Squats are a popular exercise for a good reason. Find out what doing 200 repetitions a day can do for you and how to approach it for more results.
People who are barely able to complete 200 bodyweight squats in 3 sets of 67 repetitions to 6 sets of 34 repetitions should be able to grow leg muscles, especially their quadriceps (front thighs) with a routine like this.
As you get stronger over time, you likely have to do the squats with extra weights or do one-legged variations to keep challenging your muscles enough for growth.
Something important to note is that if you are doing these 200-squat workouts to grow muscles, you likely don’t want to do them every single day.
Giving your muscles an extra day to repair and grow is often beneficial for muscle growth results.
Muscle-related effects aside, doing 200 squats (a day) can also help you burn a few extra calories and offer improvements in sleep, bone density, mood, etc.
Benefits of 200 squats a day
Most people know that more exercise can be good for their health.
However, you may want to know about the more specific benefits you can expect from doing an extra 200 squats a day.
200 squats a day burns a few extra calories
The human body requires energy, aka calories, to function throughout the day. Exactly what you do and how intensely influences how many calories you burn.
For example, doing 200 squats will require more energy than just sitting still in front of a desk. There are some ways to make rough predictions about how much.
With these predictions and that the average person does about 24 bodyweight squats and 12 weighted squats per minute, you can roughly estimate how many calories 200 squats a day will burn for different people.
One important thing to note before giving the amounts is that they are inevitably far from perfect. The way to calculate calories burned with weighted squats does not even take the amount of weight used into account.
| Type Of Squat Weight Person | 200 Bodyweight Squats | 200 Weighted Squats |
|---|---|---|
| 125 Pounds (56 kg) | 31 calories | 82 calories |
| 155 Pounds (70 kg) | 39 calories | 102 calories |
| 185 Pounds (83 kg) | 46 calories | 121 calories |
| 215 Pounds (97 kg) | 54 calories | 141 calories |
Will it help you lose weight?
Another important point is that burning more calories does not always mean more weight loss. To achieve this goal, you need to get to a point where your body requires more energy than is coming in from food.
When this happens, you start using up energy stores like body fat to get the difference.
The extra calorie burning you get from squats can help weight loss in the sense that they make it so you use up more energy.
However, this progress can still be canceled by suboptimal habits in other lifestyle areas like the things you eat.
Something else that makes things confusing is that 200 squats a day could make your muscle mass increase.
Even if the number on the scale does not move, you could be making fat loss progress. This would still lead to nice differences between your before and after situations.
It could be enough to grow your muscles
Squats are typically good for growing and strengthening leg muscles like your quadriceps (front thighs). That being said, you still need to use enough resistance and do enough repetitions to see results.
If you are barely able to complete around 3 sets of 67 bodyweight squats to 6 sets of 34 bodyweight squats, a workout like this could be enough to grow the muscles that fatigue (1).
Since squats mainly involve your quadriceps, these muscles will likely be the ones to grow. That being said, if you never do glute (butt) and hamstring (back thigh) exercises, these could grow a small amount too.
If/when the ranges of bodyweight squats above become too easy, you want to do weighted or one-legged squats to keep seeing progress.
With these, you could see similar or more results than with 200 squats a day but while doing fewer repetitions.
Is 200 squats every other day better?
Something important to note is that the ranges above are related to single workouts with 200 squats. You likely don’t want to do these every single day if you are interested in optimal results.
While doing squats, you damage the muscles you work. This may sound bad at first but it starts a variety of processes that can repair the muscles and make them stronger over time.
However, your body still needs time to complete these processes. If you work the same muscles too early, they don’t have enough time to repair and grow.
For this reason, it is typically recommended to do heavy squats every other day.
At the same time, there will be people that recover quickly enough from 200 squats a day too. Especially if they don’t push to failure and/or don’t do heavy squats.
Your general health may improve
Squats are mostly known for their muscle growth potential but this comes with a variety of other helpful health benefits too.
Some of the more general health benefits you can get to some extent include:
- Better bone density
- Your mood could improve
- Daily activities like walking and climbing stairs can become easier
- You may sleep better
- Your cardiovascular health may improve slightly
- You may feel less stressed
Doing 200 squats a day is not always the best way to get these benefits but they could be enough to motivate you to try a challenge like this.
If you are interested in optimal health, you do still want to consider other resistance training exercises and cardiovascular workouts too.
Helps you build an exercise habit
Doing 200 squats a day will only take you around 8 to 17 minutes of exercising.
While this is better than nothing, there are plenty of longer and more intense routines.
That being said, the simplicity and short duration of the squat routine can be its benefits. They make it less overwhelming and easier to make working a habit.
Once you get used to the 200 squats a day, you can start implementing glute and hamstring-focused resistance exercises, upper-body resistance exercises, and cardiovascular workouts to get more health benefits.
When can you see results from 200 squats a day?
Knowing how long it should take to see results from an exercise routine can motivate you to take action and help you know whether you are approaching the challenge in a suboptimal way.
Some of the results like burning more calories, mood improvements, and sleep improvements can start to happen to small extents as soon as the first session of 200 squats.
Other results like quadricep muscle growth can start to become noticeable after 2 to 4 weeks if you do the 200 squats with enough resistance and push yourself enough.
To see significant bone density improvements and big weight loss results from 200 squats a day you want to aim for more than 30 days and keep an eye on lifestyle habits like your diet.
200 squats a day for 30 days results
The information above is helpful but you may also want to see what results someone who actually does 200 squats a day for 30 days gets.
Martin from the Youtube channel Kaizen Lifestyle did 200 bodyweight squats a day for 30 days. You can find out about his experience in the video below.
One of Martin’s results was that his thighs went from 52 cm (20.5 inches) circumference on day 1 before the challenge to 54.5 cm (21.5 inches) circumference on day 30 after the challenge.
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