13/10/2023
💥 The squat is “gateway drug” to strength, and more strength equates to a better life.
What if I said that the key to becoming a successful personal trainer or strength coach was getting your clients to master the skill of strength at a basic level?
It’s like this…
Your ability to produce fast results for your clients and athletes, while avoiding injuries, is the #1 skill you can possess as a professional personal trainer or strength coach.
👉 Strength is the “mother” of all fitness qualities.
You have a more functional, able-bodied, healthy client when you have a stronger client.
They can climb stairs without being out of breath, carry their groceries without help, play with their kids without exhaustion, and perform better in their training sessions without fatigue.
When you have a stronger athlete, you have a better athlete with more potential to dominate in their sport.
They can run faster, jump higher, throw further and hit harder.
Their bodies become more resistant to injuries, and their mental toughness improves, giving them the upper hand over the competition.
✅ Make no mistake about it; everyone needs strength in their lives.
▪️Stay-at-home moms with busy schedules.
▪️CEOs running a company at a high level.
▪️Weekend warrior and fitness enthusiasts
▪️Grandparents who wants to play with their grandkids.
In the realm of fitness, maximal strength is the “rising tide” that raises all ships.
When your clients get stronger, their body composition improves because they're building lean muscle.
They burn body calories at a higher rate because of the metabolic cost to maintain that new lean muscle tissue.
Their bones, joints, tendons, and ligaments get stronger because those tissues adapt to stress while under load and hypertrophy.
And the best part, their outlook on life becomes more positive because life is just better when you are stronger.
💣 If you want to separate yourself as a PT or coach and become the authority in your marketplace, you must become excellent at getting your clients strong.
And no other exercise is better suited to creating quick gains in strength than the squat.
The squat is the most fundamental and functional movement that exists in world of strength training.
Every single one of us stood up from a deep squat the very first time we learned to stand and walk.
In many countries, the squat is how one sits and rests.
Can’t squat? You’re in trouble.
Some would say squats are also the most versatile strength-building exercise.
Almost everyone can squat to some degree.
And everyone should be able to squat to the best degree that they can achieve.
With the squat, you can regress any variation to accommodate someone with a movement restriction or an injury.
Likewise, you can progress any squat variation to allow for a more significant challenge, a greater overload or a more intense training stimulus.
Too busy to perform an entire training session?
Just squat!
Perform 4-6 sets of 5-8 reps, and you'll have completed an excellent workout in minimal time.
As a personal trainer or a strength coach, you'll always need to understand the squat and its relevance to your client based on their training goals.
🤔 But here's the big problem:
Getting clients to squat exceptionally well can be a massive challenge.
Because squats are such a significant, bang-for-your-buck movement, they can be the best, or the worst exercise for your client, depending on their current state of health and fitness.
You’ll need to know how to approach the squat when you encounter clients of different body types, movement or mobility restrictions, and levels of training experience in the gym.
You’ll need to grasp how to program and periodize the squat relative to your client’s or your athletes' specific goals.
You’ll also need to develop assessment skills and the ability to make quick decisions based on what you see in real-time with a client's movement quality.
This will help to know if your client should be squatting right now in their program, and if so, which squat variation is the best option for your client.
▪️ Low bar squats?
▪️ High bar squats?
▪️ Front squats?
▪️ A regression of one of those movements?
Just throwing any client into the weight room on day one with a bar on their back and telling them to squat is extremely negligent as trainer or a personal or strength coach.
It's also a sure way to get clients injured if you don't know what you are doing.
We all want those clients who can pay our rate, commit to doing the work, and value coaching.
We want clients who will refer their friends and colleagues because they love the results they achieve.
We get those clients by skilling up and mastering our craft.
💰 Investing time, energy, and resources into learning how to coach, assess, and train the squat can be one of the most important things you can do as an elite personal trainer or strength coach.
To quote the great strength coach Mark Rippetoe (author of Starting Strength):
“Just shut up and squat.
There is simply no other exercise that produces the level of CNS activity, improved balance and coordination, skeletal loading and bone density enhancement, muscular stimulation and growth, connective tissue stress and strength, psychological demand and toughness, and overall systemic conditioning than the full range of motion squat …”
