The Side Squat:
A good friend and associate of mine is a diet coach, personal trainer and competitive natural heavyweight bodybuilder named Dennis Santos. He has a vast resource of information regarding health and fitness and this includes strength training for sports.
Here is one of his exercises for the lower body, and in particular, side to side movements that many athletes will find themselves engaging in, whether its the infield in baseball, defense in basketball or football, and even hockey. It’s called the side squat and this information was taking from a personal training video I did with him a little while back. I will let Dennis take it from here:
“We are going to cover an exercise now that I like to call the side squat. It’s kind of a variation of a side lunge but the difference is that we are not pointing the toes in the direction in which we are going. You will see what that means here in a second but what this exercise is ideal for is having to maintain core stability and strength even when you are off balance which basically means having to maintain posture and strength in sports during most activities.
That’s exactly what athletes do during most sport activities so this is great for athletes but it’s also moving into the body building world. It’s great for developing the outer part of the quadriceps or the lateralis quadriceps and also developing stability around the hips which calls into play the glutes and the abductors and adductors. So let’s get started with this exercise.
You are going to notice that as my athlete here, named Eric, takes his step to the side, his leg, the leg that’s trailing stays pretty straight and this is something that’s really hard to do especially when you are starting. The other thing you want to look at here is that as you are going down into that position, your back stays straight. The same rules apply in the regular squat, you are looking forward, you are keeping balance and you are getting deep into the movement. See Figures 1a, 1b and 1c.
Figure 1a.
Figure 1b.
Figure 1c.
It’s basically a one legged squat from the side. So this is the side squat and again it’s a great exercise for the abductors and the adductors as well as the lateral part of the quad as well as the muscles that stabilize the hip, as well as the core. So a great movement especially for athletes who have to be able to change positions really quickly, or react to the hit of a baseball in a moments notice. I like to incorporate this into my workouts as it also helps to define my legs really well. So again, this is a side squat.”
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