[locallost]

Articles / opinions like these used to be very detrimental for accomplishing anything for me. In real life it's not that important that you do the ideal thing, the biggest issue is not doing anything at all. Partly because of being obsessed about finding the ideal thing. Doing squats regularly is an order of magnitude better than spending a lot of time figuring out the ideal and then doing it infrequently.

I now exercise a lot more than before and other than paying attention to not causing an injury, I do not care at all about doing optimal things. It's a big motivator to start when I know I can just do whatever I like at that moment in time.

[saiya-jin]

While I generally agree with what you say, specifically with squats its a bit more tricky. Especially if you use additional weights, but even just body weight for sedentary or bigger injury recovery person.

There are numerous ways how to mess up your body with squats, spine and knees are major source of focus if you do squats improperly. The problem is, injury may not reveal itself immediately with some snap and pain, but rather in few hours/next day, or even worse it can take many months of continuous joint degradation without a hint. A prime example would be ie weighted squats with knees not stretching out but inward, or putting too much weight in front of your feet and toes (when most weight should be handled by heel, many bulked up folks in gyms literally put some plank on floor and stand on edge of it on heels while squatting).

In fact, in regular weightlifting, squats are by some considered too injury-prone to advise to beginners, at least not without some good supervision. Deadlifts, another massively compound exercise (meaning it activates many many muscles/tissues in the body, many of them as stabilizers) is considered safer. You can lift literally a grocery bag or random stone if you want, doesn't matter as long as you keep the good form.

I personally am huge fan of squats, but I am not a beginner anymore. I don't put massive weight, rather light and many repetitions, that's much better training for real life usage like sports. I don't have mental issues that I work around by getting uselessly massive, cca lean reasonably muscular strong body with lot of endurance is much better for anything in real life. Lunges are great too and IIRC safer, I use them without weights for warmups, the longer the steps the better.

[locallost]

I agree, but I specifically said other than paying attention to injuries. Also, the article is about wall squats, I guess these are not done with weights.

But the part about deadlift brings me again to my point. When I started working out about two years ago, a friend gave me a few tips and this included squats, and no deadlift. So to this day, it stayed like that. In the past I would've spent way too much time figuring out what is better for beginners, and probably wouldn't have done anything. Now I have a routine, so I am thinking about trying out some more things, or checking for tips on how to do existing things better etc. Slow and steady works really well for me.

[m463]

I think small things that become habits are great counters to "not doing anything"

Another example is using a standing desk (and actually doing the standing bit).