The Squat Magic: A $40 Spring-Loaded Seat for the World's Most Basic Exercise, Which Requires Zero Equipment
Someone looked at the bodyweight squat — an exercise requiring literally nothing except legs and gravity — and thought 'this needs a product'
The bodyweight squat requires the following equipment: your body. That's it. Stand up. Bend your knees. Lower yourself. Stand back up. You have just done a squat. Congratulations. You used the equipment you were born with to perform the exercise your body was designed for. Cost: $0. Equipment needed: legs. Space required: the area you're already standing in.
The Squat Magic looked at this and said: "What if we charged $40 for a spring?"
The Squat Magic is a small piston-like device mounted on a base with a padded seat on top. You sit on the seat, squat down, and the spring assists you back to standing. It assists a bodyweight squat. It makes easier an exercise that is already easy enough for toddlers to do instinctively. Toddlers squat. Toddlers squat all day. They squat to pick things up, to examine bugs, to have lengthy eye-level conversations with dogs. No toddler has ever required a $40 spring-loaded seat to accomplish this.
The Squat Magic is the most aggressively unnecessary fitness product ever manufactured, and it exists in a market that includes the ThighMaster, the Shake Weight, and a machine that electrocutes your abs. In a field CROWDED with unnecessary products, the Squat Magic stands alone — or rather, sits alone, on its little spring, doing the job that standing up does for free.
The Vision: Assisted Squats for People Who Can Already Squat
The infomercial — hosted by a person with thighs so sculpted they clearly haven't needed assistance squatting since the early Clinton administration — shows the Squat Magic being used by smiling people who lower themselves onto the spring and then bounce back up with assisted joy. The spring takes the "effort" out of the squat, which is problematic because the effort IS the exercise. Remove the effort and you've removed the workout. You are sitting on a spring and standing up. This is what a chair does, but a chair doesn't cost $40 and a chair doesn't pretend to be fitness equipment.
The product was endorsed by various infomercial fitness personalities who demonstrated "5 minutes a day" of assisted squats and then attributed their physiques to this little piston, in the same way a professional chef might attribute a soufflé to a specific spatula.
The Squat Magic was available in multiple resistance levels: "beginner," "intermediate," and "advanced." The beginner level essentially stands you up for you. The advanced level provides moderate resistance. At no level does the Squat Magic provide more benefit than simply squatting without it and, if you want resistance, holding a bag of groceries while you squat.
The Glorious User Experience
Amy from Tampa, FL — ★☆☆☆☆
"I used the Squat Magic for three weeks. I then did bodyweight squats without it. The bodyweight squats were harder. The bodyweight squats were supposed to be EASIER because I'd been 'training' with the Squat Magic. But the Squat Magic had been doing part of the work for me, so my muscles hadn't actually gotten stronger — they'd gotten better at being assisted. I paid $40 to get worse at squats. I invested in regression. One star."
Jason from Denver, CO — ★☆☆☆☆
"I tried to explain the Squat Magic to my personal trainer. I said, 'It's a spring that helps you do squats.' He stared at me for approximately four seconds. Then he said, 'Do you need help standing up from a chair?' I said no. He said, 'Then you don't need a spring to help you do squats. Squatting IS standing up from an imaginary chair.' The consultation cost $60, which means between the Squat Magic and the trainer, I've spent $100 to be told to do the thing I could already do for free. One star."
Brenda from Columbus, OH — ★☆☆☆☆
“Space required: the area you're already standing in”
Click to Tweet"The spring makes a noise when it extends. A BOING noise. Like a cartoon sound effect. Every squat: BOING. Every rep: BOING. I was boinging in my living room at 7 AM while my husband drank coffee in the kitchen and wondered, audibly, what his life had become. The Squat Magic doesn't just look silly. It provides its own sound effects. One star."
Marcus from Raleigh, NC — ★☆☆☆☆
"The base is not stable. I leaned slightly off-center during a squat and the entire device tipped sideways. I went from 'doing a squat' to 'lying on my floor next to a toppled spring with a bruised hip' in approximately one second. The Squat Magic made squatting — one of the safest exercises in existence — dangerous. That takes talent. One star."
The Truth: The Market for Making Easy Things Easier
The Squat Magic occupies the absolute nadir of fitness product necessity. Every other product on this list at least attempts to solve a perceived problem, even if the solution is fake. The ThighMaster targets inner thighs (a real muscle group). Ab belts target abs (real muscles). The Gazelle provides cardio (a real fitness need). The Squat Magic provides assistance with an exercise that doesn't need assistance, for a body part that already knows how to squat, at a price that could buy a resistance band set that would make squats actually challenging.
The product's existence implies a target audience: people who cannot squat without assistance. This audience exists — people recovering from surgery, people with joint issues, people in physical therapy. For them, a supported squat device has genuine value. But the infomercial didn't target physical therapy patients. It targeted able-bodied people who wanted a shortcut to "toned legs," which is not a thing the Squat Magic provides.
The spring resistance on the Squat Magic's "advanced" setting provides approximately 15-20 pounds of assistance, which means it's making your bodyweight squat 15-20 pounds easier. To put this in perspective, you could achieve the same training effect by simply squatting while holding a 20-pound dumbbell — except the dumbbell makes the exercise HARDER, which is what builds muscle, which is what the Squat Magic was supposed to do but does the opposite of.
The Squat Magic makes squats easier. Muscle is built by making things harder. These are opposing forces. The product works against its own stated goal. This is the fitness equipment equivalent of a diet product that makes food taste better.
The Verdict
The Squat Magic is a $40 solution to a $0 problem. It is a spring that helps you do something your body already does. It makes an easy exercise easier, which makes the exercise less effective, which makes the purchase self-defeating. It is, in the most literal sense, a product that moves you further from your goal every time you use it.
Your legs are the Squat Magic. Your body weight is the resistance. The floor is the equipment. Everything you need for squats was included at birth. The Squat Magic added a spring, a boing sound, and $40 of regret.
We rate it 1 out of 5 necessary inventions.
If you want to squat effectively using equipment that makes you stronger instead of weaker, see our alternatives below.
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✅What to Buy Instead
Your Own Legs
Bodyweight squats: free, effective, available everywhere, zero assembly. You were born with the only squat equipment you'll ever need.
Resistance Bands for Squats
Add resistance to bodyweight squats for $15 instead of removing resistance with a $40 spring. Makes squats harder, which is the entire point.
Kettlebell (25 lb)
Hold it during squats for actual progressive resistance. Builds muscle because it makes the exercise harder, not easier.
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