Squats strengthen and develop your entire lower-body skeletal muscular system, including muscles, bones, tendons and ligaments. Furthermore, they improve knee and hip functionality.
Your hamstrings are key in knee flexion and hip extension, but squats don’t target them much due to body position being an influential factor when it comes to activating them.
The Quadriceps
The quadriceps muscles, more commonly referred to as quads, are four muscles located on each thigh that cover its front surface. These four muscles are responsible for straightening knee joint as you stand up or bend over from a chair; as well as hip flexion when legs come closer together during walking or climbing stairs.
The quadriceps is named for four heads of the femur bone that connects your thigh to your pelvis. They consist of both slow-twitch muscle fibers that maintain muscle length at lower intensity levels such as walking or sitting; faster-twitch fibers provide power, speed and explosive movements like jumping or running.
Cody Braun, personal trainer and NASM performance enhancement specialist, recommends squats as one of the best exercises to strengthen quads. A classic back squat can serve as an introduction; alternative variations such as goblet, zercher or pistol squats should also be tried out for maximum impact.
Other exercises you can incorporate into your routine to strengthen quads include plyometric exercises like box jumps and lunges. Also try resistance band-based exercises, like the banded Spanish squat, which involves looping a resistance band around your knees before performing a squat by sliding back on the band until your legs are perpendicular with the ground before returning back up into standing position again with an explosion back to full height.
Strong quads can help to decrease the risk of knee pain and other injuries, while weak quads increase it. Weak quads may increase non-contact injuries such as patellofemoral pain syndrome or anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tears; moreover, research indicates that women with stronger quads are at reduced risk for osteoarthritis than those with weaker ones; therefore it’s vitally important that we exercise them regularly with straight leg raises, short arc quads, wall slides and terminal knee extensions among others.
The Gluteus Maximus
The gluteus maximus is another major lower body muscle to work during squats. This muscle is responsible for the flexion (bending) of your hips, helping keep your pelvis in contact with femurs when standing up, as well as flexing knees and moving your torso forward during a squat. Furthermore, being biarticular means it crosses two joints: knee and hip – unlike quadriceps which only act to straighten knees.
Squats are effective for developing both quadriceps and gluteus maximus muscles because the pressure is distributed evenly through your feet, enabling both to engage fully in the movement. This is one reason why they’re so useful for strengthening both quads and butt.
However, to access more hamstring and calves movement during squats, bringing your torso forward more during each rep will cause knees to move further back than is ideal for their wellbeing and can reduce how much load you can lift.
Many gym-goers attempt to train their hamstrings and calves through squats in order to increase leg strength, believing this will enable them to achieve larger squats and build more leg strength. Unfortunately, squats may not be the most efficient means of training the hamstrings and calves.
Hamstring muscles run along the back of your thighs and are responsible for knee flexion and hip extension, making them essential when engaging in walking, running, jumping, or any activity which involves movement at both knee and hip joints. In addition, they play a critical role in keeping you upright.
Squatting activates the hamstrings to some extent, but they’re not as active as in exercises such as sprinting or calf raises due to being a compound exercise that recruits multiple muscles at once and therefore doesn’t specifically target the hamstrings like isolation exercises would.
The Hamstrings
The hamstrings, located at the back of your leg, play a crucial role in bending your knees and are integral to activities like walking and running. Comprising three muscles and tendons, they are prone to injury, especially during rapid running or jumping. Attached to the ischial tuberosity in the pelvis and the sides of the tibia in the lower leg, the hamstrings work with the quadriceps to move your leg forward and aid in both walking and running by pulling the leg backward and assisting in knee bending.
The muscles that make up your hamstrings are the semitendinosus, the semimembranosus and the long head of the biceps femoris (BFlh). The BFlh is the longest muscle in your hamstring. The other two muscles are more medial in location. Both the BFlh and the SM are bi-articular muscles that cross and affect both the hip and knee joint. The BFlh and the SM are innervated by the sciatic nerve.
Because the hamstrings and quadriceps act together to move your leg, it’s important for them to be in good condition so that they work well with each other. If one of the hamstrings is too weak, then it can cause problems with your quadriceps. This could lead to a knee injury. That’s why it’s important to exercise both the quadriceps and hamstrings regularly.
There are a lot of different exercises that you can do to exercise your hamstrings. Some are more effective than others at improving the strength of your hamstrings. One of the best exercises is the Romanian deadlift. This is a very challenging exercise and should be done under the guidance of a professional so that you don’t injure yourself. Another good exercise is the Nordic hamstring raise. This is a great exercise to strengthen your hamstrings but it’s more focused on hip extension than the knee flexion that you get with the Romanian deadlift.
The Adductors
Adductor muscles are located on the inner thigh, drawing your legs closer to your center of body by contracting when you squeeze together your inner thighs. As with quads and hip flexors, adductors are vitally important for daily movements – their weakness could compromise mobility in gym classes as well as when performing activities like running, jumping and walking. When strong adductors join quads and hip flexors they help get out of squat positions quickly while keeping knees in line with feet while keeping knees out of bottom-outs squats quickly!
The adductor group comprises five muscles: gracilis, obturator externus, adductor brevis, adductor longus and adductor magnus. Of these five, two start on your pubic bone while two begin at the top of the femur (thigh bone). All four lie inside of your leg – two (obturator externus and adductor brevis) can adduct your hip while gracilis can adduct your knee.
Adductors differ from quads and hamstrings in that their strength lies in flexing hips and adducting legs; their primary task is preventing hip joints from tilting forward when standing or reaching down to pick something off the floor.
Adductors play an integral part in yoga poses that involve extended legs, such as Urdhva Dhanurasana or Tadasana. Their contraction helps hold your legs together during these postures; if they lack sufficient isometric endurance or are weak then maintaining these poses for an extended period can become challenging.
Adductors are integral for mobility, so strengthening them requires much work. You can do this with exercises such as the side plank: lie on a mat or floor with arms resting against it and legs perpendicular to ground or piece of equipment like bench. Increase challenge by increasing range of motion or adding resistance; perform slowly using proper technique will maximize results and minimize injury risk.
