April 2013 - Andrew Elsass

That zit on your nose. The small spot on the back of your shirt. That awkward laugh you made right as the room got quiet. And all the other things everyone silently judges you for. Or so you think.

It’s a human inclination to think the world revolves around you. This is egocentrism, and it is the result of a bias of the mind, something we are born into. The inability to see from another’s point of view somewhat diminishes with age (in varying degree by person), but takes a considerable amount of effort and mental awareness to discard completely.

Psychologists call this the ‘spotlight effect’; the idea that everyone in a social setting is watching, analyzing, and critiquing your every move and everything else about you.

People only know what they have learned from their own experiences and through their point of view. Discussing and reading other’s accounts of a situation can give a better idea, but it is impossible (or at least incredibly difficult) to truly put oneself in someone else’s shoes.

Even in our age of extreme egocentrism and vanity (i.e., social media) the reality is that no one really cares about you.

While this might sounds harsh at first, it is an incredibly freeing realization to learn that no one is judging you because they are too busy worrying about you judging them.

The fact is they are bothered about the stain on their shirt, and with worrying if people will perceive the pictures they just posted on Facebook as a wild party or a lame one.

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A study in 2000 demonstrated this idea perfectly.

College student participants were sent candidly into a room full of their peers while wearing a Barry Manilow shirt. While the participants were convinced that the entire room would notice the monstrosity they were sporting, less than 50% of the peer group could recall the shirt when asked in a post-study interview.

So fret not if you get behind on your laundry and have to wear that shirt from the back of your closet out to the store…chances are no one is going to notice, anyway.

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When I was about 11, my parents took me to see The Truman Show. In it, Jim Carrey’s character is unknowingly cast into a reality TV show when he is an infant. His every move is watched by a worldwide audience on his own dedicated channel, 24/7, 365.

Seeing this film as an (extremely) late bloomer who had not yet come even close to developing the ability to consider others’ perspectives, it screwed me up. Big time.

As I had not yet dispelled the idea that everyone was obsessed with my every move, my brain now had to consider both the possibility that this scheme was not only true, but to an extreme extent.

I even entertained the notion that the directors of ‘my show’ made me watch The Truman Show in order to plant the idea that my life could also be a reality show, and to see if I would make attempts to figure everything out. Nevermind that I lived in a landlocked state in the middle of the country (the film takes place on a man-made island inside a giant production studio so that Truman could be contained geographically).

This went on for an embarrassingly long time (again, beyond a late bloomer). I am not really sure what finally snapped me out of it, but it was an extremely liberating feeling.

(Unless I am actually on a TV show, in which case my viewers are dying from irony-induced laughter as I write this).

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Once the mind is free from this pattern of thinking, it allows you to focus on much more productive things, like the world around you, knowing your true self, and creating great work.

So shed the spotlight, and see the light.

And don’t let your kids watch The Truman Show until they are 25.

There is never an absolute answer to everything, except of course that you have to do your squats.
-Mark Rippetoe, American strength coach and author

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More than any other exercise, none has been more vilified- or misunderstood- than the squat.

Which is massively ironic considering that people- especially those with desk jobs- perform multiple squats every waking hour of their life.

Getting up from your office chair, out of your car, or even off the toilet… if you are going from a sitting position to standing or vice versa, you are squatting.

Why wouldn’t you train a movement that has a direct carryover to your everyday life?
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Like barefoot-style running and diet, squatting is another one of those things that humans did one way for a million years, and now that we’ve changed it up in the last few hundred we have a plethora of new maladies.

Unfortunately with squatting, the solution to the problem isn’t as simple as orthopedics or medicine, but surgery.

Squatting to the ground is a natural range of motion for our species, and the natural position in which to relieve oneself. There is a reason toddlers go into a squat when they are beginning their potty training or picking something up off the ground– it’s how our bodies are designed.

The sitting toilet as we know it is unique to Western society (a few European nations being notable exceptions), and surprise- there are lower incidences of colon and pelvic disease in nations that use a squatting method to go to the bathroom.

Around the time the sitting toilet became in vogue in Victorian England and eventually the rest of Western civilization, so too did appendicitis, irritable bowel syndrome, colon cancer, and other fun diseases known mostly only (even today) to squatting nations.

The short of it is that our organs don’t empty themselves completely and properly when sitting versus squatting- consider gravity for even a few seconds and you’ll get the picture.
How could this movement ever possibly be a detriment to your health?
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While tearing out your commode might not be a realistic solution, there is another way for our bodies to reclaim the flexibility and range of motion that gets lost by sitting all day: with a barbell, of course.

When a squat is done properly (i.e. with the hip crease going to parallel, or below, if possible), virtually the entire body is being strengthened from the ankles through the abdomen through the arms that are securing the bar against the back. And of course the quadriceps, hamstrings, and glutes get their fair share of the load, too.

Contrary to the popular misconception that squats are bad for your knees and back (which is ridiculous- when a squat is performed properly most of the force is taken in the hips anyway), the movement has been said to prevent and deter injuries by way of strengthening the stabilizing muscles, ligaments, and tissues that surround the knee.

Where did these misconceptions come from? Similar to many of the myths that have become ‘conventional knowledge’ in the world of diet, many believe deep squatting is bad for your knees and spine because of some bad science that has been perpetuated for decades, despite studies proving the contrary.

When injuries occur while squatting, the cause is usually from the athlete only going into a partial squat. In these, only the quadriceps are activated and the movement never reaches its natural conclusion, forcing the knees to absorb a tremendous amount of stress in order to halt the movement.

Conversely, in a full depth squat, the hamstrings and glutes are activated when the hips drop below parallel, which in turn balance out the load distribution evenly on both sides of the knee.

Partial squats are also the source of the myth that the movement is bad for your spine. Rippetoe:

“Another problem with partial squats is the fact that very heavy loads may be moved, due to the short range of motion and the greater mechanical efficiency of the quarter squat position. This predisposes the trainee to back injuries as a result of the extreme spinal loading that results from putting a weight on his back that is possibly in excess of three times the weight that can be safely handled in a correct deep squat. A lot of football coaches are fond of partial squats, since it allows them to claim that their 17 year-old linemen are all squatting 600 lbs. Your interest is in getting strong (at least it should be), not in playing meaningless games with numbers. If it’s too heavy to squat below parallel, it’s too heavy to have on your back.”

Like with any new exercise, start slow and with light weight. Even if you are just squatting with your body weight or an empty bar in the beginning, you are guaranteed to be sore in the days following, and your strength gains the next time you go to squat (or to stand up) will be more than apparent.

In lieu of keeping this post a readable length, squats will make athletes (and anyone) more explosive, give them stronger abs and core strength, increase their vertical, increase bone density, make them more flexible, run faster, help achieve normal hip function, and of course give them a bomb ass.

Essentially it makes anything you could possibly do, in or outside the gym, easier.

Even if your athletic focus is on more cardio-oriented sports like running or cycling, cross training with squats is going to be incredibly beneficial. If, in the case of running and cycling, your power output on every stride or pedal is X, and that power is coming from your quads, hamstrings, and the rest of the posterior chain, doing something to increase the output of that X variable is only going to make you faster at your given discipline.

To cite Rippetoe one last time, “All other things being equal, the stronger athlete always wins.”
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Anecdotal evidence: When I lived in New York for six months I didn’t make enough money to join a gym, so my workouts had to consist mainly of body weight exercises and running. While I would throw in air squats from time to time, it wasn’t enough.

After a few months of being away from a barbell and squatting, I couldn’t even run anymore as the pain in my right knee became too unbearable for me to jog for longer than a minute. My knee had become weak.

How do I know that was the problem?

Fast forward to after I had moved back to Ohio and was again on a regular squat routine, I tried running again after a month or two and was able to crank out four miles without a hint of knee pain.

The problem is not with the squat. It’s with the sit.

Month: April 2013

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