Squatting strengthens the muscles of your legs and your knee and hip joints. If you experience knee pain when squatting, stop immediately and consult a physician. Performed properly, squatting should never hurt your knees, even if the effort from squatting leaves you gasping for breath. Using proper technique and getting plenty of rest, squat training should improve the stability of your knee joints. Consult a health care professional before beginning any strength-training program.
Proper Technique
Strong, healthy knee joints begin and end with proper technique. When squatting, instead of squatting straight down, sit back by pushing your hips to the rear. This increases the rotation around your hip joint and decreases the rotation around your knee joint, minimizing stress and strain on your knees. Still squat deeply, for maximal muscular recruitment. The depth of your squat has a direct correlation to the degree of work many muscles receive while squatting, according to a 2002 study published in the "Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research."
Hamstring Activation
Sitting back in the squat, particularly if you use a wider stance, recruits more of your posterior chain, in this case, your hips and hamstrings. This helps control the tracking of your patella tendon, which maintains stability of the knee joint. As your hamstring contracts, it tightens and protects the patella tendon. This principle is called co-contraction. Squatting itself activates the hamstrings far more than other exercises, including the leg press and particularly the leg extension, according to a 1994 study published in the "Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research."
Extra Hamstring Training
To avoid any problems with your knees when squatting, in addition to developing your technique, you should develop your hamstrings. Additional work from good mornings, glute-hamstring raises and reverse hyperextensions provides additional hamstring strength and knee stability. Good mornings, where you lean forward with the bar on your back instead of squatting down, are a lower back and hamstring exercise very specific to the squat. Glute-hamstring raises and reverse hyperextensions require the appropriate machines; good mornings can be done anywhere you can squat. Perform good mornings for sets of five to eight repetitions, and never train to failure or lift without a spotter.
Strengthen Your Medialis
The vastus medialis or vastus internus is the portion of your thigh muscle that is located just above your knee joint on the inside of your knee. This muscle also helps keep your knee joint tracking smoothly. As leg extensions are less than ideal, you can perform what is known as a terminal knee extension, or TKE. To do this, anchor a resistance band to something that will not move and wrap the other end around the back of your knee joint. Step back until you have taken up all of the tension in the band, and using the leg that the band is on, dig your foot into the ground. Allow your leg to relax and your knee to travel forward slightly, then straighten your leg by powerfully flexing your medialis. This exercise should be done for three to five sets of 15 to 20 repetitions.
References
- "Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research"; The Effect of Back Squat Depth on the EMG Activity of 4 Superficial Hip and Thigh Muscles; A. Caterisano, et al.; August 2002
- "Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise"; Effects of Technique Variations on Knee Biomechanics During the Squat and Leg Press; R.F. Escamilla, et al.; September 2001
- "Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research"; An Electromyographical Comparison of the Squat and Knee Extension Exercises; J.F. Signorile, et al.; August 1994
