This is a great at-home exercise that really targets your quads (the muscles at the front of your thigh). These guys are important! Your quads are a group of four muscles that work with you lift you knee up in front of the body (a movement known as hip flexion) and also when you straighten your knee (a movement called knee extension). Why should you care? If these muscles aren’t strong, these movements may not come as easily as they once did. Weak quads can also lead to knee pain – no one wants that!
While the technique to the exercise is not difficult, it’s still a challenging exercise. It usually doesn’t take more than 10 seconds to start feeling the burn at the front of the thighs – this is totally normal! Those muscles are working double overtime and telling you all about it. You can change the difficulty of this exercise by sitting higher up on the wall.
What you don’t want to feel is pain in your knees while doing this. Knee pain usually happens during this exercise because the body weight is pushing forward through the toes, which causes the force of the exercise to push forward through the knees as well. To fix (and prevent) this, make sure that your weight is staying through your heels. Pro tip: lift the toes off the floor slightly and you’ll automatically put your weight through your heels.
Go quads go!
Wall Sit
- Start standing 2-3 feet from wall, with feet hip width and toes straight ahead
- Slide down the wall to the desired depth (eventually you want to work down to a 90 degree angle at the knees and hips, as pictured)
- Glutes, tummy, and pelvic floor on, and keep hands off of legs
- Press back into wall and heels of the feet into the ground
- You should feel this: through your quads (front of your thighs). A LOT.
What do you think?