The air squat is a total body workout that aims to strengthen your calves, thighs, glutes and ankles. It is a squat performed to build up core power in your lower body, and it is beneficial for increasing your heart rate, thus better oxygen circulation.
This exercise requires no equipment as you can do it anytime, anywhere, and it is easy and fast to do for those who do not have much time in exercising. Air squat allows you to carry your weight in a certain number of repetitions and that force strengthens your joints and tendons in your legs. Having strong muscles and joints avert your further injury.
In order to achieve air squat, you need to spread your legs wider than your hip width, then go into a squat position by sitting down and by keeping your knees over your toes. Swing your arms forward to maintain balance. Go back to your starting position and repeat as necessary.
Results
Air squat primarily affects your glutes (the muscles at your buttocks), your hamstrings (the muscles at the back of your thighs), your quadriceps (thus muscles at the front of your thighs) and your calves (the muscles on the back of your lower leg).
This exercise helps in building up core strength in your leg muscles, making them more balanced and more flexible for easy mobility. It also makes your gluteal muscles more firm and flexible to prevent lower back pain. For added benefit for your muscles, air squat keeps your heart healthy and active by increasing the heart rate.
Results
Air squat primarily affects your glutes (the muscles at your buttocks), your hamstrings (the muscles at the back of your thighs), your quadriceps (thus muscles at the front of your thighs) and your calves (the muscles on the back of your lower leg).
This exercise helps in building up core strength in your leg muscles, making them more balanced and more flexible for easy mobility. It also makes your gluteal muscles more firm and flexible to prevent lower back pain. For added benefit for your muscles, air squat keeps your heart healthy and active by increasing the heart rate.
Sets and Repetitions
For starters, performing 25 repetitions is sufficed, although some say that 50 repetitions should be done on your first day. However, 25 repetitions of the air squat are enough for those who are really just beginners. Overdoing the exercise to 50 repetitions can lead to leg muscle strain. For those who want the exercise to be more challenging, 250 repetitions are achieved.
Top Performance Metrics
Some enthusiastic athletes have been achieving 500 repetitions in an average of 10 to 15 minutes, while others are able to achieve 1000 repetitions in a whole day or within 20 to 25 minutes.
Related Movements
Certain exercises are complementary to air squat in order to attain the best physical workout and to see rapid improvements in the body such as the calf raise, the cambered squat bar squats, the burpee and even the overhead squat. Although the cambered squat bar squats and overhead squat are for the experts or for those who are familiarized with lifting bars.
Related Foods
Based on an old saying, “You are what you eat”, basically refers to the consequences of your food intake to your body that leaves your physique either favorable or unsatisfactory. That is being aware of what you eat is important so that you can attain contentment with how you look. Drinking more than a liter of water helps the toxins to wash away when you sweat. A chicken sandwich, specifically chicken breast with no mayo or with fat-free mayo, can be eaten an hour before doing the exercise. Chicken breast or the white meat is considered to be the healthy meat in a chicken. Furthermore, you should also lower down your carbs and red meat intake to increase the efficiency of the exercise.
Celebrity Use
Most celebrities are ardent about getting their bodies fit for a healthy lifestyle such as Christina Milian, who has been working out for 20 minutes of squat six days per week, and Daniel Dae Kim, who also do squat around five times a week.
Functional Use
After series of air squats, you would notice that you are able to run faster and your mobility gets even better. Better posture in walking and in running gets instilled in your body, since squatting improves your body’s form. You would also see that your legs are gaining muscle mass with all the repetition of squatting. This exercise can also help in reducing your body fat—as you squat and straight up, your body loses fat, which leads you to have toned look.