If you’re looking for one of the simplest and most convenient, yet effective ways to add some exercise to your daily routine, squats are a great choice. Squats are great for strengthening and building the muscles of the legs and tightening the lower back and core, and for improving balance and overall conditioning, but what if your main goal is to lose fat? Can squats help you lose weight?
Squats are a fantastic form of exercise in so many ways. They will build lower body muscle which, in turn, will cause you to burn more calories all the time. Stimulating the large muscles of the legs will also help create a favorable hormonal profile by boosting growth hormone and testosterone. Squats will burn a significant number of calories, although not as many as a traditional cardio workout such as running. Even a fairly high volume (reps) squat workout will take significantly less time than a cardio workout, which makes it a great time saver. Yet squats have the added benefit of boosting your metabolism for hours after your workout. So long as you keep your diet in check, squats can definitely help you burn some fat. So, while not the fastest way to burn calories, doing squats regularly can certainly help you lose weight.
What’s the best way to do squats for weight loss? How many do you need to do? Let’s continue.
How many squats do I have to do a day to lose weight?
The goal should be to do as many squats as you can without causing excessive soreness. You should be a little tight in the quads and glutes the next day, but if you are very sore you will need a couple of days or longer to recover. This means you can’t do squats on those recovery days, so it will ultimately slow your progress.
If you’re just starting out, it is impossible to know what that optimum number of squats is, so start small and increase the number regularly. A good goal to get to is 100 squats per day. If you’re just getting into doing squats, start by doing 10 per day, and add 5-10 every few days or weeks, depending on an honest assessment of how well you can handle them. One great way to do 100 squats is to do 10 per minute for 10 mins. As you improve, you can up the ante even more and do 15, 20, or even 25 squats per minute. Eventually you could add time too if it’s getting too easy.
Exactly how many calories you’ll burn will vary according to a number of factors, namely your weight, and the intensity with which you do your squats. For an average 160 lb person, you’ll likely burn between 50-150 calories in 10 minutes. If you are really huffing and puffing and going at a faster pace, you’ll burn twice as many calories than if you are casually and slowly plodding through your sets. Super-slow reps, while beneficial for building muscle, are not going to burn as many calories in a given time frame as vigorous, faster squats. Of course, don’t go too fast, you should never be bouncing at the bottom of a squat as this is terrible for your knees. Focus on correct form and maintain control of your movement the whole time, but keep a quicker pace to expend more energy (calories).
The muscle-building effects of squats will cause your body to burn more calories even at rest as your muscle mass increases. Every little bit of muscle you gain will require fuel and nourishment to maintain it, and will raise your base caloric intake. Additionally, with compound resistance exercises like squats that stimulate the largest muscle groups, there is also a significant afterburn effect. That is, your metabolism will stay elevated for hours after your workout, further adding to the calories burned by your body that day.
Remember, if you are overeating, all the squats in the world won’t allow you to lose fat. So keep a close eye on your diet. Be sure that you are eating at or below your recommended base caloric intake, or BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) that is, the number of calories required to sustain your body during a day with no activity, or at rest. Having your diet right is a prerequisite to using squats, or any other exercise with the intent of losing weight.
Can squats help you lose belly fat?
Your belly is a particularly stubborn area when it comes to holding on to fat. Doing squats will help lose fat, but unfortunately you cannot control where on your body it comes from.
It is a wise move to add some squats to your daily routine to increase your metabolism, add some lean mass to your legs, and burn calories. But this will not spot-train belly fat.
No exercise can target one particular area of bodyfat. Don’t let this discourage you from doing squats. They are one of the best all-around resistance exercises you can do, and they will also help you improve your balance and flexibility as well as burning calories and developing lower body strength and muscle.
Again, your diet needs to be under control or none of this will make a noticable difference in your belly fat. Eat right, and not too much, and keep squatting. With time, your body will use up the fat reserves on your body and will eventually make it to even the hard-to-lose belly fat.
How long does it take to see results from doing squats?
Everyone wants results as fast as possible, and those about to start doing daily squats will be no different. If you are doing. 10 mins of squats per day, you should start to see a toning of the legs and butt within a week or two. After a couple of months, your lower body will look quite different. Your legs will become more muscular and lean.
Since squats are a resistance exercise, you would likely not be able to do squats for anywhere near as long as you could jog or swim. So in the short term, they are not as effective as traditional cardio for the goal of losing fat, but over time they will have a lasting effect on the amount of calories your body uses up.
So if you desperately need to drop 10 lbs in a month, you should start running for 1+ hrs each day. But if you are more concerned with improving in multiple areas and having a gradual slimming down, squats will work great.
Will I lose weight if I do 100 squats a day?
100 squats a day is a great level to be at. This is enough to really develop the legs, get your heart rate up for a few minutes, and create the afterburn effect.
100 squats per day will certainly help you lose weight if done daily, or close to it, and in conjunction with a healthy, balanced diet.
If done vigorously, 100 squats will use up about 75-100 calories for most people. This is not a massive amount, but it becomes a significant chunk taken out of your daily caloric intake when combined with a well-tuned diet. Take the afterburn effect and the added lean mass into account and you’ll be able to see how something as small as a 100 squats workout can make a tremendous difference to your body composition.
Does the 30 day squat challenge work?
There are many different 30 day squat challenges that people encourage each other to do to help transform their bodies. Some of them involve a number of different variations of squats, others simply focus on doing a fixed number each day for 30 days. Others have a predetermined progression that you are supposed to follow, e.g. day 1 – 20 squats, add 5 each day.
There’s nothing wrong with any of the 30 day plans that I’ve come across. In fact, whatever way you can motivate yourself to do your squats is a good thing. The only problem with the 30-day challenge is that many people stop after 30 days. Really it should be a lifelong challenge. After all, if you do squats for 30 days and get great results, why would you stop?!
As you continue to perform regular squats over a longer timeline, as in months and years, you will continue to reap the benefits and see results. So by all means, start with a 30-day challenge – but don’t stop there! Keep going, keep pushing yourself, and you’ll keep your results.
Can Squats make your butt bigger?
Squats can make your butt bigger if you have a small butt to begin with. If you have a larger butt where you happen to carry a lot of fat, squats will help you make it smaller as you reduce the fat deposits.
Squats will stimulate the muscles of the buttocks, namely the gluteus maximus. Over time these muscles will grow, giving your bottom a more muscular, shapely look. They will also help remove the fat surrounding these muscles. Obviously your diet needs to be clean and lean and you must keep doing the squats regularly. But with continued efforts, your squats will pay off for your behind by making it more muscular and toned.
Needless to say, check with your doctor before starting squats, or any other kind of exercise program to make sure you are healthy enough to participate. Also, if you ever experience any discomfort, pain, or dizziness during exercise, stop immediately and go get checked out by your healthcare professional.
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So you start doing push-ups, but find that your form is uneven. One side lags behind the other, or you can’t keep your shoulders parallel to the ground. You have a weak area in the chain. Push-ups are a compound exercise, that is, they involve more than one joint. So you need to figure out where you weak point is, and train to correct it. Uneven push-ups can be corrected by doing a number of things, including smaller sets, or partial (range) reps, amongst others that we will discuss.
Can Squats Be Considered Cardio?
Squats are a resistance exercise primarily designed to strengthen and build the muscles of the lower body. As anybody who has ever done squats will tell you, it is not something that most people can do continuously for a long period of time. It’s too difficult. Comparing squats to a typical cardio exercise like jogging is like comparing push-ups to dribbling a basketball. However if you structure your squat workout the right way, it can resemble cardio and have some of the same cardiovascular and fat loss benefits.
