🚨 Knee Pain During Squats

🔥 Pain and discomfort above or below the knee cap during squats could be a sign of some tendon aggravation.

👉🏽This is most commonly brought on by an increase in training volume, placing higher than normal demand through the patellar or quad tendon.

💎The point of this post isn’t to diagnose your knee pain, but to give you some ideas and modifications to try so that you can keep working out when minor aches and pains show up!

1️⃣By starting with the TRX assisted squats in the left picture, the upper body is supported and the hips are sitting back… moving the majority of forced produced to the hip, instead of shared at the hip and knee.
🔑This keeps the knee moving, and quad working, but should be less or not painful at all!

2️⃣The second is a rear foot elevated split squat, aka bulgarian split squat.
📕Research has shown higher activity of hamstrings, external obliques, and glute med activity during these than in a traditional back squat.
📙They also found a more vertical shin translated to more force shifted to the hip rather than at the knee.
💎These are still a progression from the TRX squat, since your body weight is distributed primarily through the front leg.

🔑One last note, knees going over toes is NOT bad in itself, but when your knee is irritated limiting forces through those tendons can help you stay active and calm the knee down.
💪🏾Then get back to squatting, lunging, etc as you normally would!