What's up, guys? Jake Hutton from Fitness Culture. Today we're gonna be talking
about how to fix knee valgus during your squat. So we're gonna be covering my
favorite drill that has helped thousands of clients that I've worked with fix
this movement pattern dysfunction, and then we're gonna be going over a squat
progression that's gonna help you fix it as well.
Alright, so knee valgus is when your knees cave in during a squat,
just basically at any time. So there could be a couple things that are
causing this issue. One could be lack of quad strength. The thing that I
found with most people, it's just a movement pattern issue where they're not
really engaging their glutes and really firing them to make sure their knees
track right down their toes before they squat. So we're gonna be going over a
drill right now that will really help you turn those glutes on and really
reinforce the perfect movement pattern. We've set up a band low on the rack
right at knee level. And what you're gonna do, it's a light band, you
don't need much on this, it's just enough to give you a little bit of feedback.
What you're gonna do is step in and put the band right behind your knees just
like this, and then from there what I usually do with my clients is say put
your hands on your butt, and then just press out against the band just a
little bit. Not so much that you're rolling up on your feet or anything like
that, just a little bit. And you'll notice right now if you do it yourself that
when you press out, your glutes are gonna fire and turn on a little bit, and that's
really going to externally rotate your femurs a little bit and make sure that
your knees are tracking right down your toes. And from there we're gonna descend
into the squat, taking your time, 4 count lower, chest up, and then drive out
against the band at the bottom. Drive out, drive out, 1, 2, 3, 4, come
back up. We usually do about three sets of 10 reps on this to really reinforce
good movement pattern. Another thing to think about at the bottom, just to really
help drive your knees out as you're coming up if you have a really big
problem with your knees diving in, is to think about pressing the ground apart.
So try to rip the ground apart on the way up, and that's gonna
help you really keep those knees out. So during this entire drill never let your
knees come in. Sometimes when I've worked with my clients in the past I'll
come back in and they're doing it on their own and they're using this really
heavy band and they're really just reinforcing a bad movement pattern
because they can't keep their knees out during the movement. It's not really
about trying to strengthen your glutes or anything like that, it's just giving
you a little bit of feedback so when you do the drill it sets you up for
squatting that day. Alright, the next thing we're going to cover is a squat
progression that I like to put all of our Fitness Culture app members through right
when they come into the program, and we start them off with the front squat
one, because people commonly neglect the front squat, and two,
because just where the lowest place on the front squat's gonna be right over
your center of gravity, and for most people it allows them to reinforce a
good movement pattern right off the bat. And also, last thing, it really forces you
to use your core during the movement and I like it for that reason as well.
The first technique that we use on this progression is gonna be a 1 1/4
front squat, but we're really going to control the eccentric.
Controlling the eccentric is going to allow you to really dial in your form
and make sure your knees are tracking down your toes perfectly, and then the
quarter rep at the bottom is just gonna allow you to really spend time
under tension where people commonly really have the movement fall. A lot of
people will come down, they'll drive out, and their knees will come in.
So the goal is on that quarter rep to really drive your knees out, keep them out,
control it down there though. We're not using it as a stretch
reflex type of a thing, where you're dropping out of the bottom of coming back up.
During this progression we're gonna use it more of just spending some
time in the bottom in that position. We have a 4 count tempo today, so she'll
go down for a 4 count. 1, 2, 3, 4, come up to a quarter up, drop back
down, drive your knees out, and then come back up. So we usually spend a couple
weeks on the 1 1/4 quarter reps for the front squat. The next part of the
progression is gonna be slow eccentric with no quarter reps.
Sunny will demonstrate that. So same thing, nice front squat position and then
she's gonna control it down, let's say it's a 4 count. Control it down, drive
her knees back up, just like that. From there we usually taper it down,
kick out the eccentric part of it, move people to a natural tempo and start adding a
little bit more weight. Then we de-load and then move them through a back squat
progression that's very similar to the front squat progression, and almost all
of our members at the end of that back squat progression will hit PRs.
I hope those tips help you guys fix those knees caving in during your back squat.
If you guys want to check out how we would lay out that front squat
progression, we put a link in the description, so you can click that and
download it so you can actually use this in your training. Another reason that
your knees might be caving in during the back squat is hip mobility issues, so if
you guys have hip mobility issues you can click this video right here to check
out our hip mobility video, and then click right here if you like the content. Thank you.