What Is The Difference Between A Leg Press and a Squat?
Monday, July 14, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Is a leg press the same as a squat upside down? Both the squat and leg press bend and straighten the legs against resistance. But something special makes opposite forces on the joints.
The post Exercising With A Friend - Partner Leg Press showed a fun leg press without equipment using a friend for resistance, balance, and teamwork. Reader Nina left the comment on the post: "This could being done another way. Sit on a bench or sumthing (sp) else back-to-back with your partner. Interlock arms sitting straight with your backs pressed together. Rise up and down, and feel the pressure on your leg muscles."
What Nina describes is called a squat or half-squat. The exercise in the post is a leg press. Standing on your feet changes it to a squat.
The squat has opposite joint and muscle dynamics to the leg press. In the kind of leg press described in this post, your body is fixed, and the feet move away. In the squat, the feet are fixed and the body moves. The difference in which end is stationary creates different forces on the muscles and joints.
My students Lily and Biji demonstrate one way to do a fun partner leg press. Hold your body (and head) stable.
To do half-squats with or without a partner, it is usually better exercise and balance training without the bench. There is no need for equipment. Instead, use your own muscles to hold up body weight, rather than sitting or touching down to a bench between each raise. The squat is functional - meaning it uses your body the way muscles need for real life. The key is using the half squat for healthy daily bending instead of "bending wrong." Bending over forward unequally weights the discs of the spine. Over years of bad bending, you can accumulate enough small pushes on the discs to begin to break them down and push them outward toward the back. This is the process of disc herniation. It is not a mysterious situation or a disease process. It is simple mechanics. The resulting disc damage, slippage, herniation, is an injury that can heal, usually easily and quickly when you stop the injury process of bad bending during standing, sitting, and lifting.
Your body needs to practice both kinds of leg resistance to be good at both. Have fun building functional squatting into daily life instead of dong artificial squats in a gym, then bending wrong hurting your discs the rest of your day. Have fun doing leg presses balancing friends and family that move and squirm, instead of ignoring real humans to interact only with artificial stationary gym equipment. Get real fitness with real life.
To prevent knee pain when rowing any craft or machine that uses foot bracing, foot wells, or other foot counter-force, do not push off the ball of the foot, pictured above.
Keep your heels down. Push off the whole foot, feeling the push-off through the heel. You will feel the more muscular strong push in the thigh and hip muscles, and the effort will shift off the knees. You will also get better stretch for the bottom of the foot, called the fascia.
Prevent knees from sagging or rotating inward.
Keep knees parallel and over the ankles.
Use the same heel-down push off to prevent knee pain while ascending stairs - Better Exercise on the Stairs, and when doing leg press exercise and half squats for weight lifting and daily bending .
The prayer of the farmer kneeling in his field to weed it, the prayer of the rower kneeling with the stroke of his oar, are true prayers heard throughout nature. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Fast Fitness - Functional Agility, Flexibility, Strength
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - build balance, leg and hip strength, and flexibility as a lifestyle.
Lightly sit down on the floor and get up again without your hands.
Being able to rise from the floor is natural lifestyle movement, done in many places in the world by people up to the oldest years. My martial arts student Ms. Han demonstrates in the short mpeg movie. Click the arrow to run the video:
How many times do you get in and out of a chair everyday? It could be enough for a fair amount of exercise, if you use muscles instead of leaning forward (photo shows terrible sitting) and flopping down.
At a medical conference last year, a speaker droned endlessly about back surgery (even though Studies Say Back Surgery Not Needed, and you can Fix Disc Pain Without Surgery) and the usual tedious exercises that people must do three times a week (then they do unhealthy movement all day that causes the pain in the first place, or do their exercises in back damaging ways - Common Exercises Teach Bad Bending). An obese physician arriving late plodded to a chair next to me. She laboriously bent over, bending wrong to put her bag on the floor. She slowly bent over forward, bending wrong again to retrieve two cushions from the bag. She bent over wrong again to place one cushion on the chair seat, then again for the second cushion for the chair back. She turned her back to the chair, bent far forward, bent her knees a small amount, so slowly, then slammed her backside down to the chair with a WHUMP. She sat rounded for the rest of the lecture about surgery for disc herniation. Sitting and bending rounded forward is the major cause of disc "disease." To easily avoid disc pain and surgery see Disc Pain - Not a Mystery, Easy to Fix.
What to do instead? Any time you start to sit, check if you lean forward and stick your backside out. You shouldn't need to lean far forward to sit, or rise from sitting. If you have to lean, it is usually a sign of weak legs. If your heels come up as you bend your knees, your Achilles tendons are tight (or you have functional bad Achilles habits). You shouldn't (ordinarily) need to use your hands to sit or rise. Your balance and legs should do the work. Do you sit down heavily, not using leg and hip muscles to decelerate? Why jolt your spine and give up free calorie burning at the same time? Try this now to see:
Stand up, ready to sit -
Start to sit, keeping both heels down on the floor.
Don't lean forward. If you lean, correct it by tilting your hip under and raising your upper body to be straighter.
Keep both knees back over your heels. Don't let knees slide forward.
Keep knees parallel over your heels. Don't let knees sway inward.
Notice how you have to use far more leg and hip muscle, and the pressure of holding your body weight comes off the lower back and knee joints.
Notice if you reach for the arm rests, or other support, out of habit. Use your leg muscles instead.
Sit down lightly.
Start to rise from sitting -
Notice if you lean far forward or raise your heels or jut your chin forward.
Notice if you need to push off your hands.
Notice if your knees comes together. Don't let them.
Change how you rise to put both heels down on the floor, push off your whole foot including heels, and use your leg muscles to rise while holding your upper body more upright without jutting your neck and chin forward.
This is not a bunch of strange rules for sitting, or a weird, contrived exercise, it is just basic concepts for normal healthful daily movement.
The previous post explains why it is not healthy for your back or the best exercise to lean and stick out in back - Aren't You Supposed To Stick Your Behind Out to Sit Down or Do Squats? It covered good knee placement too, so check that if you avoid healthy movement because of knee pain.
Exercise is still thought of as something you go and "do" instead of moving in real life. It's silly to do 10 squats in a gym or using your chair and then go back to unhealthy movement each time you sit or bend during the day. Have comfortable healthful movement all day. Sit and rise easily. That is exercise as a lifestyle.
It's Valentine week. Each post this week will show a fun way to improve health with a friend.
The Partner Leg Press strengthens your legs, hips, and posture muscles, and practices balance and good body position. It can be safely done with children too.
Partner 1 lies face up on the floor with both feet raised.
Partner 2 positions themselves facing down, with Partner 1's feet on their chest or abdomen, and holding their body straight (photo 1).
Partner 1, on the floor, bends knees to lower and pushes legs almost straight, in a leg-press action.
Repeat the leg pressing many times, trying for at least 10 presses, then switch places.
Be careful. This one is so much fun that Partner 2 may drool on, or fall on Partner 1 by accident (or purpose). Have fun on Valentine's Day.
Then try the Partner Leg Press with Partner 2 face up (photo 2). Start by partially sitting with Partner 1's feet on your back, and "walk" your feet away for straight positioning. Do several presses, then switch places.
Why tell a loved one or child you can't spend time with them because you need to go exercise? Instead of making exercise isolating and separating, and something you have to stop your life and disrupt your family to do, make it unifying, friendly, and fun. That is health.
American baseball catchers have the occupational risk of meniscus tears in their knees. Yoga practitioners of certain squatting moves like "the eagle" and the hindu squat are more likely to get the same meniscus cartilage tears and early joint wear and tear. Asians who routinely squat for so many activities of daily life don't get these injuries. The difference is keeping your heels down and your feet facing in the same direction as your knees.
Sitting in a full squat with your heels down and your weight back does not pressure the knees the way squatting with heels up does. Keep both heels down and keep your weight back on your heels.
People who are not accustomed to squatting often find that they are too tight in the Achilles tendon to sit all the way down. Many of these same people do Achilles tendon stretches every day, or at least they do a motion commonly taught as an Achilles stretch, but which barely stretches the Achilles. The "lunge and lean," is the least effective Achilles stretch. The post Better Achilles Tendon Stretch tells why and gives a better stretch to do instead. The squat is another good Achilles tendon stretch. It is a lifestyle stretch for the Achilles and lower back, and a hip, leg, and shin muscle strengthener. You get healthful natural exercise from regular daily life. Even if you can't get down to full sit, bend properly with both heels down for daily bending and you will get a free Achilles tendon stretch every time you bend, which is many many times a day. Holiday Leg and Abdominal Exercise tells more on this.
The trains here in Thailand have the luxury of a bathroom, including a squatting bowl. You can tell new tourists here. They are afraid of the bathroom. When we lived in Japan, even the gleaming modern Bullet train, the Shinkansen, had a spotlessly clean squat fixture. Train bathroomsgive you balance practice too, swaying with the train as it takes you to the next adventure.
Many people are taking down Christmas trees even as the Russian and other Eastern Orthodox families are putting theirs up for Christmas, coming this Saturday Jan 6th. The Russian Snow Girl (Snegurushka), and DedushMoros (Father Frost) have already come to visit. S nastupaiushchim Novym godom i s Rozhdestvom Khristovym - Happy New Year!
Here are two lifestyle strengtheners (and a free Achilles tendon stretch) to build into your fitness as a lifestyle for 2007:
If you would like to get strong legs for the New Year, don't bend over wrong to lift things (upper drawing, left). From now on, make all your bending the way that strengthens your thighs and at the same time prevents back and knee pain (upper drawing, right). Keep your upper body upright and bend your knees. Prevent knee pain and get better use of your leg muscles by keeping both knees down and back over your heels. Each time you keep both heels down while doing healthy bending, you will also get a built-in Achilles tendon stretch. The post How Often Should You Be Healthy? tells more on good bending.
If you want to stop "mystery" lower back pain for the New Year, check to see if you lean backward when you reach upward (lower drawing, left), carry things, or when you are just standing. Leaning back creates overarching of the lower back called hyperlordosis, which pinches and pressures the soft tissue and joints of your spine. People with this kind of pain feel they need to lean over forward or sit to relieve the pain. Instead of doing remedies for pain, it is smarter and healthier to stop the cause of the pain.
The "hip tuck" or "pelvic tilt" to reduce overarching and straighten the spine (lower drawing, right) is described in the post Throw a Stronger Punch (or Push a Car or Stroller) Using This Back Pain Reduction Technique. The muscles you use to move your spine out of unhealthy overly arched position and into straighter position are your abdominal muscles. By simply standing and moving with a healthier spine position, you get free exercise for your abdominal muscles. "Tightening" the abs is not what exercises the abs or prevents back pain. Tightening also does not let you breath or move properly. Tightening is not how to have healthy abdominal function. Instead, use the abdominal muscles to stop overarching and maintain healthy position while going about your daily life and exercise. The post, If Better Abdominal Muscles Are Your New Year's Resolution, Try This, shows how.
If your New Year's Resolution is to have a healthier low back, Achilles tendons, and abdominal muscles, you can do that all at once during your regular daily activities.
The days are becoming longer and light is returning in the Northern Hemisphere. Native Americans, Shinto, Iranian Zorastrians, Buddhists, Christians, and non-faith based traditions all celebrate the winter return of light and life and enlightenment with trees, and lights, and cleaning the house, and giving presents, and lifting things.
In many of these traditions, is written that pain and darkness is high before the return of the light. The upper photo shows pain - unhealthy bending. The lower photo shows "seeing the light" - healthy bending.
For healthy holidays, check your bending for all the cleaning and lifting you do. Don't lean over. Keep your body upright and bend your knees. This bending gives healthful exercise and prevents straining back muscles and herniating (slipping) your lower back discs. Many people think that lifting bent over strengthens back muscles. The problem is that, over years, it also degenerates your discs. Bend right to strengthen without also damaging. Other people refuse to bend right because it hurts their knees. But, done properly with both knees back over your heels, and your weight back over your heels, not toes, you shift body weight off your knee joints and back to your thigh and hip muscles. You will feel the difference as soon as you try it. Healthy leg and hip strengthening without back or knee pain.
For all my friend readers in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, make healthy bending a New Year's Resolution and part of your healthy holidays and stronger New Year.
Bad bending photo by subscription to Clipart.com Good Lifting photo (without halo) by iwona_kellie
I often hear from trainers, and read in exercise books, that you cannot get stronger without lifting weights. They say that body weight is not enough. Then I watch the trainers and read what the exercise books say to do to strengthen. Often the weights they teach to lift are far lighter than the resistance your muscles get from moving your own body during a real life activity.
I see women in exercise classes lifting little two and five pound hand weights, then bend over wrong to put the weights down and bend over wrong again to hoist up their 20-pound handbag. I see knee pain patients in rehab centers with two and three-pound weights strapped on their ankle, sitting down to do little leg raises. Or, they pull stretchy bands with their leg. Then they get up and walk away with injurious body mechanics, letting their knees and ankles sag inward because they are not using their leg muscles to stop it. The unhealthy sagging grinds away joint cartilage and prevents full use of the leg muscles. They don't understand why their knees, ankles, and feet still hurt even when they "Do their exercises."
Your body weight is the most important thing you need to lift. Following are things to start with, to strengthen without a gym or equipment. The main idea of these activities is not to "do" them as an exercise 10 times, but to use them to retrain your muscles how to hold your body in healthy position, then use that healthy positioning for all daily life:
1. Hold a pushup position, called the plank, described in the post Change Common Exercises to Get Better Ab Exercise and Stop Back Pain. Understand that the point of the plank is to learn how to hold your spine straight without sagging under your body weight. I see people doing the plank all the time in gyms and fitness classes, with their bottom hiked up in the air and their low back looking like a hammock, sinking under their body weight. That is not the normal lower back curve. It is injurious overarching. Done poorly this way, the plank does little to strengthen and just pressures your lower back. Done well, the plank is excellent to strengthen your wrist. The wrist is neglected in fitness, and the resulting weakness is a common source of injury. I will post more about wrists. Do the plank every day - that is how helpful and important it is. If you can't even hold up your own body weight, you may have serious weakness.
2. Use the squat for daily bending, described in the post How Good Would You Look From 400 Squats a Day - Just Stop Unhealthy Bending. The point is to use this healthy bending all the time instead of bending wrong. In posts to come, I will show another way for healthy bending using a lunge position with one leg in front and the other in back.
3. If you can't sit and rise from the floor without your hands, you are too weak and tight for ordinary daily life. Try Quick and Easy Strength and Balance Exercise. Also practice getting up from your chair (safely) without using your hands or leaning forward.
5. Hang from a chining bar, a branch, a pipe, a doorjamb, or any secure overhead. Don't worry if you cannot do full pull-ups, just hold on and hang. When you can do that, hang for as long as you can from a bent-arm position, and begin trying to raise yourself (do a pull-up). Maybe you will need to start by stepping up on a box to help raise yourself, and letting yourself slowly lower without using the box. Work up to full pull-ups. If that is easy, use fewer fingers to hold on.
When the above body weight activities become too easy, do them carrying functional weight, such packages, children, books, and other common things. It is crucial to health and independence to be able to lift and move your own body weight. In posts to come I will show you how to do more with these body weight activities for more strength and fun being active. Until then, do these every day and send your photos and stories of how you got stronger and happier.
Make it your New Year's Resolutions to be strong for real life in real ways.
Several readers sent e-mails about the last post, asking about being able to sit on the floor. Many said they are so tight and weak that it is hard for them to get down, and not comfortable to sit comfortably and straight, as in the photo at left. Others wrote applauding that I am getting the message out that sitting comfortably on the floor is a normal ability, not strange or extreme.
First, don't be shy about posting replies and comments on this blog instead of e-mailing me privately. Next, sitting comfortably on the ground or floor is not an advanced athletic contortion. It is an entry-level physical ability that is crucial for normal physical function of your body.
If you don't have the stretch, strength, and balance to do this most basic of movements, you have severe weakness and tightness. It is not just people who don't exercise. I have seen aerobics instructors and personal trainers who cannot sit comfortably straight on the floor. Their hip is so tight from all the forward bending exercises they do that their hip rolls and rounds under them, which shifts their body weight to their discs and lower back. They may do artificial gym exercises, but cannot easily get down to the floor without using their hands because they have not trained movement that is useful to daily life, called functional exercise.
For a quick exercise to improve strength and balance, try this:
Stand up.
Easily and lightly, sit down on the floor without using your hands to get down.
Sit by crossing your ankles and lowering into a cross-legged sit, or by squatting straight down, or lightly and softly kneeling on one knee then sitting. Experiment until you can do all three ways.
Don't thump down hard on the floor. Use your leg muscles to lower softly with shock absorption.
Sit straight without rounding your back forward or curling your hip under you.
Stand up again without using your hands to get up.
Do this "sit and rise" exercise several times in a row. It is more useful and effective than doing little leg raises or presses in a gym. Don't be put off if you can't do this right away. Practice (safely) and you will quickly get stronger and more flexible, with better balance. When your strength improves so much from practicing sitting and rising from the floor that your body weight is not enough to give you exercise, sit and rise from the floor holding children or packages.
You can sit and rise from the floor ten times a day as an isolated exercise then spend the rest of your day sitting in a chair, but it makes more sense to sit and rise from the floor for real life. Sitting on the floor is not a strange or rare thing only done in poor villages far away. It is done in a great part of the world's countries, even in developed cities, and in our home. When you come to eat with us, you will sit at a low table on the floor by the fire. It's nice.
Sitting and rising from the floor is one of the many ways that much of the world gets built-in leg exercise and protects their hip joints from stiffening, arthritis, and bone loss. You will see grandparents easily lifting grandchildren, and other loads. They get bone-building strength, flexibility, and balance every day through their real life, and don't need to buy little machines or go to trainers to do ten little repetitions of an artificial movement. So can you.
Fitness and Health as a Lifestyle for Thanksgiving
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Healthline
If you think you won't have time to exercise over the Thanksgiving holiday, here is good news. This post will show you how to move in healthy ways so that you have healthy exercise built-in to all the cooking, shopping, furniture moving, and social interactions. Here is more good news. You don't have to go to a gym to work off the stress and eating too much of the Thanksgiving holiday. Life is not supposed to be a poison that you deliberately take, then need an antidote to offset.
Here are four of the healthiest, quickest ways to make your Thanksgiving into fitness and health as a lifestyle:
To pick up chairs, babies, and grocery bags, to move furniture, and for lifting things from the floor, bend your knees, keeping your weight back toward your heels, and your body upright.
To carry chairs, babies, grocery bags, furniture, and any loads in front of you, don't lean back. It is a common bad habit to lean the upper body backward, increasing the lower back arch. Leaning backward shifts the weight of the load off your core and arm muscles and onto your lower spine. Get free, built-in exercise for your abs and arms and save your back by standing straight. Don't lean and arch backward to carry things.
Notice all the times you round and hang forward over things that you can easily reach by standing upright. Check your upper back positioning when standing over counters, sinks, grocery bins, vacuum cleaners, cribs and baby-changing tables, and when setting food tables. Don't let your body weight hang over and forward. Stand upright, chin in, and just tilt your head downward in relaxed manner to see what you are doing. Relax shoulders downward. Smile. Breathe.
Preparations and family interactions are no excuse to do unhealthy behaviors out of habit like smoking, overeating, and arguing, then blame it on stress. The bad habits are even more stress on body and mind. If something is wrong, see about fixing it in a good way. Don't suffer in silence with people telling you that you have to be happy just because of a holiday. Make your home healthy for yourself. There is no place it matters more:
Get exercise cleaning the house of junk and clutter. Take the extra clothing, toys, and household items to a shelter. Carry the bags with healthy positioning to the people who need it.
Make a healthy meal with family or alone, without television or phone. Carry the meals to shut-ins and isolated elderly in your neighborhood, and the homeless on the street.
Volunteer at a soup kitchen. Do grocery shopping, cooking, and vacuuming for those who are too sick or disabled or alone to do it for themselves. If you think you don't have time because you have young children, take them with you to help carry things and to teach them healthy ideals, and how thankful they can be for the home you provide.
Don't smoke, drink soda (diet soda is just as unhealthy) eat junk food (even if it has marketing words like "organic" on the label), or undo the health benefits of fruit and vegetables by junking them with cream, sugar, and cornstarch. Add up all you spend on cigarettes and junk food that take a healthy body and give it health problems. Take the money and give to the poor. With what you save on prescriptions and treatments for all the pain and jitters you cause yourself, you can feed a village and still take a vacation.
When you eat the Thanksgiving meal, say thankful things. Taste your food. Turn down seconds. Breathe. Smile. Help clean up. Shoulders back. Enjoy the roof over your head. That is health as a lifestyle.
Readers asked for more pictures of healthy bending around the house and workplace during daily life. They've been getting excited about the idea that daily life is the way to physical ability and health, instead of stopping life to do a bunch of exercises. People spend time and money for endless treatments and gadgets for back and knee pain and tight Achilles tendon. Healthy bending prevents the commonest sources of all of these.
A major predisposing factor of knee and hip arthritis is weak thighs.
A major risk factor of hip osteoporosis is lack of weight bearing exercise.
A major risk factor of falls is weak legs and poor balance.
The Achilles tendon gets a natural stretch with each time you bend right with heels down, and loses this constant normal source of stretch without good bending.
The most important contributor to making a lumbar disc degenerate, or slip out of place (herniate), and press on nerves causing sciatica, is bad bending forward.
The biggest contributor to upper back and neck pain is keeping the upper body rounded and bent over forward.
If you would like to reduce risk of falls, osteoporosis, bad discs, sciatica, achy upper back, and arthritis, get a built-in Achilles tendon stretch, and get strong shapely legs all at the same time, just use your legs with good body position for daily healthy bending.
Why go to the gym or to physical therapy to do knee bends to strengthen your legs, then spend your "real life" weakening your legs and degenerating your lower back discs with bad bending, and say, "I don't have time to exercise."
You will get free built-in exercise just moving in life. My friends and family in Asia are astonished when I tell them I teach Americans how to bend to look in the refrigerator, and that Americans tell me it is too much work to bend right to load dishes in a machine that washes for them. Then they pay money to go to a gym or buy equipment to exercise their legs.
Here is a fun way to change mindset to exercise as a lifestyle:
Count how many times a day you bend and how many times you can choose to harm yourself or help yourself.
If you would like to try "fitness as a lifestyle," this is the best place to start. Think of it:
Free Exercise and Free Back and Knee Pain Prevention - Healthy Bending
Monday, October 02, 2006
Healthline
If you think that not having time to exercise is the problem, here is good news. Thinking that your life and your health are two separate things is the problem. You don't have to stop your life to get exercise.
Look at the drawings, above left. The left-hand drawing shows bad bending - letting weight rock forward, heels lifting, and overly arching the lower back. The right-hand drawing shows healthy bending - keeping weight back, heels down, and the lower back in healthy position, not rounded and not overly arched. Look at the right-hand drawing and try it:
Keep both heels down as you bend your knees.
Keep your upper body as upright as you can.
Use your leg muscles to deliberately pull your knees back so that your weight shifts back over your heels. Shifting your weight back keeps your weight on your leg muscles and off your knee joints. There should be no knee pain with good bending.
Keep your knees back over your ankles. If you just let your weight flop, the knees will come forward. Don't allow your knees to shift forward.
Don't stick your behind out in back. Tuck your hip (tailbone) under you a bit to prevent having a large arch (inward curve) in your lower back. Although it is often taught in exercise and weight lifting classes to stick far out and arch, increasing the arch increases pressure on the joints of your vertebrae, called facet joints, and the soft tissue of your lower back.
Use this good bending every time you reach and bend - even to look in the refrigerator and get in and out of your chair. Don't use your arms to lean on the arm rests to sit down and get up; use leg muscles. If you need to use your arms, or you lean your body forward to sit or rise, you need to improve balance, Achilles tendon stretch, and leg strength. Bending properly does all that for you. (Practice safely. Don't fall down.)
Have a friend take photos of you from the side as you stand and bend, showing how you fixed your bending from unhealthy to healthy during whatever you do all day for work and at home. Write a fun summary and e-mail your photos and stories to me. I will analyse the photos for bending mechanics and will post the best photos and most fun stories.
Realize that a big part of your health is the way you move in real life. Make a conscious decision to change your idea of exercise, fitness, and health from stopping life to "do exercise" to how you live. Have fun - the best health.
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