Chinese Proverb: “You die from the feet up

Sean Schniederjan, Strength Productions

There is a Chinese proverb: You die from the feet up.
If it weren’t for being indirectly exposing to the kettlebell community, I never would have heard or thought about this profound saying.
In American fitness culture, we generally value arms over legs. That kind of thinking has a lot of consequences. This email will explore a few of them.
I’m ashamed to say this, but growing up no one told me about squatting. If you would have asked me what the best butt and leg exercise was, I would have probably said the leg press machine.
Our feet/legs connect us with the ground (irrefutable science).
For lifting stuff, strong legs and hips are the foundation of strength.
For living, strong hips and legs are the foundation of making it through the day in one piece.
To paraphrase Pavel, they are our body’s “engine.”
Bicycling up that steep hill Saturday was a test of leg strength. No way one can do that without strong legs.
When I was feeling crazy one time I signed up for Tracy Reifkind’s swing class. There was a women in there who was in her 60s. Her KB instructor says she does bicycle races against men (half her age), somewhere in the hills of Kentucky if I remember. They win the races, but she FLIES PAST them going UP HILLS! She is strong and knows how to use her legs and hips.
Running up hills – same story.
Sprinting improves with stronger legs (I’ve seen some powerlifters who don’t look like sprinters, but they can sprint like gazelles – thanks to their ridiculously strong legs).
Picking stuff up (deadlifting) gives you two options: lift with your legs and hips, or lift with your back. Over 500,000 people per month google “back injury.” They have never been taught that legs and hips are the engine and spine is the transmission (I bet that’s a part of it, at least).
If you do kettlebells, you know that a strong hip/leg drive is the foundation of your kettlebell practice/workouts. You’ll hurt yourself if you try to lift those things with your back or arms.
You even SLEEP better after doing some squats.
So what is the best squat workout?
If I had to pick one, it would be a zercher or front squat since your abs get smoked and very strong in conjunction with stronger hips and legs. Your abs (and lats) have to fire to prevent the weight from pulling you forward. Very economic full body workout in very little time.
But there’s another squat that is tied with these two awesome squats: the bodyweight pistol squat.
For starters, for most people the pistol will transfer to your weighted squats.
Second, you can (literally) do them anywhere, anytime.
In the backyard doing stuff? Knock off a few pistols.
Doing stuff around the house? Spice it up with a couple of pistols.
It’s just CONVENIENT.
But the biggest benefit to bodyweight one legged squats is that they perfect your hip and ankle mobility.
You won’t ever see someone at the bottom of a one legged squat who doesn’t have nice flexion in the ankle and their knees up close to their chests. It’s the Deep Squat par excellence.
The pistol requires the kind of hip mobility you have when you were a little kid. But it was easier then, wasn’t it?
It was a lot easier because we were a lot smaller. It is easier to move smaller stuff than bigger stuff.
We are bigger and heavier now, and it isn’t as easy to pick up our legs and squat rock bottom. Size is opposed to mobility.
In my college physics class (studying Galileo), our professor asked a very trippy question: If everything in the universe grew in the exact same proportion, how would we know it? So imagine everything grew 10x its current size – in the same proportions. Every thing would LOOK the same. We couldn’t figure it out.
Bigger things BREAK more easily because they’re heavier. A small child can fall on their butt all day – they are in no danger of breaking their hip.
This is why strength training is so important – we have to keep up with our bodies to stay mobile and strong. If you let it “lapse” then movement and simple strength activities get away and your body is a wreck.
Forget about doing a pistol squat – just TRAINING the pistol squat fights against this aging process.