Welcome back to this week’s edition of 2-Minute Tuesdays. With all of the in-home workouts that are being done now, squats and squat variations are wildly-popular options. However, squats often do not feel good on people’s knees. If you find that squats bother your knees, we have some advice on slight modifications you can make to potentially help with this.
1) Use No/Little Motion
Our first tip if squats bother your knees is to use no motion or little motion while doing the exercise. Start by going down into a squat motion, but only go as far as your knees feel comfortable. Stop right before they start to bother you, and make a mental note of that position. You can do the entire exercise as an isometric by staying in that position, or you can do tiny pulses into and out of that position where you move up and down 2-3 inches. Either way, make sure your focus stays on squeezing your muscles and maintaining control during the entire exercise.
Action Step: Do not go any lower than your knees can comfortably tolerate. Oftentimes, the part of the squat that is bothersome to the knees is the bottom, so be very careful how far down you are dropping and make sure you are slowly moving into and out of the position.
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2) Put More Emphasis On Your Glutes
Our second tip if squats bother your knees is to put more of the emphasis of the exercise on your glutes. One way to do this is to think about sliding your feet apart while doing the squatting motion. This will engage more of your glute muscles, putting a greater emphasis on your hips and less of an emphasis on your knees.
Action Step: Before trying this tip, practice the idea of sliding your feet apart while you are standing straight up. You should feel the outside of your hips start to squeeze. Keep this feeling and intention while you sit back into a squat position and raise back up to standing.
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3) Avoid Wall Squats
Our third tip if squats bother your knees is to avoid wall squats. Wall squats are often heralded as being a “good” or ”joint friendly” version of squats, but they can be extremely stressful on your knees. Reason being, in order to maintain the squat position against the wall, you are having to use the friction on the ground, which creates a lot of stress on the knees. So, if possible, it is often best to avoid doing wall squats if you find that squatting exacerbates any knee issues you experience.
Action Step: Instead of doing wall squats, go back to tip number one above and perform an isometric squat without the wall. This is often significantly less stressful on the knee joint and should be less likely to cause a knee flair up.