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My knee came up sore after an all day training hike this past weekend. Fortunately, the doc could find nothing really wrong, so I am going with ice and ibuprofen for a few days. However, he strongly recommended not doing heavily weighted squats, which I have been doing 3X a week. I have never felt any pain after squatting, but this has me wondering. Any docs or PTs out there have anything definitive? Thanks.

Jim Thomas

There was a thread about this on crossfit. http://www.board.crossfit.com/showthread.php?t=57603
The consensus was that deep squats do not stress the knees. Personally I frequently do all kinds of squats with no knee issues.

Personally, I wouldn't go below parallel. I don't think there is anything to be gained from doing that anyway.

Deep squats(past 90) is the only safe and effective way to squat. It's not really a true squat unless you go past 90 anyway. The joints are put under much greater stress when the athlete forces the natural movement of the squat to stop prior to the bottom of the squat. At the bottom(below 90) the joint and muscles use elastic energy to begin the movement back to standing.

Start light with just the bar. Do reps of 5 to learn the movement. If you have really bad flexibility, I did, work with low weights for a couple of weeks and it'll come.

Read the gospel of squat:

http://www.amazon.com/Starting-Strength ... 462&sr=8-1

oso1212 wrote:Deep squats(past 90) is the only safe and effective way to squat. It's not really a true squat unless you go past 90 anyway. The joints are put under much greater stress when the athlete forces the natural movement of the squat to stop prior to the bottom of the squat. At the bottom(below 90) the joint and muscles use elastic energy to begin the movement back to standing.

Start light with just the bar. Do reps of 5 to learn the movement. If you have really bad flexibility, I did, work with low weights for a couple of weeks and it'll come.

Read the gospel of squat:

http://www.amazon.com/Starting-Strength ... 462&sr=8-1

That is pretty much what I have been told at Crossfit as well. I will go back to squatting as soon as I get the knee back to normal.

Hey Jim, I you have some kind of a pre-existing knee condition (that you might not even be aware of) it could be a bad idea to do deep squats. For example if you have partellar tracking dissorder or plica syndrom (which I have), you should not be doing any spuats or lunges, as I was told be two different sports doctors. To make sure or if you have re-occuring issues, you might want to get it checked out. There are other exercises you could do to replace squats that are less taxing for your knees.

I have bad knees in general. When I have a day where they are sore I go down and do squats and it helps a good deal.

I've recently started to go all the way down with my squats. My weight dropped a lot but have noticed an improvement in my flexibility. Also, this has helped me to truely enjoy front squates. I use to hate those things.

mstender wrote:Hey Jim, I you have some kind of a pre-existing knee condition (that you might not even be aware of) it could be a bad idea to do deep squats. For example if you have partellar tracking dissorder or plica syndrom (which I have), you should not be doing any spuats or lunges, as I was told be two different sports doctors. To make sure or if you have re-occuring issues, you might want to get it checked out. There are other exercises you could do to replace squats that are less taxing for your knees.

Like step ups?

I'm having patella issues, all imput is welcome

I've got knackered knees anyway but I never squat. Just one destroys them for the rest of the day!

mstender wrote:Hey Jim, I you have some kind of a pre-existing knee condition (that you might not even be aware of) it could be a bad idea to do deep squats. For example if you have partellar tracking dissorder or plica syndrom (which I have), you should not be doing any spuats or lunges, as I was told be two different sports doctors. To make sure or if you have re-occuring issues, you might want to get it checked out. There are other exercises you could do to replace squats that are less taxing for your knees.

What exercises do you suggest?

patellafemoral contact force most certainly increases quickly with more flexed knee angles. whether or not the body can handle that is probably dependent on many things and not clear. time to look up some published reviews...

Doing squats to halfway is like doing half a bench press or half an arm curl. The idea is to use appropriate weight and build gradually using proper form. Squatting is a natural movement; stopping halfway is not. My grandfather was an olympic weightlifter (he was once the youngest man in the world to clean-and-jerk 300 pounds before the Russians introduced 'roids), who passed on the skills to my Dad and then me. I've been doing full squats since I was 12 years old. I played football, basketball, and track in school. I've been skiing since I could walk. I run all summer, every year. I've never once had anything wrong with my knees. My grandfather is 85 and can still do a full squat.

Incidentally, my Dad taught his college roommate how to lift using full squats. He went on to become one of the top 5 orthopedic surgeons in the country, who developed patents for hip and knee replacements. He is a strong advocate of full squats.

Ed F wrote:Incidentally, my Dad taught his college roommate how to lift using full squats. He went on to become one of the top 5 orthopedic surgeons in the country, who developed patents for hip and knee replacements. He is a strong advocate of full squats.

WOW!

This is exactly what my knee Doc had me doing immediately after he removed the screw that was in my fib for 14 weeks from my fib that was attaching it to the tib, after I dislocated it last Winter. He had to also repair the LCL and Men.

Had me doing 50 "supported" full flex squats on a half ball at a very slow pace. Then I went to single side flexes on each independent knee.

The PTist continued this routine for a week till they both were satisfied I was good to go on full movement of both knees.

Still do em every morning along with many other exercises.

Pretty amazing watching Laird Hamilton do em on a Full Ball... he jumps onto it, balances, does a full squat then jumps off and repeats this for well over 50 intervals. Fking Amazing.

Thanks for this post Ed.

Pretty amazing watching Laird Hamilton do em on a Full Ball... he jumps onto it, balances, does a full squat then jumps off and repeats this for well over 50 intervals. Fking Amazing.

Got a link? Google didn't help me. Sounds amazing.

Great input guys; thanks.

Jim Thomas