261-275 Squats

If you've done 261 - 275 squats in the test
Day 1 60 seconds (or more) between sets		Day 4 60 seconds (or more) between sets
set 1	60	set 1	60
set 2	60	set 2	60
set 3	52	set 3	58
set 4	52	set 4	56
set 5	52	set 5	56
set 6	60	set 6	62
set 7	max (minimum 60)	set 7	max (minimum 62)
Minimum 1 day break		Minimum 1 day break
Day 2 60 seconds (or more) between sets		Day 5 60 seconds (or more) between sets
set 1	58	set 1	60
set 2	58	set 2	60
set 3	54	set 3	58
set 4	58	set 4	58
set 5	54	set 5	58
set 6	60	set 6	62
set 7	max (minimum 60)	set 7	max (minimum 62)
Minimum 1 day break		Minimum 1 day break
Day 3 60 seconds (or more) between sets		Day 6 60 seconds (or more) between sets
set 1	60	set 1	60
set 2	60	set 2	60
set 3	58	set 3	60
set 4	54	set 4	60
set 5	54	set 5	60
set 6	60	set 6	62
set 7	max (minimum 62)	set 7	max (minimum 64)
Minimum 2 day break		Minimum 2 day break

How Astronauts Squat in Space

On Earth, a squat is a fight against gravity. Take gravity away and the exercise, at least the version we know, stops working — there is nothing to lift, and your own bodyweight floats. That is a real problem in orbit, because the human body is built for a constant downward pull, and without it, muscle and bone that are not regularly loaded tend to weaken over a long mission. So the interesting question is not whether astronauts should train, but how you even squat when nothing weighs anything.

The answer is to bring the resistance with you. The International Space Station carries a machine called the Advanced Resistive Exercise Device, or ARED, which uses vacuum cylinders to create adjustable resistance that stands in for the load a barbell would provide on the ground. Strapped into it, an astronaut can perform squats and other lifts against a force they can dial up or down, giving the legs, hips, and trunk something real to work against in an environment that otherwise offers nothing.

Because the setup is so different from a gym, the training starts long before launch. Astronauts rehearse these adapted routines on Earth so that using the equipment and hitting the right positions is second nature by the time they are in orbit. Once there, resistance exercise becomes a scheduled, near-daily part of the day rather than an optional extra — it is treated as essential maintenance for the body over weeks and months in microgravity.

Squats earn their place in that schedule for the same reason they anchor programs on Earth: one movement loads a lot of the body at once, and it targets exactly the large lower-body muscles that a weightless environment leaves under-used. That efficiency matters even more when training time and equipment are tightly rationed.

What comes next is likely to get more sophisticated. As agencies plan longer missions and think seriously about travel beyond low orbit, keeping crews physically capable becomes even more important, and the tools are still evolving — smaller and smarter resistance hardware, and ideas like pairing training with virtual environments to make long sessions more bearable. The humble squat, it turns out, is following us off the planet.