Push your knees out. A phrase commonly heard in many gyms across the globe, CrossFit, Bootcamp, corporate. Its common for people to squat and have their knees cave inwards. But when you ask someone to push their knees out do you really know what you are asking their muscles to do? When someones knees drop in at the bottom of their squat its creating a valgus stress on their knees. This puts a lot of stretch on their medial collateral ligament and a lot of compression on their lateral meniscus. Neither of which is good for longevity of a joint, and quality of a movement. In order to keep your knees out, and optimally I would say inline with your feet not beyond you need to engage your hip abductor muscles. Just a quick movement lesson. Abductions is moving a joint away form midline and adduction is moving it toward midline. We want the first one...Abduction. Your hip muscles do this. Specifically your middle and posterior fibres of the gluteus medius and minimus. These are pictures one and two. The medius overlies the minimus. The anterior fibres of both of these helps with internal rotation, which we arent worrying about for now. The middle and posterior figures are what need to turn on in order to push your knees out. In part two of this post ill talk about other limiting factors that may be causing a lack of ability to push your knees out that dont involve activation of these two muscles. The third picture here shows the relationship of your gluteus maximus to its lesser two counterparts. It is behind them and its primary function is hip extension and to a lessor extent hip external rotation. Three simple exercises that can be used as accessory to strengthen/engage your gluteus min/med are leg raises (think Jane Fonda workout). Clam shells. Similar movement but you keep your feet together with your knees bent to 90 degrees and spread your knees (dont rotate your pelvis back as this defeats the purpose). The last is banded squats. Wrap a band around your knees for resistance or a simple tactile stimulus and squat while pushing your knees out. You can do this while lifting no weight, or while doing heavy weight to correct a knee valgus at the bottom of your squat. Play around with the movements. - Dr.Adam.Wade -
Posted on: Fri, 19 Dec 2014 05:08:33 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015