Issue #341: Do a Deep Squat
Good morning. It’s Saturday, May 11th.
Stat of the Day
The potential increase in strength of our knee extensor after just eight weeks of squat workouts. (source)
Revisit
This week we explored ways to create energy and write for your mental health.
Issue #339 - the transformative power of journaling to boost mental health, gratitude, and self-awareness with practical tips to make it a habit
Issue #340 - the essential role of the thyroid and the key tests to monitor its function
Click HERE to check out the entire Thrive25 archive.
Focus
Get Out of the Chair
Watching videos of Centenarians in Okinawa (see Issue #327 and #329) you wouldn’t suspect they were former athletes or that muscle is their key to longevity.
But that’s kinda the point - it’s not about muscle size. It’s about mobility and strength - specifically in our hips and legs.
Older generations of Okinawans still often sit on the floor and many tend their own garden. They are doing the equivalent of 50-100 squats a day - not because they’re at the gym, just how they move throughout the day.
In the book, Built to Move, which is one of our favorites when it comes to mobility - Kelly Starrett talks about getting back to sitting on the floor.
The modern chair creates a 90° angle with our legs and transfers the weight from our glutes to our spines - putting enormous pressure on our back and weakening our butt and hips.
I see this everyday with the real-world lab of my kids - my 3-yr old is always on the floor and he’s got strong legs and perfect posture when he sits. But my 6-yr old already looks like us (hunched over) when she sits because she spends all day sitting at a desk and then on the couch (not the floor) after school.
This is also why the Sit & Rise Test is such a good test. We shouldn’t use age as an excuse on why we can’t sit down or get up off the floor without using our hands - this is absolutely possible and what we should shoot for at any age.
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Move
Deep Squat
Beyond sitting on the floor - the other thing to do is practice a proper squat. This doesn’t need to be putting a bunch of weights on a barbell at the gym - it’s doing a deep squat that we can maintain for a few seconds or even a few minutes.
This is common in most Asian cultures - how they sit, how they hang out, and even how they go to the bathroom (we’ve come up with the easy version of the squatty potty).
This deep squat strengthens our hips, our ankles and our knees.
No it doesn’t hurt our knees - it makes the muscles and ligaments around them stronger. You might not have full range of motion from a previous injury - but anything you can do to boost your leg muscles (like the supported leg press) will eventually help - not hurt - your knee health.
Two quick points here:
1. Our Ankles - a very underrated joint, our ankles are what give us our balance and keep us from falling. Kids normally have flexion of 70°, but this goes down to only 30° for adults in the western world. Deep squats give us back our ankle strength and flexibility.
2. Our Low Back - when we squat a lot we get strong hips, glutes, quads - which protects our back. We naturally bend over in a squat position and pick stuff up with our legs, not our back. So if you want to protect your back and prevent days of being stuck on the couch - do your squats!
Check out the video to see the proper technique for a deep squat:
Aim for 30-90 seconds five times a day in a low squat.
You can do these at any time during the day - in between meetings at work, playing with your kids, or even watching TV.
Struggling with flexibility? Here’s a 15 minute video to be able to get to that deep squat.
Brain Games
Emojis
We’ve been on a solid streak of logic equations and kyudoku. Let’s change it up with some emojis - not quite Emogenius, but maybe this segment won’t get canceled.
Take a look at the combo of emojis and scrambled letters in yellow. The goal is to solve the gray puzzle with the word(s) that correspond to the emojis. See if you can get all three.
Credit: Brainzilla
**For answer, scroll to the bottom of the post
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Thanks for another great week!
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** Brain Games Answer **
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