What is an air squat?
Air squats, sometimes referred to as bodyweight squats, are frequently employed in exercise regimens and training programs like CrossFit. Instead of employing additional weights like traditional squats do, you merely utilize your own body weight to perform them. Your thighs and glutes should feel the squat in these areas.
To do an air squat:
- Keep your feet at shoulder width apart and pointed straight ahead.
- When squatting, your hips will move down and back.
- Your lumbar curve should be maintained, and your heels should stay flat on the floor the entire time.
- In air squats, your hips will descend lower than your knees.
With a regular, weighted squat, you should go as low as you can while still maintaining good form, which for some people means that their hips will descend lower than their knees. When rising from the squat position in both air and regular weighted squats, you should drive up (push up) through the heels, using the glutes to return to the standing position.
How to do air squats: Proper form and safety
When performing air squats, as with any exercises, you should always utilize the appropriate technique to ensure that you obtain the intended results and stay safe. This calls for warming up and stretching first. This is crucial, even if you’re only doing squats.
When doing an air squat:
- Your knees should not go past your toes.
- Your back should not round out.
- You should not drop your shoulders forward. Your lower body should be the only part of you moving.
- Keep your eyes up on the wall ahead of you. This will keep your chest lifted.
You are either going too low or not employing the proper technique if you have knee joint pain. Knee pain frequently results from shifting your weight more toward your toes than toward the back of your heels. If your feet aren’t turned outward at a modest angle, you can also experience soreness.
Back pain is most frequently caused by unintentionally overextending your chest forward during squats, which strains your lower back.
You won’t want to do air squats daily. Instead, you should take at least one day off per week to allow your muscles to recover and develop.
Benefits of air squats
Squat technique can be learned by performing air squats. Once you’ve mastered them, you can comfortably and with a lot less danger of injury advance to weighted squats.
Air squats are another exercise that improves your lower body’s balance and strength. They specifically target your glutes, quads, thighs, and hamstrings to help you build muscular growth there. Because of the need for balance, air squats can also work your core.
Who shouldn’t do air squats
There are specific situations in which you shouldn’t include air squats in your fitness routine. Air squats by itself won’t be sufficient to raise the difficulty of your workouts. Instead, you may advance to weighted lunges or squats using barbells.
Don’t push yourself to the point of harm if you’re finding it difficult to squat low enough in an air squat. Do what you can instead, then gradually increase the depth of your squat.
Squats of any kind should not be performed by people who have sciatica nerve discomfort, which can radiate from the lower back, upper buttocks, and down the thigh. This is because the activity could compress the nerve and aggravate symptoms.
Air squat workout routines
The best results from air squats come from include them in a complete exercise program.
You can use a CrossFit Northeast Georgia workout that combines cardio and total-body strength training by performing four rounds of:
- running 200 meters
- 25 pushups
- 25 situps
- 25 air squats
- 20 jumping jacks
- 1 pullup (if you have a bar)
- 20 air squats
- 20 pushups
- 20 lunges (10 each leg)
- 20 decline pushups, where your legs are elevated