Know your exercises: Box squats

Having difficulty performing free squats? Start with box squats

Written By: Bhakti Paun Sharma | Updated : August 23, 2016 10:24 AM IST

Squats are an effective exercise for lower back strengthening, toning of thighs, hips and legs. However, beginners often face difficulty in achieving proper squat postures or positions. To make your task easy, begin with box squats. As the name suggests, boxes of different heights are used in this exercise. The box can be replaced by benches, stools or even chair. You begin with a box that is just below your hips. Once you are comfortable, you can decrease the height of the box or bench till you finally achieve maximum range of motion as in a free squat. Prosenjit Biswas, Fitness Manager, Skulpt, Kolkata gives you more tips on getting the maximum out of box squats.

How to do box squats correctly

Your feet should be parallel to your shoulders and the toes need to be pointed slightly outward.
One should keep in mind that the knee should not cross the toe level while attempting box squat.
To keep your back upright, one would need to keep their arms straight, slightly above shoulder level. This can also help improve any posture issues with regards to thoracic spine mobility.
The box squat is done to improve the squat posture. Hence, you need to go down and touch the bench, box or chair (whatever you use) while doing the squat, and not sit on it.

You can get toned legs and a sculpted butt with this variation of squats.

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Benefits of box squats

The first progression of squats would be the box squat. For those who have problems while doing squat posture normally stemming from restrictions in ankle mobility/ knee stability/ hip joint mobility/ thoracic spine mobility should start their squatting exercises with box squat. Since squats are structural exercises, it is involved in everyday life. A large number of body muscles are used while squatting and hence leads to overall toning. Squatting correctly is essential to strengthen the lower body muscles to support lifestyle movements. Also, try these 5 variations of squats to get killer legs.

Box squats vs regular squats

It s safer than regular squats for beginners or people with issues like hip-joint mobility, thoracic spine mobility, instability of knees or other injuries. Box squats can be divided into 3 categories high, moderate and low. Here s how squats help you burn lower body fat.

Since the range of motion in high box squats is lower, it is advisable for beginners who have lack of stability or mobility. The idea is to engage muscles in the lower body. Once the movements are better, the range of motion is increased and moderate box squats is attempted. The normal height of a moderate box squat is just below knee level. After which, one can attempt low box squats where the range of motion is higher. The average height of the lower box used in performing these squats would be below calf muscles.

After you achieve the ideal posture i.e. low box squats, you can attempt the free squat where the range of motion is highest and muscle involvement increases.

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