1-20 Squats

A Short History of the Squat

Before it was an exercise, the squat was just how people sat. For most of human history, and still today across much of the world, folding down into a deep squat was the natural way to rest, eat, wait, cook over a fire, or tend to a task at ground level. Chairs are a relatively recent luxury. The movement we now program into workouts is really a return to a posture our bodies were built around from the start.

The ancient Greeks, who treated physical training as a serious discipline, worked squatting patterns into the preparation of athletes and soldiers, and you can see the results in the balanced, muscular bodies their sculptors kept carving. Through the Middle Ages, strength work stayed tied to something practical: knights and foot soldiers needed legs that could carry armor, march for days, and stay steady in a fight. Nobody called it a squat, but the pattern was there.

The shift toward squatting as deliberate exercise came later, and it tracks with how work changed. As industrial cities pulled people into sedentary jobs, the natural squatting that used to fill an ordinary day mostly disappeared. Early physical-culture figures and strongmen started building it back in on purpose, and by the time the barbell became standard gym equipment, the squat rack had a permanent spot on the floor.

The twentieth century turned it into an icon. Bodybuilding culture, and later the rise of powerlifting, put the barbell squat front and center. In competitive lifting it became one of the three contested lifts alongside the bench press and the deadlift. New variations spread too, including single-leg versions that add a balance and stability demand the classic two-legged squat does not.

What is interesting about the modern view is how it circles back to the beginning. Coaches now talk less about the squat as purely a leg-builder and more about mobility, posture, and moving well, which is close to what the movement always was before we sat it out of our daily lives. New tools, from video feedback to app-based coaching, mostly serve that same old goal: help people squat with control. For a movement this simple, it has had a long and stubborn run, and there is no sign of it going anywhere.