Have you ever seen someone sitting against a wall like they forgot that they could be using a chair? Well, let us tell you that those people aren’t as thick as you may think, and no, they did not forget that chairs exist. Those people are doing wall sits and those people are in fact very smart because there are many different benefits of wall sits that those people are reaping.
You could be getting those same benefits and all you have to do is to spend a few minutes sitting against a wall every day. It’s not just an exercise that makes you look funny, but it can in fact do many different things such as strengthen your legs, help you balance better, increase your physical performance, and so much more. If you are interested in learning what all of the different benefits of wall sits are, you should definitely give this a quick read!
Benefit #1: They Will Get You Those 6 Pack Abs
One of the biggest benefits that you can get from doing wall sits on a daily basis is that they will help you achieve those 6 or even 8 pack abs that those male models in the magazines have. Doing wall sits properly requires you to suck in that gut and tense up your abs because that is what a wall sit is. If you aren’t flexing your abs the whole time that you are doing wall sits then you aren’t really doing it properly.
In case you are having trouble flexing your abs the whole time while doing wall sits, try inhaling and exhaling through your nose, and try to breathe from your chest instead of your stomach, both things which will help you do them better and will also help you yield better results in the short and long run. Flexing your abs the whole way through your wall sit routine will definitely help you build those strong abdominal muscles that you have been dreaming of.
It may not be quite as useful for your abs as something like doing weighted sit ups, but it will definitely yield good results. Put it this way, flexing your abs for 30 seconds or even 1 minute straight is better than not doing anything at all!
Benefit #2: Wall Sits Help You Learn Concentration And Focus
Yet another thing that you will benefit from by doing wall sits on a regular basis is that they will help you train your concentration and focus. It takes a lot of effort to get through a wall sit routine, because while they may sound like a very easy exercise, when you do them you will definitely change your mind about that.
It takes a whole lot of focus to get through even so much as a 30-second wall sit routine, especially because you have to concentrate on doing more than 1 thing at once. In order to do wall sits properly, you need to focus on breathing properly, keeping your abs flexed, balancing, keeping your legs in proper position, and not supporting yourself with your arms, all at once.
Having to do those many things at once requires a vast amount of effort and the more you do them the better you will get at them. Your brain is just like other muscles in the sense that different abilities get better the more you train them and that definitely goes for your focus too. The more you are forced to focus the better it will become over time.
Of course having better focus is important for your everyday life and can help you do a better job at completing school assignments, working at your job, playing sports, and many other things too.
Benefit #3: Wall Sits Are Free To Do
Something that you should definitely be able to appreciate about doing wall sits is that they are absolutely 100 percent free to do, plus there is the fact that they don’t take very much time to do either. Why would you go out and spend hundreds of dollars per month on a gym membership or on some piece of exercise equipment when you could just sit against the wall in your own home for free?
You don’t have to spend a fortune to get back into shape as long as you have a wall to sit on, and who doesn’t have one of those lying around? Wall sits also have the added bonus of not taking very much time to complete. You only have to do a few reps, somewhere around 4 or 6 of them to get the results that you want. All you need are 10 minutes per day to strengthen your abs, legs, and so much more.
Benefit #4: They Will Strengthen Your Calf Muscles
People love legs, women like legs, men like legs, everyone likes legs! Even better than just any old legs are toned and muscular legs that make people do a double take. Those are the kind of legs that you are proud to flaunt in public with those tight pants or maybe even a good pair of summer shorts.
Well, wall sits are definitely a great way to build those glorious calf muscles that you see in men’s and women’s fitness magazines. Wall sits force you to rest most of your weight on your legs and that is definitely good for your calves. Do a quick wall sit routine and you will see just how much it strains your calf muscles and your legs in general. Even just 1 minute of sitting against a wall will have you feeling that burn no doubt. Having stronger calf muscles is not just good because they look great, but for a few other reasons too.
Having stronger calves will help you hold up your body weight much better, thus allowing you to walk further and exercise harder without your legs getting tired. Having stronger legs will make your life much easier in the long run, plus they can even help you balance better too!
Benefit #5: They Will Help You Balance Better
Another benefit that you can get from doing wall sits on a regular basis is that they will help you balance better. They help you balance better because of course, like we mentioned before, they make your legs stronger. The stronger your legs are, the better you will be able to balance because an increased strength level means less slipping and falling, but there is more to it than just that.
Wall sits involve balancing against a wall with nothing but your back on the wall and your feet on the ground. In essence, you aren’t only doing a strength training routine, but you are also doing balance training because wall sits offer you no support, by which we mean there is nothing under your bum. After all, wall sits are like sitting on a chair without the actual support of said chair. This forces your body to balance in order to stay upright or at least to stay in a sitting position.
Your balance is mostly regulated by something known as proprioceptors, which are the things in your muscles that react to positional shifts. Proprioceptors force your body and all of your muscles to adjust their position to stop you from falling down from something as simple as walking. The more you train these proprioceptors through exercises like wall sits the better your balance will become.
Having good balance is of course important because it is the thing that keeps you from falling down when you are doing anything and everything, something that gets especially important in your old age when slipping, falling, and breaking fragile bones become a big issue.
Benefit #6: Getting Rid Of Those Thunder Thighs
Perhaps the muscles that benefit the most from doing wall sits are your thighs. Of course when you do wall sits most of your weight rests on your legs, with the vast majority of it being on your thighs. If you want to get rid of those thunder thighs and get some beautifully sculpted legs, you should definitely try doing some wall sits.
Having stronger thighs is great for your everyday life in a number of different ways and it isn’t just because they make you look good in your swimwear. We already mentioned that doing wall sits can help you balance better and that is in part thanks to having stronger thigh muscles.
Having stronger muscles makes it easier to balance in general, not to mention that stronger legs help you increase your physical performance too. Stronger leg muscles will make you run faster, get up those stairs with ease, and kick that ball oh so much harder in your next soccer game.
Benefit #7: Wall Sits Let You Multitask
Another thing that you should be able to appreciate about the simple wall sit is that you can do many other things while you are doing them. In other words, you can do things like watch TV, listen to music, or even read a book while you do wall sits. This is great because it allows you to be more motivated to workout.
Sure, sitting against a wall for a prolonged period of time can end up being pretty boring no doubt, but the time will definitely pass much quicker when you’re watching your favorite TV show while you do it. There is also the fact that you could even pick up your dumbbells and do some curls while you do wall sits, thus maximizing your efficiency and letting you work out more than one muscle at once.
Benefit #8: Increasing Your Stamina And Physical Performance
Based on all of the things that we have mentioned thus far, it should be pretty obvious by now that doing wall sits can help increase both your stamina and your physical performance. Since doing wall sits helps to increase your leg and abdominal strength they in turn also help you increase your endurance. Having stronger muscles means being able to work out harder for longer, something that is beneficial even for small things like walking up a flight of stairs.
Doing wall sits on a regular basis will help you run faster, do stair climbing for longer, and play your favorite teams sports much better. On a side note, wall sits are a great way to deal with runner’s knee, a condition that many people who run on a regular basis suffer from. Wall sits help you strengthen the muscles around your knees and that help you run better and avoid the pain of runner’s knee too.
Benefit #9: Help You Burn Off That Big Mac
Yet another great benefit that you can get from doing wall sits is that they can help you burn some calories and get rid of that Big Mac belly. To be fair, there are exercises which can help you burn more calories that wall sits, but any calories burned are better than burning none at all. Just give it a try and sit against your wall for just 1 minute.
You will quickly notice yourself heating up and working up a decent sweat. Sweating means that your body is using effort to do something, in this case wall sits, and that means that your body is expending energy.
Expending an increased amount of energy means that your body needs to get that energy from somewhere, or in other words, your body is using the calories you have eaten to fuel your wall sit routine. Using calories for fuel ultimately translates into weight loss and the maintenance of a good figure, things that everybody can stand behind.
Benefit #10: It’s A Weight Bearing Exercise
The next awesome benefit that you can get from doing wall sits has to do with the strength of your bones. To explain, any exercise that forces you to put weight on your bones, such as the wall sit, makes your bones grow stronger through the virtue of being weight bearing. To keep things simple, your bones grow just like your muscles, and the more weight you put on them the more they grow.
When you perform weight bearing exercises your bones generate more bone mass which results in bigger and denser bones. Having stronger bones is of course beneficial because it reduces the chances of suffering from something like fractured or broken bones, plus stronger bones help to prevent degenerative bone diseases such as osteoporosis.
Benefit #11: They Are Versatile
The next benefit of wall sits that we would like to mention quickly is that they let you train your legs individually if you so choose. You can do wall sits with one leg or the other, thus letting you train them separately, something that is pretty beneficial in case you have any muscle imbalances. Wall sits let you work out your muscles in your legs at the same rate if you choose, or if one leg is bigger than the other you can also try doing some wall sits with the smaller leg, something that will actually increase the amount of balance training that you get from the simple wall sit as well.
Benefit #12: Lower Your Resting Heart Rate
Another benefit that you can reap from doing regular wall sits has to do with the fact that it is an isometric exercise, meaning that you are pushing against a still sitting object, which in this case is the wall and the floor. Isometric exercises such as wall sits are shown to lower your resting heart rate. A lower resting heart rate means that your heart isn’t working as hard as it would otherwise have to in order to pump blood around your body. A lower resting heart rate also leads to lower blood pressure. Both of these things are good for the health of your heart and for your body in general. A heart that doesn’t have to work full capacity at all times is a heart that can stay healthy for longer.
Benefit #13: Reduce Cravings
One final benefit of doing isometric exercises such as wall sits that we want to quickly talk about has to do with alcohol and tobacco dependency. Of course, we all know that smoking and drinking is not good for your health in any way, shape, or form. And as anyone who has ever had an alcohol or tobacco dependency knows, quitting is perhaps one of the hardest things known to mankind. Well, it is shown that doing isometric exercises can actually provide short-term relief for cravings. In other words, if you really feel like having a smoke or a drink, spend a few minutes doing wall sits and in all reality, your cravings should more or less disappear instantly.
Conclusion
If you still think that wall sits are really easy and a big waste of time, you might just want to try actually doing some. The benefits of wall sits are vast and they can definitely help make you stronger, increase your physical endurance, make you balance better, and much more too. Some wall sits will definitely make you fitter and give you that good-looking body that you have always wanted!
If you have any questions or comments about doing wall sits, please feel free to tell us and we will address you as quickly as possible.