Video and Transcript: Functional Loaded Squat

Hi, everyone! Dr. Orit Hickman here from Pain Science Physical Therapy. 

I would like to show you one of my most favorite exercises to do. It is both a lower body and an upper body strengthening exercise, so when I show this exercise, I’m going to show it to you today with a 10 lbs weight. 

If you are not used to lifting weights, then I would start with whatever feels most comfortable. And, you’d be surprised. If you look around the house, there’s probably lots of things that you lift on a daily basis. And so, if you’re not sure what those items weigh, I would go ahead and stand on a scale with the item. Then stand on the scale with the item, and that might show you what you’re already more comfortable lifting on a regular basis. 

When I work with female patients that are ages 40 and above, I am typically having them lift 10 to 15 lbs weights to start because most of the time, you’re able to actually do that pretty comfortably. I’m not having patients do anything more than maybe 10 to 12 reps at a time when we’re doing exercises. And, I might have them repeat that just a couple of times. So, today I’m doing-using a 10 lbs weight, and when we-when I-when I do lower body strengthening, I am using 5 lb, 10 lb, 15, 20, and 25 lb weights, depending on the exercise I’m doing. Your legs are actually pretty strong, so you can typically lift heavier weights. 

I have a preference towards free weights versus using machines in a gym, and the reason for that is when we are doing functional activities in your daily life, you are not doing those within the confines of a piece of gym equipment. So, the more that you can get comfortable using a free weight like this, so, again, 10 lb weight or any of these little, small dumbbells or barbells-dumbbells rather. So, then, if you can get comfortable using those for working out, you will find that your daily activities of doing things throughout life where you are able to-you know- you’re moving and doing all kinds of stuff, it’ll get easier to do those things when you’re used lifting these smaller weights that are not part of a machine. So, that’s my soapbox. I’m going to step back off of it for a second here. 

And, I’m going to show you an exercise. So, the exercise we’re going to do today is just a squat. I like to do these squats holding a weight on one side. The weight is not resting on my shoulder. It’s just up above. And so, the reason [why] I like to do this is that I am engaging the muscles in my right arm to do this exercise right now. I’m also engaging all of my trunk muscles to hold myself up. The weight is going to want to pull me off to one side, so your abdominal muscles, your back muscles, they all have to help hold you up against this weight. Your legs also have to work when you do this. 

So, the squat exercise… If you watch me right now, my feet are about hip-width apart, so they’re just kind of positioned under where my hip bones are. I’m going to show this from the side. I’m going to show it from the front. 

So, when we do this exercise, you want to be mindful of where your knees are going, so you don’t want your knees to roll in. You don’t want them to be too far out. They should be kind of level over the tops of your toes. And so, then, when I go down into this exercise, I’m sticking my butt out. I’m letting my knees bend. I’m keeping my trunk nice and straight, and my chest is lifted up. And then, I’m coming back from that position. 

I’m going to show you that from the side. Holding the weight, again, it’s hovering above my shoulder, and that immediately engages my trunk muscle, so I don’t have to work super hard to hold my core in if I am keeping myself up against that weight. And then, what I’ll do is I’ll go ahead and sit back, and you can see that my knees are not flying past my toes, and my hips going back from-they just come behind my knees. And, my trunk is staying nice. I’m not rounding my back when I do this exercise. Shoulders [are] gently down and back. Chin is slightly tucked. And, again, core muscles are naturally engaged because I’m holding myself up against gravity, and I’m holding this weight. 

So, I’m getting a little tired holding the weight on the right. I’m going to switch it over to the left side. I’m going to show you this from the other side so that you can see what this looks like. So, again, I’ve got that weight. It’s hovering above my shoulder, and I’m coming down into that squat and coming back up again. And so, I’m coming down. Core is nicely engaged. Trunk is nice and straight. As I lift, I push through my heels so that I can really engage my quad muscles. And, I’m squeezing my butt muscles as I come up and again coming down and pushing up into that position. 

When you do this exercise: nice and slow and only down as low as you feel like you can control the motion… So, I’m not going super far down into this exercise. Right? I am not coming into a super low squat. I can, and I do when I’m working out myself, but for right now if you’ve never done this before, you can come down about halfway. And, you can imagine hovering over a chair. 

So, this exercise is incredibly functional. Right? How many times a day do you come in and out of a chair? The challenge is, as we get older, our tendency is to use our arms to push up and to not really lean forward and use our legs. So, even if you don’t practice this with a weight, throughout the day, getting in and out of your chair, be mindful of not using your hands to push up and try to lean forward and really use your legs so that you can build strength in your legs. 

So, I really like this squat exercise. Let me know what you think, if that was a good explanation, [and] if that felt helpful. I would love any feedback down below. I will go ahead and respond to. If you thought this was a good video, give me a thumbs up. That’s great. And, subscribe to get more videos like this one. Have a great day!