Hi there, welcome to this Get Exercise Confident video. I'm with Alice, and today we're going
to show you how to do the freestanding squat. The freestanding squat is a great exercise
for working the front of your legs - the quads, the back of your legs -your hamstrings and
glutes, and also really engaging your core. So to start with Alice is going to demonstrate
the exercise and we're going to break it down into it's three components and then talk about
some of the common mistakes people often make. So the first thing we're going to talk about
is the set up. So as you can see Alice is standing shoulder width apart. She's currently
got her feet, her heels, slightly elevated and we're going to talk about why that's important
later on. She's also making sure that her toes are pointing outwards, at eleven and one
o'clock, rather than straight ahead. Also when we look side on, she's got a nice tall
posture. So that's the set up. We're now going to talk about the downwards phase. So begin
with, do you want to show the downwards phase, great. So as you can see from side on, Alice
is sitting back as she comes down, rather than going forwards. She's also keeping her
posture nice and tall, so just hold it at the bottom. So at the bottom, you want this
angle here to be the same as the angle here, so the angle of your shin should be roughly
the same as the angle of your back. From the front, you'll see as she goes straight down
she keeps her knees outwards. Then on the upwards phase, (so if you go back down). She
keeps her knees out and drives up with her glutes. Great and one more time. And again
she keeps her body straight up. Now as we said she's got her heels slightly elevated.
If you are a beginner this really helps, because often inflexibility means you can't quite
get the depth you want, and we focus on quality. So if you just step forwards and show us a
squat without your heels elevated, and hold it at the bottom. See without this she can't
get the same depth she had before, and her body shifts forwards, rather than sitting
back. So if you are a beginner, elevating your heels helps get you more depth and control.
(So just get back on). We're now going to show you some of the common mistakes people
make when squatting. So the first one is the knees coming in. So if you can just show an
incorrect one. So rather than here knees pointing outwards, they're coming in like this, which
puts excess strain on her knees and also means she won't engage her glutes as well as she
wants. The second mistake is best seen side on. So if you can sit forwards rather than
backwards. This is a common mistake people make, and they shift their body weight forwards
rather than sitting backwards, and again this is going to put excess pressure here, and
it's not going to engage the glutes as much. The third most common problem we get is on
the upwards phase, best seen from the side again. So if you come down, it's where they
rock forwards like this, rather than coming straight up. So if you go back down. What
you see is here torso goes forwards and her bum goes up first before her body. Where as
what we want to see, the correct version, is her body comes straight up, by engaging
her glutes and keeping her legs out. Thanks very much, and hope you found this video useful.