How to Do an Air Squat Exercise

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Dr. Garrett Smith for Expert Village and we're going to go over one of the most fundamental exercises for the lower body, the 'air squat'. Some people know it as the 'body weight squat' because it's just your body weight. We're going to start from the ground up on form tips. The 'air squat', I'll show you one first. Basically, it's going to look like this, and then back up. So, I'll go down to the bottom position and show you some things there. I'm going to start from the ground up again, like I said. Heels. Your weight is on the heels in this exercise. Important thing is how wide apart are your legs. Basically shoulder width is a great width. If you need to go a little wider or a little narrower, that's Okay too. Toes are turned slightly out. They're straight ahead and they're not way turned out like a ballerina. Got feet done, now knees. Knees for most people, you're going to feel like you're pushing your knees out. You want your knees to stay over your feet. They're going to feel like they're pushed out. Hips. The depth on squats, on 'air squats'. You want the top of your hip crease to be below the top of your knee, or at least level with it. When you're in this position, this is about as deep as I need to go. Lower back. I'm going to turn sideways so you can see this. Lower back. You want your lower back, in the bottom position, to have the nice lumbar curve to it. What we call a neutral spine. You don't want to see this. If you see your hips tucked under and the lumbar curve flipping the other direction, you've gone to far and you likely have some flexibility issues. Lumbar curve needs to be maintained. I'm going to go down and show you the next part, the thoracic spine. When we go down to the bottom we want this part of our spine, the rib cage part of our spine, the thoracic spine, to be as straight up as possible. Arms. Arms are out in front for balance. You can, as a teaching tool, keep them higher and this will also help you to keep your lumbar curve. 'Air squats', from the side, will look like this. As you start going faster, you can start using the arms in kind of a pumping manner to help give you a little extra push. 'Air squats' are the most fundamental exercise for the lower body. Incredible tool and you can do them, there's people out there doing more than one of those a second. You've got to have them in your routine. "