December squats challenge OUT NOW
Yes you heard right. It's back again by popular demand to get our butt and legs toned before Santa arrives. Who remembers this challenge 2 years ago #xmas25squats? It's pretty straight forward, 25 squats everyday until the 25th December. Tag your pictures so we can see where you are doing your squats! What I love about what I do is meeting amazing people and this girl right here, is one of them. It's Zali's ELC teacher who got tagged by her sister in Instagram to join our challenge. So what did I do? I told her lets do some squats! Haha What small world.
Why squats are so good...
Tone Your Backside, Abs and Entire Body
Few exercises work as many muscles as the squat, so it's an excellent multi-purpose activity useful for toning and tightening your behind, abs, and, of course, your legs. Plus, squats build your muscles, and these muscles participate in the regulation of glucose and lipid metabolism and insulin sensitivity, helping to protect you against obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Builds Muscle in Your Entire Body
Squats not only help to build your leg muscles (including your quadriceps, hamstrings, and calves), but they also create an anabolic environment, which promotes body-wide muscle building.
In fact, when you do these properly, squats are so intense that they trigger the release of testosterone and human growth hormone in your body, which are vital for muscle growth and will also help to improve muscle mass when you train other areas of your body aside from your legs.
Therefore squats can actually help you improve both your upper and lower body strength.
Burn More Fat
One of the most time-efficient ways to burn more calories is actually to gain more muscle! For every kilogram - pound of additional muscle you gain, your body will burn an additional 50-70 calories per day. So, if you gain 4.5kgs - 10 pounds of muscle, you will automatically burn 500-700 more calories per day than you did before.
Functional Exercise Makes Real-Life Activities Easier
Functional exercises are those that help your body to perform real-life activities, as opposed to simply being able to operate pieces of gym equipment. Squats are one of the best functional exercises out there, as humans have been squatting since the hunter-gatherer days. When you perform squats, you build muscle and help your muscles work more efficiently, as well as promote mobility and balance. All of these benefits translate into your body moving more efficiently in the real world too.
Maintain Mobility and Balance
Strong legs are crucial for staying mobile as you get older, and squats are phenomenal for increasing leg strength. They also work out your core, stabilizing muscles, which will help you to maintain balance, while also improving the communication between your brain and your muscle groups, which helps prevent falls – which is incidentally the #1 way to prevent bone fractures versus consuming mega-dose calcium supplements and bone drugs.
Prevent Injuries
Most athletic injuries involve weak stabilizer muscles, ligaments and connective tissues, which squats help strengthen. They also help prevent injury by improving your flexibility (squats improve the range of motion in your ankles and hips) and balance, as noted above.
Boost Your Sports Performance - Jump Higher and Run Faster
Whether you're a weekend warrior or a mom who chases after a toddler, you'll be interested to know that studies have linked squatting strength with athletic ability.1 Specifically, squatting helped athletes run faster and jump higher, which is why this exercise is part of virtually every professional athlete's training program.
Help with Waste Removal
Squats improve the pumping of body fluids, aiding in removal of waste and delivery of nutrition to all tissues, including organs and glands. I know this may sound a little offensive but they're also useful for improved movement of faeces through your colon and more regular bowel movements.
xxDani
Your Everyday Fitness Food Motivator