![]() If that muscle isn’t working correctly, it allows the body to sort of compensate and allow the knee to cave in when it’s called upon to do a very powerful movement.” “That’s because they have a poor ability to coordinate hip muscles and the glute medius, the muscle on the outside of the body that controls abduction. ![]() “A lot of the time athletes won’t show that bad coordination or movement in a regular squat, but when you give them a pistol squat it comes out,” says Horschig. Yelling “knees out” in your head can be surprisingly effective, but Horschig says the key to fixing knee valgus is the pistol squat. It’s not great, and it’s still a good idea to experiment with the following exercises, but you probably don’t have to drop weight.īut if as soon as you hit 80 percent of your 1-rep max, your knee goes further inward than your toes? You should probably stop squatting that heavy until you can correct the issue. If your knees cave a little bit but they don’t go further than your big toe, it’s not such a big deal. How Do I Stop My Knees Caving In When I Squat? For a lot of us, form starts to break down as the weight gets heavier, so how do you train the system to not do that? (Crazy, right?) That means the heavier the weight, the more neuromuscular control and coordination your body needs to maintain correct form and avoid knee valgus. “That can be either due to fatigue or neuromuscular control issues - you haven’t been primed to move that way every single time you squat, and when you get up to very heavy weights, the body can’t properly meet the demands of that increased weight.”īasically, it’s harder for the body to squat heavy than it is to squat light. “It’s not because they’re weak, necessarily, it’s because the timing of when the muscles activate is a little off,” says Horschig. If your knees cave in a little when you squat, does it happen on the descent of the squat? Does it happen when you’re using light weight? If not, it’s probably more of a coordination problem than a mobility problem. So mobility can be an issue, but usually it isn’t, particularly if you’ve been training for a while and don’t have old ankle injuries giving you problems. When screening ankle mobility, he likes to administer the 5-inch wall test: can you touch the knee to the wall at a distance of five inches? If so, then ankle mobility probably isn’t your problem. “Either the knee will collapse, or the chest is going to start collapsing because the knee has stopped moving forward, meaning the hips will try to push forward instead and the chest will collapse as compensation.” “It reaches a point where there are two paths the body can take,” says Horschig. While we’re most mechanically efficient when the knees track over the feet, poor hip or ankle mobility can cause pretty significant restrictions on the way down to a squat. ![]() The knee is basically a hinge joint that’s stuck between two other joints that control it: the hip joint and the ankle joint. So what are the causes, and what can we do about it? You can only do that so many times before the hinge starts to wear out.” As you as you get a bit of knee waiver, it’s like trying to open the door but simultaneously pulling up as you’re pulling out. “Open it cleanly, the hinge opens nice and smoothly. Aaron Horschig, a sports and orthopedic physical therapist, USAW Olympic weightlifter, and founder of Squat University. “Ideally, knees should track up and down the exact same way, just like a hinge opening and shutting,” says Dr. But usually it’s not the kind of problem that causes an automatic, acute injury. Instead, it creates small imbalances at the knee every time it tracks incorrectly, wearing away knee cartilage and eventually causing pain and immobility. It’s common, but it can have disastrous results, sometimes causing snapped tendons and even complete knee replacements. If you like to squat heavy, there’s a pretty good chance that at some point, your knees have started to cave inward on the ascent. It doesn’t matter if you’re a weightlifter, powerlifter, CrossFit® athlete, or you just like to squat heavy. If you’re experiencing pain or other symptoms, please consult a medical professional. The opinions and articles on this site are not intended for use as diagnosis, prevention, and/or treatment of health problems. Editor’s note: The content on BarBend is meant to be informative in nature, but it should not be taken as medical advice.
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