BEFORE YOU SQUAT, Understand the ANATOMY Behind it! (What Muscles Squats Actually Work)

What's up guys, Michael Kamalu, medical student at the Mayo Clinic here with Gains Without Pains. Today we're going to talk about the king of all lifts and that is the squat. For those of you who have been skipping leg day, repent. If you've been doing leg day but skipping squats, repent. There's an incredible number of proven benefits to the squat. It increases strength in almost your entire body. It improves circulation. If you do it right, it improves joint health, decreases cellulite, improves flexibility, builds your core strength, helps you get better posture. In men, it's been proven to increase the level of testosterone in your body. You get a better butt and a thousand other benefits. But squatting is also the number one way that people injure themselves at the gym because they do it wrong. Although squatting does work almost every muscle in your body either directly or indirectly, for our purposes right now, I'm going to walk you through the muscles that it targets the most. Here's everyone's favorite, the gluteus maximus. It originates on the surface of what's called the ilium and the lateral border of the sacrum and then travels down and inserts on your femur, which is the bone that runs the length of your upper leg. So when it contracts, it brings your femur closer to your pelvis. Now the gluteus maximus actually has a few other roles besides hip extension and therefore other ways that you can target it, but for now we'll just focus on the squats. Now in the squat, the gluteus maximus actually doesn't fully engage until your knees pass 90 degrees, which I will go over later. The muscles that are activated most during the first 90 degrees of the squat are your quads. Now the quads are called quads because they're a group of four muscles. The rectus femoris, vastus lateralis, vastus medialis, and vastus intermedius, which lies under the rectus femoris. Although we group them together, these muscles do have slightly different origins and therefore slightly different actions. In a general overview, they pass the knee joint and insert on what's called the tibial tuberosity. So when you contract them, they extend the knee. And the last muscle that squatting that I'm going to go over in this video is the adductor magnus. As you can see, it's a massive muscle that makes up a large portion of your interior thigh. And because it has multiple origination and insertion points, it has several roles. For example, it's actually activated during both flexion and extension of the hip, but its main role is actually in the name. Adductor magnus adducts the leg. Adduct means to bring towards and is the opposite of abduction. Abduction, adduction. So if you think about it, when you're squatting down, the natural tendency would be for your legs to separate. And so the adductor magnus has to work hard to keep them together and is in large part responsible for stability. So those are the three main muscle groups we're going to focus on for squats. A lot of people think that squatting actually works your hamstrings as well, and they do get some activation, but their main role is actually the opposite of the quads. They work to flex or bend the knee, the opposite of what you're doing in squats as you push against to extend the knee. So to target the hamstrings, there's other lifts that you need to do, which we will go over later. Now, I'll be honest with you. I didn't squat for years because it hurt my knees and my back. And I thought I was just going to have to work legs other ways until I learned several key tips that brought me back into the squat game. And I am super excited to share those with you guys. Stay tuned for my next several videos because I'm going to give you some tips that will allow you to do these squats, build up those glutes and quads without any pain or injury.