Squats are without a doubt some of the most popular leg exercises. They are extremely efficient and extremely easy to perform. Easy in terms that you do not need any equipment and you can do them literally anywhere. Squats are performed by children, adults, elders, men and women, professionals, and beginners. Squats are a great way to see your leg muscles grow. But, are squats cardio or strength training? Don’t blame yourself if you’re confused. In fact, this is still a world debate.
You may see a lot of gym-goers squatting in the weight section. But then you can go to a cardio class and you may notice that they are performing the squats as well! That’s why most people are confused – is squatting considered a type of cardio? Or is it mostly within the strength training workout?
Well, mostly, squats are seen as strength training by most fitness gurus and enthusiasts. That’s because they are resistance exercises that will do a great job of building strength and muscle in the lower body. Nonetheless, it looks like depending on how exactly you do them, they will also have great cardiovascular benefits as well. Usually, these are associated with cardio. That’s why, they can actually extend into both fitness types.
The Difference Between Cardio and Strength Training
Often, you may hear people saying that you need strength training or cardio. Or maybe even both. But what exactly do they mean? Before we go any further, we should rule out what cardio exactly is and what is categorized as strength training.
Cardio
Cardio, also known as cardiovascular exercises, is defined as any type of exercise that raises your heart and breathing rate. In this case, weightlifting could also be classified as cardio, isn’t it? No. Indeed, during weight lifting, your breathing and heart rate can increase, but it won’t increase as much as it would during cardio and not in all types of exercises. For example, there’s a bench press with maximum weight. Professionals tend to bench press 1-3 times. That’s definitely not going to increase your heart rate too much. Cardio exercises need to work and challenge your cardiovascular system. Therefore, weight lifting is not cardio.
Cardiovascular exercises do not work your muscles until failure. It mostly works your cardiovascular system until failure. The goal of cardio is to improve fitness, endurance, and health. Therefore, specific workout types such as HIIT or sports are cardio. Such as football and basketball. But there are numerous other cardio exercises as well. Some examples are running, skipping, cycling, swimming, power-walking, and others.
Strength Training
As long as your goal is to build muscle, strength, and endurance, however, cardio isn’t very helpful. As long as you want to become bigger, strength training is what you need to focus on. Exactly like cardio, there are obviously different types of workouts. It depends on your exact goals. From powerlifting (mostly focusing on strength) to hypertrophy training (mostly focusing on growth).
Usually, for cardio exercises, you need little to no equipment. But for strength training, you usually need various tools for your workouts. Implement them into your workouts in order to assist your muscle growth. Challenge yourself with the following ones: barbells, free weights, weight machines, resistance bands, and others. But you can still do a lot with your own body weight.
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So, are squats cardio or strength training?
The lack of tools or some equipment doesn’t indicate that an exercise is considered cardio or weight training. That’s why, what are squats? As earlier said, squats generally seem to go under the umbrella of strength training. That’s even if you were to do squats with only your body weight without the use of a dumbbell or barbell. It is still a resistance exercise. That’s because you use your own weight against gravity in order to complete the move. But you’re still going to experience great cardiovascular benefits from squats. As I earlier said, it greatly depends on how you do them.
For example, if you do lots of them fast and explosively, they will reap more cardiovascular effects compared to squatting less with weights slowly and deeply.
How To Perfect Your Squat?
There are a lot of types of squats. You can look at some of them and give them a try. But it’s obvious that in order to do any other form of squatting, you need to perfect your good old classic squat. So, we’re going to focus on it.
A good starting point is to have your feet hip-width apart. Keep your toes facing forward. Some people may prefer a wider or narrower stance, but generally, hip-width apart is the most common. Engage your core and squat down. Push your hips back. Your knees need to face outwards. Yet, your shoulders, back, and chest should go all upright. For the maximum results (perfecting your squat), you should aim to hit that 90-degree angle. It means that your thighs are parallel to the ground. For beginners, I recommend aiming to get as low as possible. That’s a work in progress.
From that position, you should push into your heels and stand up, back at the starting position. I recommend trying to make this part of the movement as powerful as possible. You should keep your proper form.
Strength Focusing Squats
Many people aim to build strength and muscle in your lower body. If you’re one of them, here you will find some ways to get more such benefits from your squats.
Add Some Weight
It’s pretty obvious that before you proceed to add some weight, you need to make sure that you first have a good form using only your body weight. If so, you can add weight. Of course, with more experience (and depending on goals) you can add more weight. Generally, you keep a progressive overload to your training as you improve in order to keep improving. Progressive overload (as in any other exercise) means that you are challenging your body by making the muscles work harder than they used to work before. You start by going with your body weight, then adding a lightweight, then adding more and more.
Add Resistance
An awesome way to improve your squats is to include resistance bands in your workouts. Resistance bands come in different levels allowing you to adjust to what suits you best. As with weights, you should choose the one that makes it challenging, but still allows you to keep your form. Two popular ways to use resistance bands include:
- Wrap the band around your knees. This is the most popular method because it is simple, yet it makes it harder to spread your legs. It forces you to pay more attention to your knees to make sure that you will not buckle. With its help, it will make more glute muscles work.
- Step on the resistance band. You need a longer band to perform it. You need to stand on one end with both feet and then wrap the other end around your neck. From this position, the band is loose when you squat, but the resistance is higher when you stand back up.
Cardiovascular Focusing Squats
You will follow the strength-based squats if you wish to grow strength and muscle in your lower body. But if you want to include squats in your cardio routine, you will need to read on. Below you will find various ways for you to approach squats in order to reap maximum cardiovascular benefits from them.
Keep Doing More and More
In order to progressively overload your cardio-based squats, you need to add in more reps and sets. It’s obvious that you will gain some strength too, but strength training or cardio training are both forms of training. Of course, there are lots of similarities. But by adding more reps and sets you will earn yourself a lot of cardio rewards too. Especially if you do a higher volume of squats.
Considering that this is mostly about quantity (but do not forget about proper form), you do not need to add much (if any) weight. So, you just aim for a number. Either number of sets (such as 5 sets of 10 reps), or number of reps (such as 2 sets of 25 reps). Or, you could strive to do as many reps as possible in a certain period of time. Or simply do as many reps as possible in one or two rounds, for example. Regardless, it will greatly help you get your heart pumping.
Add In A Jump
If you add in a jump, that most definitely makes it more of a cardio type of exercise than strength training. That jump means that you are going to challenge your cardiovascular system and it is going to improve the power through your heels in your extension. If you add the jump at the top of the movement it will allow for a seamless transition into the next rep.
Add Pulses
Pulse squats are squats types that do not go the full range of motion. You go down, but when you’re at the bottom of the squat, you pulse up and down before finishing the rep. Now it may not sound like it is going to offer much of an effect, but if you do it, you’ll see it is a killer. That is going to increase the burn in your lower body and will add some pulses (make your heart rate increase). Overall, it makes you work a bit harder.
Squats The Bottom Line
So, as said, squats are mostly considered a form of strength training exercise. Nonetheless, as we have learned in this article, depending on how exactly you perform the move, it can change the benefits from muscle building to better cardiovascular health.
In the end, regardless of the way you decide to do your squats, I strongly recommend you keep the correct form. It will not only help you gain maximum results but will help prevent injury as well.
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