Trying to Squat, F'ng Up My Knees

I had a similar problem. Foam roll every day before your workout, maybe for 20 or so minutes. Hit the glutes, the connection between the hamstrings and the glutes, the TFL and IT band A LOT, heavy heavy foam rolling on your rectus femoris, and then do foam rolling all down your quads including the area close to your knee.

It will take a week or so to clear up, but it should work. I have definitely seen something like this before. (note: I am not saying it is absolutely the right solution, but it works for me and those I have offered it to)

You’re ankle mobility is fucked. From your vid, you’re squatting with a 1.25" heel and you can’t get your knees past your toes. That throws everything off because the knees stay up and the hips stay back and the lumbar spine is stressed to hell and back

Soleus stretch every day for at least 90 seconds per stretch, 3 stretches per ankle. Then run through your mobility drills. Don’t put heavy weight on your calves after you do these.

I’ve improved my ankle mobility alot and I think it’s my hips letting me down now, I can’t even bring my knee up to my chest…

Also, my knee starts to noticebably hurt after I stretch my hamstring, is there a particular reason for this?

[quote]Goodfellow wrote:
I’ve improved my ankle mobility alot [/quote]
Still doesn’t look like it’s enough.

What exact stretches are you doing to increase hip flexibility?

If you’ve been hitting the bottom position of the squat without tension across the front of your knee (you should already be pushing up when you hit bottom), you may have stretched or damaged some of the ligaments inside the knee. If so, you’ll pull the tibia backward in relation to the femur when you stretch the hams with the knee extended.

[quote]JayPierce wrote:
What exact stretches are you doing to increase hip flexibility?
[/quote]

I use a wall, I put my butt as close as I can to it and get in a full squat position (with my back flat on the floor, feet on the wall), and push my knees outward, I get a deep stretch in the hips/inner thigh and hold it for about 10 minutes.

See this: Overhead squat/snatch prep | Feat. Kelly Starrett | Ep. 71 | MobilityWOD - YouTube

Another is that I put one foot on a surface that is about the height of my stomach/lower chest area and keep the other foot flat on the ground, I hold that for a few minutes each leg.

And some various other groin/hip flexor stretches.

Do yourself a favor and stop listening to that guy. Sitting in a squatting position for ten minutes when you don’t have the proper mobility in the first place is a terrible idea. If you were fit to do it, it would be fine.

Having your feet facing forward is also a position that’s not for everyone. For proof, just google search ‘olympic squat’ and see how many people are squatting heavy weight that way. So your guy’s statement that it’s best to have the toes pointed forward to strengthen the arch of the foot is bunk. If you have the toes pointed out too far, the arches will collapse. But as long as the toes are in line with the path of the knees, it ain’t happnin’.

Now, I’m not the type of asshole to dump on another guy’s advice without offering a better alternative (I am an asshole, but not that type)

Here’s what I learned from my own bum knee:

Your stance width is determined by your hip width and the ratio of your femur length to your shin length. I can’t for the life of me figure out why people say to “stand with your feet shoulder width apart”. As a person with wide shoulders and narrow hips, I object. Did it for a long time until I watched a vid of myself squatting, and saw how twisted my knees were.

Besides, What exactly is shoulder width? Clavicle width? Middle of the delts? Outside edge of the delts? Are my toes supposed to be there, or my heels?

Without getting too technical, here’s how to find your best stance:

  1. Stretch (more on that later)
  2. Jump three times and stick the landing
  3. Without moving your feet, squat down into the bottom position. Just squat. Don’t think about keeping the hips back or any of that. Just squat straight down.
  4. Straighten your lumbar by arching hard, and pull your knees up into your armpits
  5. Rock your weight back and forth from heels to toes.

Your feet will inch their way into the best position for the bottom. The stuck landing is the best for power transmission to the ground. Find a happy medium.

Now the part about stretching:

Stretch your ankles as part of your daily routine. On non-leg-days, stretch for at least 90sec per rep. On leg days, do them for 20sec per rep. Stretch the gastroc for GP, but focus your efforts on the soleus (tension is taken off of the gastroc when the knee flexes)

Stretch your glutes. If you can’t do a seated glute stretch keeping perfect posture and pull the knee up above the hip, do them for the same times as the soleus.

Same with hams and hip flexors. Hip flexor stretching is just to improve hip flexibility, function, and balance. No help with squats, as the weight kinda flexes the hip for you.

Now repeat steps 1-5 in my post above. Hold the ‘knees in pits’ position for 20sec, for three reps. When you’re done with that, you’re ready to squat.

A little bit about knee travel:

Forget knee travel. For your body to be in balance on a heavy squat, you should be able to draw a straight vertical line from the middle of your foot, through the middle of your femur, and up through the bar (or pretty damned close).

So when you think about that, low-bar keeps the hips back and focuses on the posterior chain (this one is kinda the exception, when done PL-style for the highest weight). Front squat pushes the knees forward and focuses on the quads. High-bar is somewhere in between.

Again, this is for a HEAVY SQUAT. Lighter weights cause you to lean forward a bit more to balance out your ass.

Just my 2 cents - Your vid doesn’t start at the beginning of your squat, but I would say the position your in on the first frame is already terrible. It looks like your knees are already jutting out past your toes, your weight is all on your quads and if you let yourself you would come up on the balls of your feet as you descend. How much experiance do you have squatting “powerlifting style?” In my opinion no matter the style, you initiate the squat by breaking the hips and sitting back, this is simply exaggerated in the powerlifting squat. Looking at the still frame at the beginning of your vid it looks like you break the knees first and try to squat down.

I would second some of the advice already given, try a little wider stance, point the toes out at the same angle as the femurs, and use progressively deeper box squatting. I would also suggest using bodyweight and then goblet squating along with the box until you get the form. You don’t need extra loading with your current form or while learning.

Hope that helps a little!

JayPierce, thanks for the advice I’ll definitely take it on board. And yeah, I think I will stop listening to that youtube guy, most of his advice so far has just fucked me over.

I didn’t get to go with your advice today as didn’t read it before I went to the gym, but I spent about an hour warming up with just front squats & the empty bar. I ended up having a decent front squat session with little to no knee pain.

I tried some back squats but I was having a much harder time keeping good form with those compared to front squats, but I didn’t stretch today or yesterday either.

I am thinking about this too much, today I just tried to clear my mind and ‘squat’ and things fell into place. I also did the jump & squat thing too so my feet were in a natural position.

Waylon, I’ve squatted 363x3 before powerlifting style (although it was barely parallel) and I did initiate the movement with the hips.

In todays session though I initiated with my knees/hips simultaneously, which worked ok.

Goodfellow, forget what you did PL style. It is irrelevant.

The mechanics of the squat is completely different.

Focus on sitting upright.

Youtube goblet squats and work on it. Cycle for 10mins to warm up and then do your dynamic stretches. Do a lot of windmills with your legs forwards and backwards and from side to side. You need to be religious with these. You will get deeper but you will only get what you put in.

Oly squat = sit down i between your legs. Feet about shoulder width/ a bit wider and toes point out a tad. Knees track over toes. Sit down and then, go the goblet squat exercises.

You are just stiff from not doing things to full ranges of movements.

Koing

So I did 40 minutes of cardio on the bike today, 20 minutes of dynamic stretching & then some hip mobility drills and I STILL got knee pain on squatting 50kg today.

This is fucking me off to no end.

Then I did some deadlifts and managed 180kg x 2 (personal best weighing 15kg less than when I did it before)

…For fuck sake.

[quote]Goodfellow wrote:
So I did 40 minutes of cardio on the bike today, 20 minutes of dynamic stretching & then some hip mobility drills and I STILL got knee pain on squatting 50kg today.

This is fucking me off to no end.

Then I did some deadlifts and managed 180kg x 2 (personal best weighing 15kg less than when I did it before)

…For fuck sake.

[/quote]

Hey, this won’t be solved over night or by doing what you just did. It will take many many hrs to work this out. Keep with it and you will get there.

Youd on’t need to do 40mins of cardio on the bike. Just do 8-10mins then do dynamic stretches. Did you do PNF stretching post work out? If not get on it. Stretch a few times a day and you will get there.

Where do you get the knee pain? Knee pain is a symptom of something else, especially when you are only squting 50kg.

Koing

[quote]Koing wrote:

[quote]Goodfellow wrote:
So I did 40 minutes of cardio on the bike today, 20 minutes of dynamic stretching & then some hip mobility drills and I STILL got knee pain on squatting 50kg today.

This is fucking me off to no end.

Then I did some deadlifts and managed 180kg x 2 (personal best weighing 15kg less than when I did it before)

…For fuck sake.

[/quote]

Hey, this won’t be solved over night or by doing what you just did. It will take many many hrs to work this out. Keep with it and you will get there.

Youd on’t need to do 40mins of cardio on the bike. Just do 8-10mins then do dynamic stretches. Did you do PNF stretching post work out? If not get on it. Stretch a few times a day and you will get there.

Where do you get the knee pain? Knee pain is a symptom of something else, especially when you are only squting 50kg.

Koing[/quote]

It starts as calf pain then if I carry on with my squatting antics it turns into knee pain around the VMO area

The knee pain has only started since I attempted squatting oly style… guess I’ll just carry on getting flexible and be paitient.

box squats rule

[quote]Goodfellow wrote:

[quote]Koing wrote:

[quote]Goodfellow wrote:
So I did 40 minutes of cardio on the bike today, 20 minutes of dynamic stretching & then some hip mobility drills and I STILL got knee pain on squatting 50kg today.

This is fucking me off to no end.

Then I did some deadlifts and managed 180kg x 2 (personal best weighing 15kg less than when I did it before)

…For fuck sake.

[/quote]

Hey, this won’t be solved over night or by doing what you just did. It will take many many hrs to work this out. Keep with it and you will get there.

Youd on’t need to do 40mins of cardio on the bike. Just do 8-10mins then do dynamic stretches. Did you do PNF stretching post work out? If not get on it. Stretch a few times a day and you will get there.

Where do you get the knee pain? Knee pain is a symptom of something else, especially when you are only squting 50kg.

Koing[/quote]

It starts as calf pain then if I carry on with my squatting antics it turns into knee pain around the VMO area

The knee pain has only started since I attempted squatting oly style… guess I’ll just carry on getting flexible and be paitient.[/quote]

Can you do a bw squat without pain? Have you looked in to goblet squats? If you can’t do a bw squat without pain I’d suggest you see someone about it.

Koing

[quote]Koing wrote:

[quote]Goodfellow wrote:

[quote]Koing wrote:

[quote]Goodfellow wrote:
So I did 40 minutes of cardio on the bike today, 20 minutes of dynamic stretching & then some hip mobility drills and I STILL got knee pain on squatting 50kg today.

This is fucking me off to no end.

Then I did some deadlifts and managed 180kg x 2 (personal best weighing 15kg less than when I did it before)

…For fuck sake.

[/quote]

Hey, this won’t be solved over night or by doing what you just did. It will take many many hrs to work this out. Keep with it and you will get there.

Youd on’t need to do 40mins of cardio on the bike. Just do 8-10mins then do dynamic stretches. Did you do PNF stretching post work out? If not get on it. Stretch a few times a day and you will get there.

Where do you get the knee pain? Knee pain is a symptom of something else, especially when you are only squting 50kg.

Koing[/quote]

It starts as calf pain then if I carry on with my squatting antics it turns into knee pain around the VMO area

The knee pain has only started since I attempted squatting oly style… guess I’ll just carry on getting flexible and be paitient.[/quote]

Can you do a bw squat without pain? Have you looked in to goblet squats? If you can’t do a bw squat without pain I’d suggest you see someone about it.

Koing
[/quote]

Not really, if I do a lot of bw squats i’ll get pain in my knee.

I’m well aware of goblet squats, I try to use that technique but still can’t get the depth without discomfort.

[quote]Goodfellow wrote:
cardio on bike
[/quote]

2birds1stone. Gluteal amnesia+ crushed prostate/internal penor shaft. Neither one gonna help the squat.nuff said.