Note: This is the fifth chapter of my serialized book Healthy Movements for Human Animals. You can find an archive of previous chapters here.
We tend to think of squatting as being about going down, but from an evolutionary and developmental perspective, it's more about going up. For both babies and our terrestrial ancestors, the story of movement begins with the spine flat on the ground, and nothing interesting happens until the limbs push the body up. For humans, the most powerful way to accomplish this fundamental task is the squat.
Squats push the body upward with “triple extension” - the coordinated straightening of the ankle, knee, and hip. Triple extension provides the power for almost every explosive movement that humans make, including vertical jumps, sprints, or throws. And it occurs in subtler form with every step we take. The simplest and most primitive expression of this pattern is simply rising from a deep squat to standing.
This is a long distance in functional terms—from a position that is low and flexed to one that is tall and straight. In terms of the “four worlds” concept discussed in preceding chapters, squats move us back and forth from Ground World and Bipedal World. It is the quickest, smoothest, and most powerful connection between sitting and standing, the two stable endpoints of the human postural landscape. If movements were roads, the squat would be the main highway with the biggest and most powerful vehicles.
Unfortunately, modern humans don't visit Ground World very often, and when they do, they are unlikely to spend much time resting in a deep squat position. Instead, they squat up and down from chairs and couches, cutting the squat highway in half, and depriving themselves of dozens of movements per day that could be helping to build mobility, strength and coordination in the lower body.
In this chapter, we'll consider the evolutionary and developmental history of squatting, discuss how squats appear in natural settings versus modern life and the gym, and provide exercises to practice squatting in ways that provide the highest return on health and performance with minimal investment of time and effort.
Evolution of squatting: the road from sitting to standing
To understand the evolution of squatting, let's examine how it manifests in three different stages of our evolutionary history – the quadrupedal stage (Ground World), the primate stage (Tree World) and the human stage (Bipedal World). The general trend is that over time (about 350 million years!) the distance between sitting and standing becomes longer, and the legs do more of the work of crossing it.
Quadrupeds and triple extension
The first land animals established the basic method for raising and lowering the body from the ground that is used by almost every other land animal – coordinated extension of three joints in the front and back limbs (the ankle, knee, and hip in the hindlimbs, and the wrist, elbow, and shoulder in the forelimbs.) When these joints flex, the limbs fold and the body lowers; when they extend, the limb lengthens and pushes against the ground.
When quadrupeds "squat," they simply drop their pelvis toward their heels through triple flexion while keeping their front limbs extended for support.
Some quadrupeds can rise from a squat to stand tall on two legs (like a bear rearing up to fight). But they can't do this with much efficiency or stability because this isn't a neutral position for their spine or pelvis. This starts to change with the first primates, who gained functional range of motion into more extended postures.
Primates and squatting movements
When our ancestors moved to the trees, reaching overhead and climbing upward became key skills. The hips evolved to produce force over a larger range of motion, including deeply flexed positions to step onto branches and pull the body upward, and fully extended positions that brought the spine in line with the legs and allowed the arms to reach higher. Further, the spine became "orthograde", meaning its neutral position was vertical, not horizontal.
These adaptations changed how our ancestors could move between sitting and standing on two feet. Apes can sit in deep squats with their hands completely free and their spine comfortably vertical, then rise smoothly through triple extension all the way to standing tall.
Human squatting
Although non-human apes can walk on two legs, they do so with bent hips and knees. Humans became much more efficient at walking by straightening and lengthening their legs, increasing power into hip extension, and shortening the arms.
The tradeoff was that squatting became more of a challenge. The distance between standing and sitting became greater, our arms became less able to help with the transition, and we became slightly weaker at rising from a deeply flexed position. But we retained the ability to sit in deep squats as a fundamental rest posture. We see this in hunter-gatherers, children, and many populations where sitting on the floor is a cultural norm.
Development of squatting
Children sit in deep squats with ease, and move in and out of them all day as they interact with the ground.
They start to develop this ability around 9-12 months. Their first efforts to stand involve reaching upward onto couches or cribs and then trying to extend the legs while the hands provide support and balance. These are called “pull to stand” movements. Like the first primates, the arms assist the transition from Ground World to Bipedal World by reaching upwards.
The pull-to-stand movement is often performed from a half-kneeling position, with one leg in front and the other resting on the knee (resembling a "marriage proposal" pose). This develops triple extension coordination and strength in the front leg.
Descending from standing into a deep squat is a more difficult skill and involves many falls. The first clean transitions involve the hands moving to the ground first, while the pelvis remains higher in the air, so the hands can provide balance as the pelvis lowers to the heels.
After a few months of practice, infants learn to rise from and descend to deep squats without assistance from the hands. At this point, the deep squat becomes a frequent rest position that is used during play time with toys. As such, it is constantly being modified to allow reaching forward, back, and to the sides. There are fluid transitions to crawling, and other sitting positions like side-sitting, kneeling, or half-kneeling. In this sense, the deep squat serves as the hub of a movement network that connects sitting to standing and crawling. Thus, if squatting is the main highway between the world of the ground and standing, the deep squat is the intersection that connects the local side streets.
Squatting in hunter-gatherers
Squatting is easier for kids than for adults for several reasons: they have body proportions that provide better leverage (shorter legs, longer torsos and bigger heads) and they have higher levels of joint mobility (which allows deep flexion at the ankles and hips.) But adult humans who regularly spend time on the ground retain the ability to sit easily in deep squats even into old age. I can recall visiting Viet Nam and seeing 80-year old people on the sidewalk sitting and rising from deep squats with fluidity and ease.
A study of the movement behaviors of the Hadza tribe in Tanzania found that they spend substantial time resting in deep squats each day (close to 2 hours) and make an average of 37 sit to stand transitions per day, the majority of which would be performed through squatting-like movements. This video shows an example of their impressive mobility (filmed by Frank Forencich):
Notice the fluency of their movement in and out of the squat position. They can easily reach forward or to the side, and even take small steps in variable directions.
Let’s consider in more detail the physical challenge of this lifestyle and compare it to one where the “ground” has been raised to the level of a chair.
