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How The Kneeling Squat Focuses On Glute Strength

The kneeling squat is a great exercise to build lower body and glute strength while protecting those vulnerable knees.
The kneeling squat is a great variation to the traditional squat and will work to really build lower body strength with a host of other benefits. We all know we need some sort of a squat in our routine and often times the traditional squat is a lot on our body. Finding a safe and effective alternative can work to develop strength, power, and stability while still giving us great foundational support for sport specific and functional strength. Without it, our training and performance can suffer and that’s something we just don’t want or need.

Let’s check out this great exercise in the kneeling squat and see what it’s all about. From what it is, to muscles worked, the great benefits, and how to perform it, you will be well on your way to tackling any lift that comes your way by building a great foundation for lower body strength.

What Is The Kneeling Squat?
The kneeling squat shares all the same characteristics of a traditional back squat but does so by protecting your knees. Since the barbell back squat is one of the best strength building exercises and one of the big three powerlifts, the benefits of having a squat in your workout routine is undeniable. The kneeling squat is versatile and can be done anywhere, with or without equipment, although with equipment will surely enhance those gains. Kneeling squats are perfect for those you may struggle with glute engagement during a traditional squat in order to help establish better mind-muscle connection and form to tackle any lift that comes your way (1).

Muscles Worked
The kneeling squat is a great lower body builder and one to definitely not overlook. As a great form of a squat, this will work your quads and hamstrings as they are required throughout the entire movement. With the bend followed by the upward movement, you rely on these muscles for the full range of motion. Your glutes get some serious work done, both the gluteus maximus and the gluteus medius. Responsible for assisting the movement and providing stability, this is big bonus with this exercise. Depending on if you use a barbell or dumbbells, your arms may get work done with the dumbbells given the way you have to hold them.

Benefits Of The Kneeling Squat
The benefits of this exercise are great and should absolutely not be ignored, for they can really work for lower body strength and functionality as you seek gains with other big lifts. Benefits include:

Strengthening lower body muscles: This is a great exercise for working your glutes, quads, and hamstrings (2).
Activate glutes: Really work to activate glutes to enhance strength and valuable stability needed on other big lifts (3).
Develop power and stability: Like any good lower body exercise, this can really enhance all areas of your power and stability to aid in sport specific movements and those more functional ones.
Low impact on your knees: A great variation to the squat that works to protect your knees (4).
Allow for higher reps: Being in a slightly different, less vulnerable position, this will work to allow for higher reps to maximize hypertrophy.
Good for rehab: Work to bounce back from an injury or soreness while still working on strengthening those lower body muscles.

How To Perform It
Here are the steps for performing the kneeling squat:

Begin in a kneeling position with your knees around shoulder width apart, similar to a regular squat. Place the bar on your back, just above your shoulder blades.
With your back straight and core tight, slowly lower into a squat until your glutes touch your heels.
As you drive back to the starting position, extend your pelvis forward similar to a deadlift and make sure to squeeze your glutes at the top.
Reset and repeat for your desired amount of reps.

Alternative Exercises
Knowing some great alternatives can help add variety to your workout while still aiding in that valuable growth and other benefits of a squatting exercise. Here are some great alternatives to try:

Kneeling squats with dumbbells
Kneeling squats with resistance bands
Kneeling squat jump
Box squat
Goblet squat

Featured Supplement
When it comes to any exercise, we want to start building up our supplementation shelf to reflect all of our hard earned gains. For something like this exercise, looking to a creatine supplement can make sure we give our bodies the proper fuel they need to thrive and build that desired muscle. Creatine will work to build muscle and allow for that sculpted physique to start to take shape and it is no wonder why so many have gravitated towards this supplement. Let’s check out a great creatine product from Transparent Labs that can boost all your gains.
Transparent Labs StrengthSeries Creatine HMB

Transparent Labs StrengthSeries Creatine HMB is well worth the price and is one of the best creatine products for pure creatine. It has no added artificial flavors, fillers, preservatives, or coloring, which means the body isn’t wasting energy metabolizing useless chemicals — just pure creatine. Transparent Labs creatine is infused with HMB, or β-Hydroxy β-Methylbutyrate, which has been proven to increase muscle strength and lean body mass while decreasing fat mass. At a good price, this is a one of the best creatine products to buy for athletes.
Price: $39.00/ 30 servings
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Use the promo code GENIRON10 for 10% off! Check out our individual review for Transparent Labs StrengthSeries Creatine HMB here!

Check out our list of the Best Creatine Supplements for more great muscle building products!

Wrap Up
The kneeling squat is the perfect squatting variation to allow for continued growth while still giving you the benefit of working on strength and glute activation for all your desired gains. Since we all need a good squat in our routine, it is important to know what is out there so we can still see the gains we want most. Give the kneeling squat exercise a try and see what this can do for all of your gains today.
Let us know what you think in the comments below. Also, be sure to follow Generation Iron on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. 
*Images courtesy of Transparent Labs and Envato
References

Del Vecchio, Luke; Daewoud, Hays; Green, Shannon (2018). “The health and performance benefits of the squat, deadlift, and bench press”. (source)
Lucero, Rhys A. J.; Fry, Andrew C.; LeRoux, Christopher D.; Hermes, Matthew J. (2019). “Relationships between barbell squat strength and weightlifting performance”. (source)
Neto, Walter K.; Soares, Enrico G.; Vieira, Thais L.; Aguiar, Rodolfo; et al. (2020). “Gluteus Maximus Activation during Common Strength and Hypertrophy Exercises: A Systematic Review”. (source)
Chandler, T. J.; Wilson, G. D.; Stone, M. H. (1989). “The effect of the squat exercise on knee stability”. (source)

5 Basic Yet Crucial Fat Loss Habits

5 Basic Yet Crucial Fat Loss Habits
Everybody wants a chiseled physique, but that can’t happen with blubber covering all your muscle. In other words, you need to get lean. And getting lean comes down to some key habits. Namely jumpstarting your fat loss. You don’t simply wake up with six pack abs, your perspective and behaviors have to change.
Here are some fat loss habits that you should practice to lose those inches. Let’s get into it.

1.​ Set realistic goals
One of the most complex parts of losing fat is starting. No seriously. Most people don’t lose any fat ever because they’re too afraid, hesitant, or wimpy to start. After you get started, you must stay committed and be relatively consistent. Losing weight has no shortcuts. You can’t starve yourself lean because those methods usually aren’t sustainable enough to see noticeable results long term.
So get stupid passionate about why you want to lose weight, but most importantly, set realistic goals.
Start with something realistic enough to be achieved. You can start by aiming to lose a pound or two however long that takes. Don’t worry about losing 15 or 20 pounds just yet.
Just focus on seeing 1 or 2 pounds shaved off the scale. It’ll be much more manageable. Furthermore, achieving small goals will motivate you to keep going. Don’t overlook this first step and aim for the stars. Professional bodybuilders and physique competitors start dieting for shows months before their competition and set realistic goals. They lose weight steadily. If the pros are doing it that way, you should too. You’re not so amazing that you can sustain double digit weight loss weekly.
2.​ Eat Nutritious Foods
Losing fat comes down to being in a caloric deficit which is burning fewer calories than you consume over time. Ideally, you’d also maintain adequate protein intake. The deficit will force your body to shave off calories from stored tissue. The protein intake will feed your muscle, so fat tissue is lost.
Achieving this is simple in theory, but the fitness industry has overcomplicated this and have coddled towards people’s desire for pleasure. How so?
You can’t go 2 seconds on any fitness page without seeing someone promote pop tarts, pizza, and donuts while dieting. Yes, you can consume all of these and still lose fat.
However, it’s simply not practical or optimal to do so in large amounts or frequencies.
Despite what many fitness pages will tell you, you can’t view foods as only macros to fit your deficit. All foods can fit your deficit, but some foods do a better job at it because they are more satiating while providing more vitamins/minerals for health, performance, and recovery. This should be common sense, but was somehow lost in our age of information overload.
So yes, monitor your calories, but you’ll find that eating mostly whole, minimally processed foods make this much easier. This includes foods like lean meats, seafood, fruits, veggies, and grains. Drinking plenty of fluids throughout the day and with your meal can help as well. This makes up the base of your habits.
The pizza, donuts, and pop tarts should be more of an afterthought not a priority. I know, growing up can feel hard.

3.​ Start Walking
Walking is the most underrated thing for fat loss. People often consider it ineffective or pointless. That’s nonsense. Steps are a gamechanger because they force you off a sedentary lifestyle. In addition, they ensure you’re burning additional calories beyond your gym session because if you only work out for an hour per day while sitting the rest of the day, your life is still quite sedentary.
But beyond merely burning extra calories, walking is also easy to implement. Many people can walk their dogs, play with their kids, or go on hikes.
Many of my clients report better moods as well. And if you want to get extra sciency on why steps are amazing for fat loss, it also mitigates your unconscious drop in NEAT.
You see, when you lose weight, your body conserves energy by being more selective with how much energy it uses. You burn fewer calories for the same movement because you’re getting lighter in addition to unconsciously performing fewer spontaneous movements.
Research finds you may fidget or blink less especially after significant weight loss. By intentionally walking, you’re able to offset this loss in energy expenditure. In fact, without walking, your weight loss can easily plateau which nobody likes.
So don’t overlook walking and get your steps in.
4.​ Appreciate the slow progress
Always remember that slow progress is still progress. Well, actually what many people perceive as slow progress is simply normal or expected progress. Dieters don’t realize this though because snake oil marketing has lead everyone to believe you’re supposed to lose 12 pounds every week when most people would be lucky to lose 3 pounds per week.
Most people should lose 1-2 pounds per week and that’s excellent. Excessive weight loss leads to muscle loss anyways, so you’re not in position to brag about your 8 pound weight loss if half of it is muscle loss.
Anyways, having clear expectations allows you to keep going and psychologically stick with your habits. This is key because the effectiveness of fat loss isn’t based on how powerful an approach is. Rather, it’s based on how long you can sustain an approach.
The accumulation of days being in a deficit is what gets people lean whether you’re in a big or small deficit on a day to daybases. In most cases, the tortoise does outrun the hare because the hare was an idiot and took a break instead of accumulating more progress.
So if you find yourself accumulating progress, keep going. Repeat your habits until you’re at the finish line. You can always keep going and adjust as needed. But if there’s one key habit to keep in mind, it’s to simply not give up. To do so, you have to be ok with any progress you get. It also takes time to see progress, so don’t forget to be patient.

5.​ Get Proper Sleep
Sleep is the most ignored activity that enhances weight loss. Not having enough sleep makes you feel tired and stressed. This leads to feeling hungry, skipping exercise, unknowingly moving less, and performing worse in the gym. Worst of all, not getting sufficient sleep screws up your partitioning ratio.
This is the ratio of body composition changes you experience between muscle and fat tissue. Research finds that insufficient sleep skews you to lose more muscle and retain more fat. The more sleep you get, the opposite happens. More muscle retained and more fat loss.
In fact, people who eat in a deficit, but get very little sleep still obviously lose weight thanks to the deficit, but end up losing far more muscle. This keeps you at the same body fat percentage or makes it worse on a smaller frame. So the scale might go down, but your body looks nowhere near your desired physique.
As for practical steps in repairing your insomniac like habits, most people will noticeably feel and look better by doing the following:
-​Dedicate 7-8 hours of sleep every night
-​Turn off electronics, especially screens 1 hour before bed
-​Stretch, read, relax, journal, or anything you need to destress before enetering your bed
-​Take melatonin if needed.
Go Crush Your Fat Loss
Fat loss really isn’t groundbreaking or complicated. Most people know some of the key basics needed. You have to eat fewer calories than you burn. You should be eating veggies. And you shouldn’t be sitting all day.
Most people suck at getting started, so set realistic expectations and just put in the dang work. Don’t read another article or listen to another podcast. You just need to take these habits and keep repeating them day in and day out.