PrisonerFitness-The True Book of PowerChapter 6: Lift-Like Thighs
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Squats
When most people think of strength, they only think of the upper body - broad shoulders, bulging chest muscles, and thick arms are all regarded as basic signs of strength, as if No one really thinks about legs. If you ask someone (even a kid) to flex their muscles, they will usually roll up their sleeves to show you their biceps. No one takes off his pants to show you his thighs.
This phenomenon is also reflected in the fitness plans of ordinary fitness enthusiasts. You can take a tour of the gym and see what the guys are doing in the weight training area. You'll see a lot of people working out their shoulders, torso, and arms, and some are even queuing up to do bench presses, incline curls, or pull-downs to get their triceps pumping. 90% of the strength training in gyms around the world is likely to exercise the upper body, and I estimate that almost 95% of them exercise the arms. In the gym, you can only see a few people working hard to exercise their legs.
When I was serving time in San Quentin Prison, I met an inmate who was a regular at Jim’s Gym before prison—one of the most popular gyms in the world. , located in Venice Beach, California (also known as "Muscle Beach"), probably has more serious bodybuilders and elite strength trainers among its members than any other gym in the world. He once told me that the gym also had a squat rack and that although he had been a regular there for years, he had never seen anyone queuing up to use the machine. In fact, the squat rack in the gym is just a decoration most of the time. If even the world's most famous Kim's Gym was reallySo, how good can gyms in other places be?
The source of strength
In fact, this attitude is completely wrong. Real strength comes from the hips and legs, not the upper body and arms. As long as we are not floating in mid-air or sitting with our legs off the ground, all movements our upper limbs make rely on the power transmitted by our legs. Upper body strength is important in many sports, but it is useless without a strong lower body as a foundation. True strength lifters understand this better than "weekend warriors" or "beach body" lifters. Strong biceps and well-defined pecs may look great, but they contribute little to ultimate strength. Take the clean and jerk in a weightlifting competition as an example. Although the weightlifter lifts the barbell with his arms, the power to complete this movement mainly comes from the legs. In other words, it is not the arms that really exert the force - the barbell is too heavy for the arms. . Next time a weightlifting event is broadcast, take a closer look and you will know. The actual situation is that the weightlifter first uses explosive force to lift the barbell to shoulder height, then lowers the body and uses force from the legs to lift the barbell a little further. Then bend your legs and lower your body under the barbell, which is actually a standard squat position with your arms locked. From this position, they must use their legs to get up and complete the movement. During the clean and jerk, the role of the upper body and arms is not as important as the legs. Weightlifters have strong thighs and spend a lot of time squatting because they understand the value of leg strength.
Probably the heaviest exercise known to use weight is Deadlift. The deadlift requires the lifter to pull a heavy barbell off the ground and up to hip level. Now, the world record for the deadlift is held by the famous weightlifter Andy. Created by Andy Bolton, he can lift a barbell weighing 455 kilograms—nearly half a ton! Although this movement affects almost every muscle in the body, its main areas of force are the thighs and hips, especially the gluteus maximus, hamstrings (back of thighs), and quadriceps (front of thighs). Even in a purely upper-body exercise like the bench press, the legs play a major role. Lifters without legs may have a strong upper body, but they can't lift nearly as much weight on the bench press as able-bodied lifters, simply because their legs can't generate force. Given these examples, it is easy to see that the real power lies inIt actually comes from the lower body, not the upper body.
The above examples are all related to strength sports, but overemphasis on upper body strength also occurs in most other sports. For many athletes, the importance of lower body strength only becomes apparent when they injure their legs. If you have a knee injury or a torn hamstring, bodybuilders will have a clear understanding of how important the lower body is. You can try to do some upper body movements when you have a leg injury, such as wrestling, boxing, pushing, pulling, etc. You will find that it is almost impossible to complete these movements, let alone lower body movements such as running, jumping, and kicking. wait. Needless to say, most sports are based on the lower body, which means that these sports rely heavily on leg strength, and the upper body is relatively unimportant. There is an old saying in track and field: a person is as old as his legs. The first thing older athletes lose is the explosive power of their legs. In fact, the loss of lower body strength can be delayed or even reversed, but no amount of upper body training can have such an effect. You need to learn how to exercise your legs. This chapter explains everything you need to know about it.
Modern methods hold back the legs
There are many kinds of leg exercises, many of which can only exercise a certain muscle in the legs, such as leg extensions and soft squats. Quadriceps, leg curls work the biceps, and push-ups work the glutes. In addition, there are many exercises that require the use of leg trainers and tensioners, but they only exercise certain leg muscles.
Too many modern training techniques are not beneficial to modern trainers, but will have a negative effect. That's because many of these newer leg exercises are designed to work just one leg muscle. They are useful for experienced bodybuilders who only want to exercise a specific part of the lower body, but they are of little significance to ordinary bodybuilders who are of average size and have low practical strength. The reason is that our leg muscles have evolved to beWork as a whole, not individually. In fact, today's wide variety of leg exercises will even weaken the practical strength of the legs and reduce their movement ability, because the natural response ability of the leg muscles to work together will be degraded by these exercises. The best way to build truly strong, agile legs is to use the fewest exercises that work as many leg muscles as possible. The ideal situation is to only practice one movement, as long as you can find one that dynamically exercises all the muscles in the lower body.
In fact, such an action does exist, and it has been known to athletes since ancient times. It has a profound impact on sports culture around the world, and we call it thesquatorDeep knee flexion. In India, the entire sports culture is based on bodyweight squats (i.e.Indian squats). Some people don't believe that one simple move can tone the entire lower body, but squats deserve it. What does this action look like? Squat means lowering the body by bending the three important joints of the lower body (i.e. hips, knees, feet). When some people describe squats, they often focus on bending the knees, so squats are sometimes called knee bends or deep knee bends. But in fact, to do a deep squat without relying on anything, you need to bend three joints. If you only bend your knees without bending your feet and hips, you will fall backwards. If these three "axes" don't rotate simultaneously, you won't be able to squat at all. These major joints in the lower body are meant to work together—evolution did it. The hip flexion movement mainly involves the powerful gluteus maximus, gluteus minimus, and gluteus medius muscles. In addition, there are about 12 smaller muscles at work, such as the tensor fascia lata and piriformis. "A chain is only as strong as its weakest link." This sentence is very appropriate to describe the hip muscles. Some of the muscles in your hips are indeed smaller, but they can determine whether your hips are healthy and strong. When squatting, the upper body needs to lean forward slightly, so the spinal muscles and waist muscles can also be exercised during squats, especially the latter. Squatting deeply also puts greater pressure on the internal organs, so the transversus abdominis and abdominal muscles—the muscles that wrap around the internal organs—also become more intense. Powerful.
Bending your knees can greatly exercise the quadriceps muscles on the front of your thighs. As can be seen from its name, the quadriceps muscle is composed of four large muscles, namely the lateral femoralVastus medialis (a muscle on the outside of the thigh), vastus intermedius (a deep muscle that runs through the center of the thigh), rectus femoris (a muscle on the front of the thigh), and vastus medialis (a teardrop-shaped muscle adjacent to the knee). These four muscles play different roles when the knee joint extends. Which muscles get the most emphasis depends on your range of motion: a static lockout will work more on the vastus medialis, smaller movements will work more on the vastus lateralis, and a full squat will work all four. All muscles receive high-intensity exercise. Everyone in the bodybuilding world knows that squats are the best exercise for building quadriceps. Squats also work the semimembranosus, semimembranosus, and biceps femoris, which are the muscle groups on the back of the thigh that are often known by the name "hamstrings." Squats can exercise the muscles on the back of the thighs. Not many people know this today, so most bodybuilders use leg curl training machines to exercise their hamstrings. To build strength, leg curls put the hamstrings into their worst biomechanical position, so the exercise does little to build strength and muscle. Strongmen and fitness experts of the past knew that squats work the entire thigh, including the hamstrings and quadriceps, so most of them only exercised their legs through squats, and as a result their entire bodies became more and more The stronger. If you’re not convinced that squats work your hamstrings, test it out for yourself. When squatting, hold the back of your thigh firmly with your hands. You will feel the muscles in the back of your thigh contract powerfully. Theoretically, the quadriceps and hamstrings should not contract at the same time because they are a pair of antagonist muscles located on the front and back of the leg. But the fact is that the two do contract at the same time, and they contract powerfully. Kinesiologists call this phenomenon Lombard's Paradox (Lombard's Paradox).
The femur (thigh bone) is the longest and strongest bone in the human body, and the tibia and fat bone join it at the knee joint. When you lower your body into a squat, the lower part of your femur moves forward, which causes your tibia and fat bone to move forward accordingly. This in turn forces the pedal joint to flex automatically, stretching the calf and Achilles tendon, and causing the tibialis anterior to contract. When you stand up, the stepping joint has to return to its original position. This seemingly simple action can exercise every muscle in your calf, including not only the flat soleus muscle and the rhombus-shaped fat intestinal muscle, but also the smaller muscles and muscular legs on the feet. Even the muscles on your feet have to follow suit to maintain balance and stability during the squat. Many bodybuilders don't even need to specifically train their calves—squats will make them strong enough.
All of the above muscles (and more) can be intensely exercised through squats. But, more importantly than that, squats also develop these muscles in a coordinated manner, consistent with the way these muscles naturally work together. You can take a look at the following The most basic movements of the human body:
·Running·Standing up
·Jumping·Stomping your feet
·Supporting·Pushing hard (such as pushing a car)
·Sit down· Pull hard (like tug-of-war)
You will find that these movements, like squats, require flexion of the legs and U-7. It is precisely because all the muscles can work together that the lower body (actually the whole body as well) can have such powerful strength.