Doing Squats on the Smith Exercise Machine at the Gym

Video Transcript

"And we’re here at Extreme Fitness in Laurel Springs, New Jersey and today I’m going to demonstrate squats on a smith machine. What you want to do with the smith machine is get underneath the bar make sure that the pad is on your shoulders and not your neck. Put your feet out in front of you comfortably, now smith machines have a hook that locks the bar into the machine, you want to be careful not to hit that hook on the way down. So you unrack it and make sure the hook is very far away from the peg, put your feet in front of you. Also what you want to make sure is that your back is straight and your knees don’t go past your toes. What you’re doing is you’re coming down until your upper legs are parallel to the floor coming up, weight on your heels and squeeze the quadriceps. Down, weight up on the heels, exhale on exertion, exhale at the top. Now you’re going to do 12 to 15 repetitions as a beginner, this is a very good way to learn how to do squats properly because you’re in a fixed range of motion so it’s very difficult to get into any trouble like into a free weight squat. About repetition 10 you’ll start to feel a burn in your legs and that’s a very good thing because that means that you’re working at the proper weight. You’re down at parallel and you’re up and you squeeze, down at parallel keeping your back straight, you’re up and you squeeze. And for our last few repetitions here we’re also not locking the knees at the top. Never lock your knees on any weight training exercise. And for our last couple of repetitions I’m really starting to feel the burn and at the very top come up and we re-rack the machine before we go away. And that’s how you do a smith squat."