Do you get knee pain when squatting?
Well, I'm going to show today, it's time to stop blaming the knees, and start looking
elsewhere.
What's up guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.COM.
A mid-week video.
Whaddya' know, right?
This is sort of an idea I've had on my mind for quite some time was, What if we started
to put out a couple more videos?
What if we did 2 a week?
Now, if you guys like that idea, let me know below, and even drop some of the ideas that
you'd like to see, and maybe we'll start making some of those videos.
That being said, I thought today was a great chance to talk about a real common issue,
put on my physical therapy hat,
and talk about something that I see come in front of me all the time, almost 90% of the
time with athletes that I train, is knee pain.
Hardly anybody can get through leg workouts without having some sort of knee pain.
But the big factor here is, what are you blaming it on?
Most guys will say, I have bad knees.
The fact of the matter is, the knee joint itself is sort of what I call a consequential
joint.
Meaning, it's a joint that's stuck in the middle of the ankle and the hip, and has to
deal with the consequences that those 2 joints can do to 'f' it up.
Ok.
That's the fact of the matter.
It's really, there's another analogy of a train on a track.
The knee sits in the middle of the train track.
And it just sort of, if the track is messed up, the track is messed up because the ankle
is moving it or the hip is moving it out of whack.
So, when we squat, one of the problems I think most guys have is a big issue up here in the
hip, not having the right mechanics of the hip in order to stabilize and allow the knees
to track in line the way they should.
So, my best tip when you're doing the squat to fix knee pain, almost instantly.
You'll see if you do this tip, you'll do a squat regularly, you'll feel knee pain.
You do a squat with this, you should feel the pain significantly go away if not totally.
You got to get under the bar and start by getting your elbows pointed downward.
What this does is, it sort of acts to stabilize the mid back which will set it up and make
it easier to stabilize the low back.
Alright.
We're dealing with a kinetic chain here.
So, by digging the elbows down and into our sides, we have already stabilized the upper
back/mid back.
The tip is, at the time that it comes to go into your descent, you're going to pull down
into the descent.
You're going to actively contract your hip flexor, your solas muscle, to get you down
into that.
So, what does that mean?
Before you do a rep, if you were to push up here on your hand, you're going to feel as
if you got the resistance.
You know what the activation of the solas feels like.
You're going to try to recreate that.
So, not only by pulling down with the hip flexors are you going to stabilize the hips,
but you're also going to get other muscles out of it.
So, let me demonstrate what I'm talking about.
If I get under here, ok, the first thing I do is dig my elbows down into my sides.
Ok.
Head is up, elbows dug down in here, and then, I'm going to go and pull myself actively downward
into the squat.
So, I activate the hip flexors down, and then I come back up.
Ok.
I squeeze them down, and I come up.
Ok, again, down, and up.
Ok, so what I'm demonstrating here is that that active contraction, what it does is,
it gets the leg firing the way it should, the knee contracts where it has to.
And we don't involve and get muscles like the tensor fascia and all these other muscles
on the outside of the thigh to kick in artificially.
Which is what is going to happen if your hip isn't stabilized because it's got to get the
stability somewhere.
The problem is the TFL is going to pull the knee out of whack, not in the direction it
needs to stay.
So, a second benefit.
When you actively pull down, think about yourself as loading a spring.
When you pull down, you're loading that spring so that it can unload and actually help to
propel you out of the bottom position of the squat.
So, you're actively loading the spring, have that concept in your mind too.
Load the spring, come out of it.
One final tip.
If you have a hard time feeling the sensation of pulling down, you want to set up a couple
of bands in the squat rack.
Reach up here, grab them ok, up high.
Grab them up high.
Now, in order to get down into the squat, I'm going to have to actively pull.
So, I pull the bands down with the hip flexor contraction.
Pull down.
By pulling down into the hip flexors, I push my butt out behind me.
I get the knees from tracting too far over the toes, and I stabilize the back because
the hip flexor solas attached back here in the lower back.
As soon as you contract it, it stabilizes all the lumbar segments here so that I'm in
a good position to go.
So, guys start trying this.
Put this into action.
Do it without a bar.
Go there if you have knee pain, do your traditional squat.
Then, try to actively contract as you go down right here through the hip flexors.
If you want to see what that feels like, try the band, or just hold your leg up and actively
contract your hip up to see what that contraction feels like so you can reproduce it when you
get under the bar.
Guys, like I said, if you like, especially if you like some of these more, we call them
the nerdy videos, but it's the PT application of strength here.
Putting the science back in strength.
If you like this, let us know, tell us some of the other issues you want to see us cover.
And I'll start cranking out 2 videos in a week.
So, guys, if you haven't already, and you want to start training smarter, and harder,
head over to ATHLEANX.COM and grab the 90-day training program.
It's not just strength training guys.
It's strength training with a purpose, and it's strength training with some science behind
what we do.
So, I will see you guys this week.
Got another video coming up, and I will see you guys on Team Athlean.
See you guys back here in just a couple of days.