- Okay, here we go.
Squats, undoubtedly, one of the best body strength exercises
for mobility, as well as balance.
And if you don't have 'em in your exercise routine yet,
and you're concerned about are you gonna do 'em right,
this is the video for you.
Mike, what are you doing?
- Cue intro music.
♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous physical therapists on the internet ♪
- Okay, Mike.
Let's talk briefly about some of the wonderful benefits
of doing squats.
Number one, they use large muscle groups,
and they burn a lot of calories and they get you stronger,
but you don't have to use weights.
- No, you can use just body weight.
You can do single leg variations.
The squat is a large compound lift.
Say, if you're doing a barbell squat,
you could definitely burn more calories.
And it's very functional, especially if you're in sports.
- Right.
Or, if you're elderly and your balance is a little off,
doing squats the way we're gonna show you at the beginning
is gonna help your balance,
get you stronger for negotiating up and down steps,
hiking out in the woods, all kinds of functional levels.
Again, there's no weights with any of these,
and we're gonna start from the beginner
to the more advanced without weights.
It's gonna be wonderful.
Let's go on to the next section, Mike.
- Okay.
- Okay, we're gonna start with the beginner squat.
If you're elderly,
if you're coming out of something where you're very weak,
and we're gonna start with a chair,
and you want a solid firm chair with armrest.
There's been studies done
where doing sit-to-stand for the elderly
is one of the most important exercises you can do
to improve your balance,
because it works the muscle groups as well as your balance.
So, if you do have a walker,
and you need a walker for balance,
you can do these with a chair here,
the walker would be right in front of you.
Or, if you feel unsteady, have someone helping you.
So hands here and we're just gonna push up,
and get all the way tall.
And this is basically a squat,
but the chair is assisting you,
so you have time to rest between each one.
Repetitions, I'm gonna say, let's shoot for 10.
If you can do 10 squats pushing off of here,
and it's easy by the 10th one, then it's time to advance.
Put your arms up.
There you go, just like Mike has in there.
This makes a big difference.
Lean forward and up.
If you cannot, this is a big change,
so you might go one hand for a little help if you need it.
- I would definitely say lean kinda forward
when you're getting up.
'Cause a lot of people, if they're weak or uncoordinated,
they won't go up and they'll go back,
and then they go backwards.
- Right. - So.
- And, Mike gave a nice option here.
You can do this off the bed a little higher and it's easier,
and make sure your balance feels good.
As this improves and this gets too easy,
then you go into the advanced version,
and you bring your arms up like this.
It's even more difficult,
a little more in the balance aspect of it.
And 10 times like this.
All right.
- That's easy as that.
Just bring it up higher.
If you're a little weaker,
maybe if you have sore knees, arthritis,
go lower as you can.
- There you go.
All right, moving up to the next difficulty of squats.
We're going to do it,
and we're gonna use a tool.
You're gonna use a, we got the posh or the-
- Booyah Stik.
- The Booyah Stik.
You don't need that.
You can use anything that's about four or five feet long,
and you can go without this if you want,
but this really forces you to have good body mechanics,
'cause in squats, it's important.
The reason we use this stick
is we have a contact point here,
a contact point here between the shoulder blades,
and then at the sacrum or below the belt line.
If all of that is in line,
which your stick forces you to be,
you have good mechanics.
Go ahead, Mike, can you do a squat?
- You could call me Bob.
- I almost did.
Bob's off today, but he'll be back.
There we go.
Good.
So, again, this really forces you to do good mechanics.
I've had patients do this to go home,
and practice at home
just so they get their body mechanics right,
to take stress off of their back if they have an injury
- Everyone's gonna have a different foot position.
What's comfortable for you,
depending upon the shape of your legs and your hips.
So some people might be wider,
some might be a little narrow.
You don't wanna go super narrow like this.
This is not gonna work.
- Excellent point.
- So make sure you got a wide base, feel comfortable,
and safe and sturdy.
Once you're good, get rid of the stick.
- Right.
And, again, if you don't have a stick,
you can do 'em without.
Good posture and how deep you go
is gonna depend on your comfort level.
If you don't have any knee pain,
go down as deep as you feel comfortable,
but with good balance.
Obviously, you don't wanna fall.
Sometimes I do 'em like this.
It forces me to have good posture
and body mechanics in my back,
and it's just a little harder.
- Yep. - It brings it up.
I don't know, how far do you go down, Mike?
- I don't know.
Parallel around.
I don't force myself to go too deep.
- Yeah.
So there's a, I don't want-
- Just comfortable. - Yeah, I don't wanna-
- It depends on the weight you're using too.
- What do you mean?
There's no weights.
These are not- - These are non-weights.
- Now, let's go to the next one.
All right, progressing the squat with your body weight.
You want a little more, but we're not using weights,
but you can use resistance bands.
This is what I use personally and I really like it.
I've also used it this way with the bands.
- The handles. - Exactly.
- These are two bands.
Those are called a loop band, if you're curious.
- The large loop band.
And I'll show the loop band first.
One foot here, one foot there,
at least shoulder-width wide, good posture.
Now, this is a little awkward until you get used to it.
Get it around your shoulders,
and then I bring my elbows out,
and then I keep up with good posture,
and down I go and up.
And Mike is using the band like that.
- There you go.
So far, I'm hitting my butt on the mat table.
- So, once you get used to this,
becomes very easy, very natural.
And it does make a lot of difference on the resistance.
- So, with bands,
you're not gonna get the resistance going down.
It's easier.
But when you go up, you are gonna get some resistance.
Obviously, you can use more bands if it's too easy,
or go to a harder color.
You can also increase the width of your stance
to make a little more resistance.
- This really works the quads nicely.
All right.
And we've got one more set without weights
that's gonna actually really challenge
even the most advanced people, I have a feeling.
All right.
And, finally, and last it not least,
let's do the advanced squats.
We're gonna go to one leg with these.
- Single leg variations.
You can call 'em split squats, Bulgarian squats.
They have like a hundred names, I swear.
- And yeah, I know these are my favorite.
This is what I do at home.
It's really helpful for my biking, for climbing hills.
When I started, I use a stick just for balance.
You can hold onto something if you're concerned,
'cause you really wanna focus on the strengthening,
and it's good for balance.
I got one finger over here,
and I go down until my kneecap
just touches the floor gently.
So I got good, smooth motion.
And, actually, I progressed out of this
after a couple months.
And, again, just for balance, I go to the...
What do you like to call this one, Mike?
- Rear elevated split squat?
- Oh, there you go.
I just call it my squats.
- This is definitely gonna stretch your back leg.
Hip flex a little more.
You need a little more mobility with this one,
and balance, definitely. - Yeah.
- And notice his posture is straight up with his trunk.
He's not bent forward.
A lot of people will bend forward
if they're uncoordinated or it's too fatigued.
- And, I do wanna mention with all of these squats,
we mentioned about, you should not be having any knee pain,
and you can go over the toes as much as you can.
You know, Bob and I talked a lot about
the knee should not go past the toes.
That was to train of thought for years,
and now that has been overruled,
as long you don't have knee pain,
go ahead, let the knee pass over the toes.
Mike, show some of your techniques.
- This is just the variation you can use
with a resistance band as well.
So you just hook it on,
you get in kind of a split squat position,
and it's just stationary,
you're obviously not gonna move with a band there,
and you just go up and down as many reps as possible.
The thicker the band here, the harder it'll obviously be,
and you're not gonna get the resistance going down,
but you definitely get it going up.
- Here, let's do this.
Let's try this.
- Oh, we're gonna do numerous ones?
- Yeah, put that.
And this is something, it works out quite well.
If you wanna add resistance,
and you're using those loop bands, just double 'em up.
- You just double it up, go up,
and you just do how many reps are comfortable.
You can do 10 reps, 15, whatever is good for you.
Just make sure to not step off it until it's down.
'Cause it can snap you in the face with a ceiling.
- Yeah, the bands do have a little bit of a risk involved.
So be careful with 'em.
There's one thing I'm very concerned about here, Mike.
- What?
- Well, that was really nice job on your,
everything is going well, but stand up again.
Look at this, he didn't tuck his shirt in.
You know-
- My generation doesn't really do that-
- Bob would be concerned about this
because he makes me button this thing up all the time and-
- I'm gonna have to talk to Robert.
- Yeah, yeah, well.
- My dad said it was fine.
(Brad chuckles)
- All right, squat away, enjoy, burn calories, get stronger,
and improve your balance.
Thanks, Mike.
It was a good job today and I'm very happy that I'm alive.
- And squats are for everyone.
- Say no more.