The Ultimate Guide to Air Squats (Bodyweight Squats)

Air squats, also known as bodyweight squats, are a fundamental exercise that can benefit an incredibly wide range of people.

They are simple yet highly effective, requiring no equipment while offering numerous benefits. 

As a professional basketball player, I’ve relied on air squats throughout my career, especially during my first year in Macedonia, when I had limited access to a weight room. 

That year, I performed hundreds of air squats daily, which helped me maintain muscle mass, improve cardiovascular endurance, and enhance my overall athletic performance. 

Even now, air squats are a regular part of my training, from warm-ups to high-intensity interval training (HIIT) sessions.

What Are Air Squats?

Air squats are a basic squat variation performed without added weight. 

They involve lowering your body from a standing position into a squat and then returning to a stand. 

Air squats are a functional movement that mimics everyday activities like sitting down and standing up, making them a valuable exercise for improving lower-body strength, mobility, and endurance.

This movement mimics the squat pattern without the external load, making it an excellent exercise for beginners and a versatile tool for advanced athletes.

Bodyweight Squats Muscles Worked

The movement pattern of an air squat engages multiple muscle groups, including the quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes, and core.

It involves hip flexion, knee flexion, and ankle dorsiflexion on the descent, followed by hip and knee extension on the ascent.

• Quadriceps: The front thigh muscles that extend your knee.
• Hamstrings: The back thigh muscles that help with knee flexion and hip extension.
• Glutes: The muscles of your buttocks that drive hip extension and stability.
• Core: Although not the primary target, your core muscles stabilize your torso throughout the movement.

These muscles work in concert to perform the squat, making it a compound exercise that effectively builds lower body strength and stability.

How to Do Air Squats Correctly

To perform an air squat:

• Start Position: Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, with your toes slightly pointed out (depending on tibialis/ankle/calf mobility).
• Descent: Lower your body by bending your knees and pushing your hips back like sitting in a chair. Keep your chest up, your spine neutral, and your eyes looking forward.
• Depth: Aim to lower your hips below knee level, ensuring your knees track over your toes.
• Ascent: Push through your heels to stand back up, squeezing your glutes at the top of the movement.

Keys to Proper Form

Doing bodyweight exercises like air squats is the safest option for most people, especially beginners.

However, you should still exercise caution when performing your form over time so that your body squats and you can try to improve.

You can eventually progress to additional, challenging squat variations.

• For Proper Mobility: Ensure your hips, knees, and ankles have the necessary range of motion. Regularly incorporate mobility exercises to improve your squat depth and form.
• Muscle Tissue Quality: Use foam rolling and other self-massage tools to release tight muscles and improve tissue quality, enhancing your ability to do bodyweight squats.

Focusing on these aspects will help you perform air squats more effectively, leading to better results in your overall fitness.

Common Mistakes to Avoid:

• Knee Valgus: Don’t let your knees collapse inward; keep them aligned with your toes.
• Rounded Back: Maintain a neutral spine to avoid undue stress on your lower back.
• Heels Lifting: Keep your heels grounded throughout the movement to ensure proper muscle activation.

Benefits of Air Squats

Air squats are a highly effective and accessible exercise with benefits that extend beyond simple lower-body strengthening.

Their impact on muscle protein synthesis, neuromuscular efficiency, metabolic health, and overall fitness makes them a valuable addition to any workout routine.

Research highlights their role in muscle growth, cardiovascular endurance, and functional movement, making them suitable for a wide range of individuals, from athletes to older adults.

Personally, air squats have played a vital role in my personal training, particularly during times when I lacked access to traditional gym equipment.

Even now, I integrate them into my warm-ups, Tabata workouts, and CrossFit-style circuits due to their versatility and efficiency.

Whether used for muscle maintenance, cardiovascular conditioning, or functional movement, air squats remain one of the most effective bodyweight exercises available.

Caloric Burning and Weight Loss

Air squats provide a moderate calorie burn, making them a useful exercise for endurance training and fat loss when incorporated into high-intensity routines.

Research on bodyweight exercises estimates that air squats performed at a moderate pace burn approximately 2.7 kcal per minute (Nakagata et al., 2022).

While this may be lower than high-resistance movements, the ability to perform high-rep sets or incorporate air squats into circuit training enhances their overall effectiveness for energy expenditure.

Muscle Protein Synthesis and Nutrient Utilization

Air squats enhance muscle protein synthesis by increasing amino acid uptake, particularly when used as a method to break up prolonged sedentary behavior.

Research has demonstrated that performing intermittent air squats throughout the day significantly improves the efficiency of dietary amino acid utilization for muscle contractile protein synthesis (Moore et al., 2022).

This suggests that even without added weight, bodyweight squats can contribute to maintaining and building muscle, especially when combined with proper nutrition.

Neuromuscular Benefits

Aair squats can improve neuromuscular efficiency by enhancing motor unit recruitment and coordination.

A study examining the effects of high-repetition bodyweight squats in older adults found that while there were no significant increases in muscle mass or strength, there were improvements in neural activation patterns (Hirono et al., 2023).

This suggests that air squats may be beneficial for maintaining motor control and movement efficiency, though additional resistance may be needed to achieve significant muscle hypertrophy.

Strength Gains Comparable to Barbell Squats

When programmed progressively, air squats can match barbell squats in terms of lower-body strength and hypertrophy.

Research comparing progressive bodyweight squats to barbell back squats found that both methods led to significant improvements in knee extensor and flexor strength, as well as muscle thickness in the gluteus maximus and rectus femoris (Wei et al., 2023).

However, barbell squats were more effective for reducing body fat, likely due to the increased metabolic demands of heavier resistance training.

Incorporating unilateral variations, such as Bulgarian split squats and pistol squats, can make air squats even more effective for building lower-body strength without external resistance.

Metabolic and Cardiovascular Benefits

While air squats can elevate heart rate and improve cardiovascular endurance, research suggests that a single session may not significantly alter 24-hour glycemic control in healthy individuals (Babir et al., 2023).

However, regular incorporation of air squats into a training routine could still contribute to overall metabolic health.

When performed at high volumes or intensities, air squats can function as a metabolic conditioning tool, improving endurance and helping regulate blood sugar levels over time.

Best Body Weight Squat Workouts

Air squats are highly adaptable to various workout styles. Here are some of my favorite options:

EMOM (Every Minute on the Minute)

I frequently use bodyweight squats in EMOM (Every Minute on the Minute) workouts, where you perform a set number of squats at the start of every minute and use the remaining time to recover. 

This format pushes your cardiovascular system and muscular endurance, ensuring you maximize your workout in a short period. 

The most I ever worked up to was 25 air squats every minute on the minute for 25 minutes. 

This challenging workout tested my physical endurance and mental toughness, requiring sustained effort and focus throughout.

Tabata

Another of my favorite air squat workouts is the Tabata interval workout, which involves 20 seconds of all-out effort followed by 10 seconds of rest, repeated for eight rounds. 

Air squats are perfect for this high-intensity protocol because they can be done quickly and with minimal setup, allowing you to maintain a high heart rate and build muscular endurance.

CrossFit Workouts

Additionally, I love incorporating air squats into 21-15-9 circuits—a CrossFit staple. 

In this format, you perform 21 reps of air squats followed by 21 reps of another exercise, such as pushups or sit-ups. 

You then move on to 15 reps of each, and finally, nine reps.

This descending rep scheme challenges your muscles and tests your mental toughness as you endure fatigue.

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