form good habits. When you rise from the squat, most of the force should be being applied through the heel. Over time you will decrease the heel elevation.<p>2) Body weight distribution can add to the difficulty of it if you&#x27;re &quot;back heavy.&quot; For my body fat distribution, losing weight enabled me to balance over my heels, while before I would fall backwards.<p>3) Practice every day, even if it&#x27;s just a set or two of squats.<p>4) Hip flexion and ankle dorsiflexion are the key components to a squat. I find the former easier to improve than the latter. The supplementary exercises I&#x27;ve found most useful are Cossack squats, horse stance, and training my pancake split. For the pancake, you want all the folding to come from the hips and not from the lower or upper back. This transfers well to working on squats, because folding from the hips instead of the back brings your center of mass forward more effectively.

From the article:<p>&quot;&gt;At best, we might undertake it during Crossfit, pilates or while lifting at the gym, but only partially and often with weights (a repetitive maneuver that’s hard to imagine being useful 2.5 million years ago).&lt;&quot;<p>A repetitive maneuver with weights is hard to imagine 2.5 million years ago? So they&#x27;re going to bash getting yourself strong and healthy because they can&#x27;t imagine anyone doing a repetitive maneuver 2.5 million years ago? Either you&#x27;re supporting that people should squat more or you don&#x27;t. This article wants you to squat but not in any way which will improve your strength and chances of getting off the toilet when your 95.

So, about 10 years ago, I&#x27;d seen a few articles on the prevalence of the &quot;squat-down-to-your-feet&quot; stance in Asia, and the ease with which this stance could be reached by those who&#x27;d been doing it their whole lives, and its benefits as a low-energy sitting-position where chairs are unavailable &amp; the ground is unappealing. But, I could get nowhere close without extreme ankle-knee-hip tightness &amp; then, if I pushed, pain.<p>I thought, well, maybe I can gradually get that range-of-motion back for my adult body, with occasional tries&#x2F;stretching.<p>After a few weeks of trying squats for a couple minutes most days, I was playing a typical game of basketball with friends, and landing from an unremarkable jump for a rebound, when my knee ACL snapped.<p>Quite possibly a coincidence! But even now, long after the recovery from ACL-replacement surgery, I can&#x27;t muster any interest in trying those particular exercises again. And I wonder if ACL injury rates vary based on people&#x2F;cultures where this stance is prevalent. (I could believe that actually <i>achieving</i> such squats involves longer ACLs, which might in the end be either positive or negative for sports-related ACL tears.)

Time for a squatting desk?

Furniture in general is detrimental to people&#x27;s general fitness. I&#x27;m convinced its primary purpose is class signaling and generating unnecessary business for the economy. Sells bigger homes and office spaces, you need to haul all this junk around whenever you buy it or move it, and it needs to be manufactured and bought in the first place.<p>If you think about what furniture actually does, it&#x27;s pretty obvious. It deprives you of an entire range of natural movements and postures a life without furniture forces you to experience regularly.<p>I&#x27;ve lived without furniture or even a bed for over a decade, and am now middle-aged, and the difference is very obvious when I socialize with folks especially when we&#x27;re playing board games on a floor or hanging around a campfire.<p>My flexibility and comfort at squatting and sitting indian style or really any position on the floor is equivalent to that of a child. Most american adults I know can&#x27;t comfortably sit indian style if they can even get into the position at all, and often need help getting up from the floor or at least let out quite a grunt in struggling to get back up.<p>In any given day I&#x27;m getting up and down from the floor dozens of times. Go do some burpees and see how significant that can be vs. using a chair. I leap up from the ground like it&#x27;s nothing at all because it&#x27;s the normal.<p>Another thing I&#x27;ve learned from one of those investigations of regions with the most oldest living people is many of them have cultures without furniture, where everyone uses the floor primarily and preserves the ability to squat and get up from the floor independently into old age.

I&#x27;ve actually mostly lost my ability to squat now which I kind of regret. A lot of places, especially China despite its breakneck speed growth, still use squat toilets. When you have an upset stomach from that breakfast stall you last ate, it then becomes a matter of survival. Not being able to squat is a weakness

From the article:<p>&quot; &gt;These positions—which, in addition to a deep passive squat with the feet flat on the floor, include sitting cross legged and <i>kneeling on one’s knees and heels</i>—are not just good for us, but “deeply embedded into the way our bodies are built.&lt;”<p>But several of my friends suffered heart attacks (embolism) after long periods of kneeling to worship and&#x2F;or to garden.<p>I conjecture that, contrary to the article, kneeling on one&#x27;s knees is not only not &quot;good for us&quot; but bad, as it may inhibit blood flow in the legs, promoting the formation of clots which are later released upon standing and moving around.

Tangentially related...I know it may not be for everybody but I recently started skateboarding at age 36 while looking for something to do during the PG&amp;E blackouts last fall and haven&#x27;t stopped since.<p>It&#x27;s definitely been a great way to get out and just explore around town while also building up my leg and core muscles.<p>Because I&#x27;ve been wanting to improve as much as possible I&#x27;ve started doing squats and calf raises as well and it has been helping a lot with my overall control and balance on the board.

Discussed at the time: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=16471215" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=16471215</a>

Want to do something for your fitness but full squats scare you? Start doing quarter squats while brushing teeth, 2x couple minutes every day. Simple, easy to do, doesnt steal time from other activities, and you will feel the difference.

I played basketball for almost 20 years and my knees can&#x27;t handle this type of position anymore. Also I am basically 2 meters tall so its a long way down and up.

&gt; “But if you go to the restroom once or twice a day for a bowel movement and five times a day for bladder function, that’s five or six times a day you’ve squatted.”<p>Ancient man squatted to take a leak? That&#x27;s not what I do in the forest...

Old people in the developing world often have knee or back problems. I don&#x27;t think significant squatting is a good idea.<p>The article buries the fact that &quot;there are studies to suggest that populations that spend excessive time in a deep squat (hours per day), do have a higher incidence of knee and osteoarthritis issues.&quot;