If you have knee pain with squatting or lunging of any kind, then this blog is for you. You should be able to decrease or eliminate your knee pain completely so you can squat down to reach a bottom shelf, use the toilet, or exercise. You should be able to get your hips below your knees in a squat without pain, but the variations of that we will cover in another blog. For now, take this information that follows and use it to try to eliminate your knee pain in your squats or lunges.
Reasons For Knee Pain During Squats
There are a few main reasons that knees hurt during a squat. A majority of them a treatable with some soft tissue work, joint mobilizations, taping, and exercise!
Without getting too deep in the anatomy of a squat (that will come in our squatting properly blog around Thanksgiving) the majority of knee pain is caused by something else. The knee is a relatively simple joint compared to the joints around it. For the most part, the knee bends and straightens.
What happens when we squat or lunge is that the knee doesn't bend or straighten in a proper plane for the knee cap to track on the thigh bone. This is usually caused by an issue in the hip or the ankle.
The hip and ankle joints have more complex movements available to them then the knee itself.
If you have knee pain and it isn't from a known injury to the knee (think ACL injury), then it probably comes from one of the two other joints.
Reasons for Knee Pain During Squats
Poor Hip Control
Ankle Instability
Muscle Substitutions
Poor Movement Patterns
That is pretty much it.
How To Fix Knee Pain During Squats
Depending on the cause of your knee pain (See list above) there are some exercises you can do to help improve your squat and decrease your knee pain.
Poor Hip Control
Ankle Instability
Muscle Substitutions and Movement Patterns
You can try any of these exercises and then see how it changes your squat. For a large percent of you, this will be all you need. For the rest of you, you may need some squat and lunge coaching for a few sessions to get rid of the pain completely.
There is much more we can do to help you continue to squat without knee pain. We never want you to stop doing squats or lunges from pain (unless it is a severe injury that requires surgical repair). We believe that you can keep doing all of the activities you enjoy doing with some minor tweaks to how you do them.
If you would like more help with your squats due to pain or for any reason, please reach out to us at info@bodyfixpt.com or (425)202-5687.
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