I'm with Alice, and today we're going to show you how to do the freestanding squat.

The freestanding squat is a great exercise for working the front of your legs - the quads, the back of your legs -your hamstrings and glutes, and also really engaging your core.

So to start with Alice is going to demonstrate the exercise and we're going to break it down into it's three components and then talk about some of the common mistakes people often make.

So the first thing we're going to talk about is the set up.

So as you can see Alice is standing shoulder width apart.

She's currently got her feet, her heels, slightly elevated and we're going to talk about why that's important later on.

She's also making sure that her toes are pointing outwards, at eleven and one o'clock, rather than straight ahead.

Also when we look side on, she's got a nice tall posture.

So that's the set up.

We're now going to talk about the downwards phase.

So begin with, do you want to show the downwards phase, great.

So as you can see from side on, Alice is sitting back as she comes down, rather than going forwards.

She's also keeping her posture nice and tall, so just hold it at the bottom.

So at the bottom, you want this angle here to be the same as the angle here.

So the angle of your shin should be roughly the same as the angle of your back.

From the front, you'll see as she goes straight down she keeps her knees outwards.

Then on the upwards phase, (so if you go back down).

She keeps her knees out and drives up with her glutes.

Great and one more time.

And again she keeps her body straight up.

Now as we said she's got her heels slightly elevated.

If you are a beginner this really helps, because often inflexibility means you can't quite get the depth you want, and we focus on quality.

So if you just step forwards and show us a squat without your heels elevated, and hold it at the bottom.

See without this she can't get the same depth she had before, and her body shifts forwards, rather than sitting back.

So if you are a beginner, elevating your heels helps get you more depth and control.

(So just get back on).

We're now going to show you some of the common mistakes people make when squatting.

So the first one is the knees coming in.

So if you can just show an incorrect one.

So rather than here knees pointing outwards, they're coming in like this,

which puts excess strain on her knees and also means she won't engage her glutes as well as she wants.

The second mistake is best seen side on.

So if you can sit forwards rather than backwards.

This is a common mistake people make, and they shift their body weight forwards rather than sitting backwards,

and again this is going to put excess pressure here, and it's not going to engage the glutes as much.

The third most common problem we get is on the upwards phase, best seen from the side again.

So if you come down, it's where they rock forwards like this, rather than coming straight up.

So if you go back down.

What you see is here torso goes forwards and her bum goes up first before her body.

Where as what we want to see, the correct version, is her body comes straight up, by engaging her glutes and keeping her legs out.

Thanks very much, and hope you found this video useful.