How I Cured My Squat Woes (so You Can Too) – Part 3

Here’s the bad news: I had so many problems with my squat that I could break them into a 3-part article series (read part 1 and part 2 here). Here’s the good news: I fixed most of them and want to share the knowledge I gained along the way. After years of lifting and coaching, I’ve learned that these problems are fairly common, so hopefully I can help YOU improve YOUR squat in the process.

In the final installment, I’ll reveal how I fixed my worst squat faux pas of all: my knees caving in. I missed more lifts because of my knees knocking together than any other technique issue, but after several years of frustration, I’ve been able to cure myself of this squatting cardinal sin. Here’s how:

WHY YOU SHOULD KEEP YOUR KNEES OUT

First and foremost, let’s all agree that keeping the knees out (i.e. knees aligned with the feet) during the squat is favorable compared to letting the knees cave in (i.e. knees inside the feet). When the knees stay out, good things happen. When they cave in, bad things happen. Let’s discuss.

Everyone cues “knees out” during the squat, but why? Because it creates torque, which is simply rotational force that creates stability at a given joint. Keeping your knees out in a rotational manner, using one of the following cues…

• Spread the floor
• Screw your feet into the ground

… stabilizes the hip joint for a stronger squat. If the hip is stable, the knee will likely remain stable as well.

I’ve never heard anyone explain this concept as succinctly as Dr. Kelly Starrett in his book, Becoming a Supple Leopard. Here’s what Starrett has to say about torque:

There is slack within these ball-in-socket joints that allows for full movement of the limb. To make your joint stable, you need to wind up, twist, and spiral your limb into your hip or shoulder socket. … When you add rotation, it takes up all the capsular slack within the socket, making the joint very tight and stable.

When you don’t keep your knees out, you lose stability in the hip joint, which then sends your body “tension hunting,” as Starrett calls it. Basically, if your muscles can’t actively create stability, your body kicks into panic mode and will get that stability passively from anywhere it can, including ligaments. That means that you’ll run into trouble both upstream (at the spine and shoulders) and downstream (at the knees and ankles) as your body slams into poor positions for the sake of stability.

All it takes is a close look at the structures of the knee to realize that you’d rather have your glutes, quads and hamstrings taking the brunt of a heavy squat than your ACL, MCL, patellar ligament and menisci.

 

Besides the increased risk of injury, you’re much more likely to lose position elsewhere if your knees cave in. As Starrett described, properly keeping your knees out indicates that you’ve created stability at the hip. If you lose stability at the hip because your knees cave, you’re bound to run into a handful of other positioning issues, including:

• Ankles rolling in – reduces foot contact with the floor and hinders force production
• Heels lifting up – same as above, plus loss of posterior chain engagement and more stress on knees
• Hips shooting up early/chest caving over – more stress on lower back and misaligns bar in front of hips/knees

So not only can knee cave lead to injury, but it can also rob you of precious strength.

DO YOU NEED TO KEEP YOUR KNEES OUT?

I’d be remiss if I didn’t briefly discuss the fact that you don’t need to keep your knees out. Lots of lifters, specially Olympic weightlifters, exhibit some knee cave and perform just fine.

While this is a common trend among high-level lifters, it’s a poor recommendation for novice and intermediate lifters lest they develop poor habits.

And even then, when talking about knee cave among these lifters, you have to ask two questions:

• How much knee cave is occurring?
• How well is it controlled?

Keep in mind that often this knee cave is not so severe that it reaches an end-range amount that could be dangerous. Much like the powerlifter who rounds his back when he deadlifts but knows how much rounding it too much, lifters who let their knees come in a bit when they bounce out of the hole know how much is too much and accept the risks.

Here’s a real world example. In my experience, I’ve missed plenty of squats because of too much knee cave. Just watch how I hit a wall at the 0:25 mark when my knees cave in:

Even though I flew out of the hole with good speed, I simply couldn’t overcome my knee position.

Nowadays, my knees may not stay way outside my knees throughout the whole lift, but they come in only slightly, returning to a “neutral” position instead of caving inside my feet.

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Here’s how I fixed it.

A MATTER OF TENSION

When people break down the squat, they like to talk about mobility. You’re tight here, tight there. Stretch here, stretch there. Hips, hamstrings, ankles, everything’s tight. While it’s true that you need a certain degree of mobility to squat in a good position, knee cave is rarely an issue of mobility, especially if it only occurs at heavier weights.

If you can keep your knees out with 300 pounds but not with 400 pounds, it’s not a matter of mobility. It’s a matter of tension. Much like Starrett said, can you find adequate tension to keep your knees out and hold it throughout the lift?

For me, the answer was no, for several reasons.

“Feeling Tension”

First of all, I couldn’t “feel” what it was like to create torque at my hips. Miguel Aragoncillo has truly opened my eyes to the importance of hammering home a feeling and getting it to “stick” during a movement, whether that’s packing the shoulder, bracing the abs or torque at the hips.

Miguel taught me some reflexive ways (i.e. they happen automatically) to learn to get tension at the hips. Once I could discover this feeling reflexively, it was easier to “get it” under the bar.

One method was having Miguel push against my foot as I squatted down, forcing me to spread the floor. Another was the more common mini-band walk, which pulls your knees inward and forces you to actively push them out. I explain both methods in this video that I helped film for 212 Health and Performance:

Adjusting Your Squat Stance

Some people can’t get tension in the hips because of their stance width and foot position. Standing with your feet too far apart or your feet turned out too much puts you in a position of too much external rotation, making it hard to create any further external rotation torque at the hips.

As Eric Cressey has said many times, sometimes if your knees are already out, there’s nowhere for them to go but in. Listen to the man himself:

And while turning the feet out a bit can clear up some room at the hip and help you squat lower, it can rob you of some force production. Especially for people who have anteverted hips (their “neutral” position is a bit more internally rotated so their knees might appear “knocked”), turning the feet out excessive likely pushes them beyond the point where they can effectively externally rotate further and create torque at the hip.

Long story short, if you’re a wide-stance squatter and can’t keep your knees out, trying narrowing your stance and turning your feet in a bit.

Eccentric Control

About two years ago, I got into a really bad habit of divebombing my squats. Basically, I’d drop down as fast as I could to try to bounce out of the hole. I was relying more on gravity and the stretch-shortening cycle than my legs.

But as I mentioned before, you have to have some degree of control of your knee position, and that’s tough to do when you’re free falling like Tom Petty. And like Cressey said in the above video, you need a certain degree of hip internal rotation at the bottom of a squat. If you don’t have adequate control of your descent, that internal rotation will likely be accompanied by hip adduction and – you guessed it – knee cave.

So what did I do? I slowed down.

Greg Robins prescribed me a wide array of pause squats and squats from pins at various positions, which helped me drive my knees out. Miguel advised me to work on controlling my descent and focus more on “pulling” myself down instead of just falling. Both methods worked wonders.

SUMMARY

To summarize this three-part series, where’s what I did to fix three of my biggest squat issues:

• Changed my hand position
  • Moved hands out wider to help elbow discomfort
  • Pulled the bar down with my lats instead of simply under the bar
  • Improved shoulder and upper back mobility so I could get in a better position
• Changed my bracing strategy
  • Stopped arching my lower back so much
  • Learned to breathe properly to create stability
• Used my hips to keep my knees out
  • Used reflexive learning strategies to “feel” my hips
  • Adjusted my stance width and foot position
  • Slowed down my descent

Keep in mind, this is simply how I fixed my squat. It may not work for you if you don’t have these problems. But in my coaching and lifting career, I’ve found that a lot of squatters have these same problems. I hope these insights can help you improve your technique too.