Strength training has become far more popular over the past few years, and people have worked out that it is an essential part of losing weight. The question now is how to do it without hurting yourself.
The squat is one of the most common exercises people do incorrectly. It is not a complicated movement, but done wrong it will cause you serious knee pain, which rather defeats the point.
Why the squat hurts your knees
The main reason people get knee pain squatting is that they go down by bending at the knees first. That puts the knee out in front and loads the patellar tendon, and that tendon is where the pain you are feeling comes from.
The fix is not to squat less. It is to squat from the hips instead of the knees.
The correction
- Start by pushing your backside out behind you.
- Put your weight into your heels.
- As you descend, that should bring your knees back in line with your heels rather than out over your toes.
With the knees stacked over the heels there is far less pressure going through the patellar tendon, which is what removes the pain.
If that alone does not fix it
Regress to a simpler version that takes the pressure out of the bottom of the squat, and will often let you get deeper than you could before. It is called a sit squat, and it is simple because you have been doing it your whole life.
- Take a chair, box or stool at roughly waist height or a little lower.
- Practise literally sitting down onto it and standing back up.
- Use the same technique: backside back, weight into the heels.
- You should feel little to no tension in the knees at all.
Building back up
If you need sit squats for a few weeks, that is completely fine. Progressively add weight while keeping to ten to twelve repetitions, and keep going until the knee gives you no trouble in a normal squat.
The squat matters. It is where your quad, glute and hamstring strength comes from and it belongs in any strength programme. What it is not is something to push through pain on. Do not assume it will just get better, and do not train it with poor form in the meantime.
If you want someone watching your positions rather than guessing from a video, book a free discovery call.
Written by
Kristoff "Kris" Warsaw
Kris is the owner and head trainer at Versed Fitness, training clients in their own homes across Baltimore, Towson and Pikesville. He specializes in working with people whose joint pain has made ordinary exercise feel impossible.
