61-80 Squats

Why the Military Loves Squats

Ask why squats show up in nearly every military fitness program on earth and the answer is refreshingly practical. They need no equipment, almost no space, and they train exactly the kind of strength a soldier's job demands. You can do them in a barracks, on a base, or in the field. For an institution that has to keep large numbers of people fit under all kinds of conditions, that combination is hard to beat.

The movement itself maps onto real tasks. Squatting is just a loaded version of sitting down, standing up, and lifting from the ground, which soldiers do constantly, often while carrying heavy gear. Building the legs, hips, and core together supports the ability to shoulder a pack, hoist equipment, or move a wounded comrade, and it builds the endurance to keep doing it when tired.

The United States Army made this explicit when it overhauled its fitness testing to tie physical standards more directly to combat tasks. Its test includes a deadlift event, a ground-based lift closely related to the squat pattern, precisely because lifting heavy things off the floor is a core part of the work. Alongside formal testing, functional training in the U.S. Army uses squat variations like air squats and goblet squats to build mobility and lower-body strength.

Other militaries lean on the same logic. Russian forces are known for demanding strength-and-endurance regimes in which squats feature heavily, and their special-forces units use them to develop the leg power that matters in close combat and over rough ground. The British Army folds squats into circuits and standalone strength work to prepare soldiers for lifting and carrying loads. India's armed forces, operating across terrain that runs from Himalayan mountains to desert, use squats in routine physical training to build durable lower-body strength. The Israeli Defense Forces work them into conditioning as well, including within the Krav Maga training that emphasizes leg strength for both offense and defense.

What ties all of these together is adaptability. A squat can be scaled from bodyweight to heavily loaded, arranged into progressive programs, and dropped into almost any training setting, which suits the military habit of steady, measurable improvement. Studies of military populations have generally supported the value of this kind of strength work for physical performance. None of it is exotic. The squat stays in the manual because it is cheap, portable, and closely matched to what the job actually requires.