/lit/ - Literature

>Squatting ass-to-grass is not a common sight in the commercial fitness center. Pay a visit to your local gym, glance at the stranger stepping out of the squat rack with a loaded bar. Watch the hips, knees, and ankles. You may notice that our squatter’s heels are not stable and dug in, that their knees are pointed straight ahead or are not aligned over the feet, or that the lumbrosacral spine loses tension as they reach the bottom of the squat (assuming they even hit parallel).

>Instead of merely watching, how about asking the stranger if you can work in a few reps? Tighten your upper back, position the barbell on top of the taut folds of muscle. Fully extend the knees and unrack the weight. Take a step or two backwards. You may not realize it but the body is already shifting its center of gravity to accommodate the barbell. Take a deep breath and tighten the core. Point your big toes outward at a slight angle. Did you notice how your glutes clenched? Probably not. The weight is not getting any lighter. It’s time to take the plunge...

>If that was your first time attempting an ATG squat, chances are you didn’t fare much better than the previous victim. Is this why people skip leg day? How did it all go so wrong? It’s likely that you (the person reading this) live a sedentary life in an Anglophonic region. Your daily activity likely consists of shuffling from one cushioned surface to the next. From your bed, to your driver’s Toyota Camry, to your chair at work and back home again. Kapital has gathered innumerable materials and transfigured them into comfortable shit to sit on—can you remember all the seats that your hind parts have touched today? In your life? I cannot fathom the combined area of all purpose-made seating, nor the number of organisms consumed/destroyed by furniture production. Such figures would allow us to envision a great and terrible ergonomic empire that occupies the area of a large nation-state.