I was at the barber’s the other day and this old friend of mine I hadn’t seen in YEARS, walked in. It took me a good few seconds to recognize the guy because he’d put on so much weight, he was HUGE!
I didn’t want to be blunt, so I kept it vague. “Wow, you’ve changed!” I said. And you know what he said in reply? “Yeh, I’ve put on weight, but don’t worry I’m GONA JOIN THE GYM”.
How many times have you heard someone fat tell you they’re gona join the gym? Boy, if I had a dime every time…
Here’s my motto. If you can’t lose weight at home, you can’t lose weight at the gym. Every worthwhile exercise in the gym, you can do at home. The only difference is the gym takes at least an extra HOUR out of your day.
With a one hour workout, that’s 2 hours a day! Who the hell has 2 hours a day to spare for exercise?
Who the hell WANTS to spend 2 hours a day on exercise? Especially when this new study shows you can lose weight fast at home, grow muscle and get stronger in less than 10 minutes a day, using zero equipment?
This new study by the National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Kanoya, Japan, now PROVES that busy folk like you and me can lose weight and get that lean beach-body without stepping foot into the cold outdoors. Heck, this exercise is so simple, you can do it in the bathroom and no-one will ever know you work out!
The study took 94 adolescent Japanese boys and split them into 2 groups. A control group who kept to their usual daily routine, and a training group who did 100 bodyweight squats 4-5 days a week for 8 weeks.
By the end of the study, the training group had lowered their body fat count by 4.2% (vs. 0% in the control group), increased lean body mass by 2.7% (vs. 2.0% in control), increased thigh muscle thickness by 3.2% (vs. 0%), increased knee extension strength by 16% (vs. 8%), and increased jump height by 3.4% (vs. 1.8% in the control group).
Lead scientist, Dr Yohei Takai, concluded that “body mass based squat training for 8 weeks is a feasible and effective method for improving body composition, the strength capability of the knee extensors, and jump performance in adolescent boys.”
Now what’s really interesting is these boys were already fit and active. They were taking part in competitive active sports like soccer, track and field, swimming and kendo for 1-3 hours a day, 3-7 days a week.
These boys didn’t have much fat to lose in the first place, and yet they dropped their body fat count down by a whooping 4.2% with this new exercise. So imagine what effect this simple workout would have on a sedentary overweight adult. It boggles the mind, don’t it?
We know that bodyweight squats have been used by many an athlete in the past, not just for losing weight, but for growing big muscles, and developing phenomenal strength, speed and agility.
The Great Gama of India did 500 bodyweight squats a day! He was in undefeated in 5,000 matches.
The Great Gama of India for example, was reported to have done 500 bodyweight squats a day (some say up to 4,000 squats a day!). This guy had legs like tree-stumps, and was undefeated in 5,000 wresting matches.
WHY Is This Exercise So Effective?
Hang on. Don’t you have to jog for 40-60 minutes out in the freezing cold before breakfast to lose body fat?
We’ve all tried that method and we know it doesn’t work. You lose some fat in the beginning, but before long your body adjusts and you find you have to jog for longer and longer to make further progress.
Truth is, more and more studies are now showing that exercising in the fat-burning “zone” is maybe the LEAST efficient way to get rid of that blubber.
The best way forward is a combination of high intensity cardio and resistance training (i.e. lifting weights). Bodyweight squats are the perfect cross between the two.
Not only does this exercise get you winded and your heart beating like a racehorse’s, it also makes your thighs burn like they’re being filled with molten iron.
A 2.5 minute workout may not seem like much, but don’t let the short time span fool you, these easy-seeming squats can get very intense when you put in the reps.
Are Bodyweight Squats Better Than Sprinting?
We know that short, high intensity sprints can help you lose weight VERY fast, but there’s something special about squats that I really think makes them superior.
Unlike with sprints, squats take the largest muscle groups in your body (the quads, hamstrings and glutes), and put them through their full range of motion.
From what I know about post-exercise hormone release, this would lead to bigger hormonal shifts in your body. It kicks your body’s adaptive mechanisms into overdrive, releasing way more fat-burning and growth-stimulating hormones like testosterone and growth hormone.
Plus unlike with sprinting, you don’t need to be outside! What if it’s raining or freezing cold? Bodyweight squats you can do at home and without a treadmill.
But Are Bodyweight Squats Better Than WEIGHTED Squats?
My personal opinion is weighted squats are better – both for losing weight and for growing muscle and strength. Weighted squats stimulate your body’s adaptive mechanisms more than bodyweight squats.
I go into detail about weighted squats in the Chest Sculpting Blueprint.
But hold on.
There is a theoretical advantage of bodyweight squats over weighted squats when it comes to fat-loss, and you’d get best results if you did both types of exercise.
Because of the lower weight and higher repetitions, bodyweight squats do two things that weighted squats don’t:
- Increase mitochondrial density in your muscle cells
- Increase capillary density in your muscles
Mitochondria are the powerhouses in your cells. They are responsible for transforming fats and carbs into energy. This means each mitochondria is like a mini fat-burning furnace. The more mitochondria you have in your muscles, the more efficiently your muscles will burn fat at rest and during exercise.
High repetition resistance training also increases the capillary density within your muscles, more so than heavy weight, low repetition training. This means more blood-flow to your muscles, and an increased ability for you body to deliver nutrients to your muscles that would otherwise be stored as fat.
So here’s my suggestion.
If you want the BEST results, do both – weighed squats and bodyweight squats. Studies suggest that combining high resistance training with the endurance effects of bodyweight squats, increases mitochondrial biogenesis beyond just endurance training alone.
If, on the other hand, you want something quick, easy and convenient that requires minimal space and no equipment, and still promises sustained fat loss, then you’ll get by just fine with just bodyweight squats.
Here’s How You Get Started…
Firstly, here's how you do the exercise…
This is my favorite way of doing bodyweight squats. Moving your arms in front as you descend, forces you to hold your torso a little further back to maintain balance. This reduces the involvement of your hips. To further reduce the involvement of your hips, and put more focus on your thighs, you can do the exercise by going on your tip-toes as you go down.
The most important thing is to never push yourself too hard, or you’ll end up putting yourself off the exercise psychologically.
It’s unlikely you’ll be able to do 100 squats right from the get-go. It’s more likely you can do say 20-30 in one go. So do 20-30, and aim to do 100 in one day, over however many sessions it takes.
Without pushing it, over time you’ll find as your leg muscles adapt, you’ll be able to do more reps in one go. Keep at it until you’re doing 100 a day. Do this 4-5 days a week, or even 7 days if you like.
You can stick to 100 a day, and you’ll get great results. But why not take it further and challenge yourself to reach higher numbers?
After a certain point your legs become so well adapted, that doing squats feels almost like WALKING – you feel like you can do ‘em forever. At this point the mitochondrial and capillary density in your legs are so high that it’ll become difficult for you to put ON weight.
Can You Spare 2.5 Minutes A Day?
Unlike running, swimming, or using weights, you can do bodyweight squats ANYWHERE. The best thing is it’s over in a couple of minutes and you don’t even break a sweat! – so there’s no need to shower.
This exercise goes beyond just helping you to lose weight fast at home. You can do squats when you’re out and about, say in a restroom stall after a heavy meal in a restaurant. So go give it a try. Why not do a set right now and let me know how it feels in the comments section below.
I personally find it kills my thighs, lower back and calves. I feel it in my thighs the most, what about you?
Are Squats Alone Enough For All Your Weight Loss Needs?
They can be for some, but you'd get far better and far quicker results if you combined squats with other powerful testosterone-boosting exercises.
To learn about the most powerful whole-body workout regimen for getting that lean physique you've always wanted, click the link below to learn about chest sculpting:
https://chestsculpting.com/how-to-lose-chest-fat
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Hi
I weigh 220 pound so is it possible to me to do this excerise without hurting my knee?
Thanks in advance
Hi Nada
Not unless you already have problems with your knees? I’ve known guys who are far heavier than 220 pounds manage to do bodyweight squats without hurting their knees. Plus a lot of people who train with weights (me included), commonly lift their bodyweight with squats, with over a hundred extra pounds of weight added onto a barbell.
In a lot of cases, when guys start out with knee pain or knee stiffness, doing bodyweight squats helps to actually heal their knees due to the increased blood flow and extra joint support from stronger and larger muscles in the area. But this totally depends on the cause of your knee pain. If you already have knee pain, then I suggest you see a physical therapist, doctor, or some other fitness/health expert before doing squats… just to be safe :p.
Hi, it’s great what you explained above. You mentioned Bodyweight Squats and WEIGHTED Squats but talked and put on a video about bodyweight squats only. Am intrested to know about weighted squats too and how to do it. Thanks.
Jinor
Ayims.
I will do a video and article on weighted squats in the near future. Thanks for the reminder, just been really busy with other things lately.
Holy moly my thighs are burning…I could only do 25 before my low back started to ache. Thanks for the great tutorial and video.
Hi,
Thanks for the article. I just want to ask, can I actually lose weight by doing squats only?
thanks
Hi Mikha
You sure can, though you’d get far better and quicker results if you also went on a low-carb diet, and incorporated some whole-body weight training into the mix.
Thank you for the article, squats works the whole body
I found that doing 150 a day has helped me bring down my blood sugar levels to Around 6.2 millimolls with controlled diet, which is really great as I am diabetic type 2.
Nice one Trevor
I sometimes stop doing these in pursuit of other exercises using weights, such as the barbell squat. I suffer from arthritic pain in my left knee, due to a past injury. I’ve realized that where barbell squats don’t seem to help, whenever I get back to doing high rep bodyweight squats, my knee gets back to normal.
Do you do those 150 all in one go?
Yes my thighs burn like hell but it’s worth it,a great workout all round.
Hi Gary,
I have read your other posts that working out the same muscle groups everyday is not good. It needs time for recovery. But here you say do squats every day. Is this ok? is this not overtraining?
Hi Adarsh, thanks for your question.
In this case, it’s OK because with bodyweight squats, since you are doing more than 20 reps at a time, you are causing very little muscle microtrauma. It’s more of a metabolic workout than a muscle hypertrophy workout. Less time for recovery is needed for these kind of light weight workouts.
Hey there, Garry.
Thanks for this awesome tip! Recently my younger sister has been worrying about her weight so much, that she wants to lose weight before the winter holiday ends. Is this exercise okay for girls? If so, I would love to show this to her.
Hi Bobby, yes, it’s equally effective for women. Get your sister started on this and let us know how she gets on. Remember to also get her to fix her diet too. Check out the diet section of this site for more info.
Hey.
I started today. With squats. I did 210. But not in one go. I do 50 and rest a bit and do more there after till I can’t anymore and its 210. But my weight is 118 kg. Is ot fine to push myself so hard. I want to be again 85kg. I’m 18 yo. Tanx
Hi Mike
Don’t push yourself too hard in one go, you’ll end up just giving up, and you might even push your body into overtraining, in which case you’ll have a hard time growing muscle or losing weight (due to hormonal derangement, esp low testosterone levels). Bodyweight squats can help, but you’d be better off with weighted squats and other weight training exercises. Check out the following video for advice on how to train:
https://chestsculpting.com/chest-sculpting-core-exercise-dvd-series/
Also, make sure you fix your diet too, since diet is 85% of the game. You can learn more about diet here:
https://chestsculpting.com/category/diet/
I started off with 10 squats a day…I went to 30, 50 and now 100…My body is BEAUTIFUL!!!! I was 25lbs overweight..not any more!!! My husband LOVES this website!!!
THANKS!!!
Wow, awesome! Sounds like you’ve made some excellent progress Cathy. If you can, do post up your before and after pictures, to help motivate the rest of us. Would love to hear from your husband too.
Also, do you do those 100 squats all in one go, or do you space them out. If the latter, how do you space them out? Do you do 50 squats twice a day? Or 10 squats 10 times a day? Or something else?
Heyy garry , i want to lose weight form lower body and burn the hard fat there so many people say that squat make the butt bigger and i saw squat b4 and after and it seems the butt bigger , so what should I do :(
Hey Basil.
You don’t need to worry about your butt getting bigger if you are doing bodyweight squats as suggested in this article. Bodyweight squats put very little stress on the hips compared to weighted squats, so your butt does not get nearly as much of a workout as your thighs.
Barbell back squats however, do make the butt bigger.
If you want to do weighted squats, a great alternative is the weighted front-squat, with your heels elevated on a plank. This exercise takes a lot of the movement off your hips (so your butt doesn’t get bigger), and concentrates most of the effort on your thighs. I write about this exercise in detail in my program, the Chest Sculpting Blueprint.
Thank u very much , i will keep squating to lose this stubborn fat! , now i feel my thighs are stronger!
Probably one of the best videos i’ve seen on how to do the squat properly
This is OK results for such little work but I hope no one misunderstands the results. It does not mean their body fat percentage went down by 4.2%, as in, it was 14.2% and now it is 10%. It means if it was 14% then it is now reduced by 4.2% to 13.4%. I verified my understanding by reading the study.
Thanks, Tony! I had been wondering about that. So, the whopping fat loss results come out to about a pound each. I’m sure it’s still worth doing, but it’s not quite as amazing as it first sounded.
For a guy who wants to loose man boobs and already has his nutrition on track would squating give the same results as HIIT.
Hi. When you say you have your nutrition on track, what do you mean? I’m totally against low calorie diets and low fat diets, in my experience, both of these types of diet make it very difficult to get rid of man boobs. What I recommend instead, that my clients go on a low carb diet. Of course, there’s more to losing man boobs than just going on a low carb diet, but a low carb diet is a VERY important piece of the puzzle.
Squatting (if done correctly) will give you bigger thigh muscles, greater whole-body muscle growth, and better testosterone boosts to help you lose your man boobs. HIIT (also if done correctly) will still give you great testosterone boosts (though not as much as squatting will), and it’s better for generalized body fat reduction (which also helps get rid of man boobs).
If I had to pick one form of exercise, I would pick whole body weight training over HIIT, but the best way forward is to do both form of exercise. Not only will each form of exercise help you lose man boobs via different mechanisms, they also complement one another very well.
Resistance training increases your strength, thereby helping you perform better at HIIT.
HIIT improves your cardiovascular fitness, which helps you perform batter at resistance training.
The better you perform in both of these types of exercise, the bigger the testosterone boosts you get.
You can learn more about how to do resistance training to lose your man boobs in my program, the Chest Sculpting Blueprint, here:
https://chestsculpting.com/how-to-lose-chest-fat
And you can learn more about the best form of HIIT for losing man boobs, here:
https://chestsculpting.com/paleolithic-high-intensity-interval-training
Are you doing 100 squats (or your max) all in one set, or are you breaking them up into 20 reps, 20 seconds rest, repeat? or does it not matter? Is the goal to be able to do 100 squats in one rep?
Hi Caitlin
100 squats in one go can be your goal, but it doesn’t have to be. The participants of this study didn’t do 100 squats in one go. You should aim to do 100 squats in total throughout the day.
I personally started by doing 3 sets of 25 squats, making a total of 75 squats. I’d do one set of 25, rest 30 seconds, and do another set of 25, rest 30 seconds again, and do my final set of 25.
As this got easier, I added in a 4th set of 25, to make a total of 100 squats.
As time went on, I managed to reduce the 30-second rest interval to 20 seconds, then 10 seconds, and eventually I was able to do 100 squats in one go.
Will my thighs get bigger? I have PCOS which means that for being a girl, my testosterone levels are very high naturally and therefore make me gain weight easily
Hey Jeisha, chances are your thighs will get at least slightly bigger, but to what extent you’ll never know till you give it a try :p.
I know squats are good exercises, but how will they help my chest and are pushups good for the chest?
Hi Drago. Squats will help by boosting your metabolism and helping you to burn generalized body fat including chest fat. They also help raise testosterone levels, which is important for getting rid of man boobs.
what is the difference between bodyweight squats and weighted squats?
With bodyweight squats you’ll end up doing more volume, so it focuses on muscle endurance and cardiovascular fitness. You do get a lot of muscle growth and strength with bodyweight squats, but not as much as you would with weighted squats.
Weighted squats put added strain on the lower back. On one hand this makes your lower back stronger, on the other hand it can lead to lower back injury, especially if you overtrain or use improper form.
Hi Garry, can squats trigger puberty changes because they raise testosterone?