Squats with knee problems? You bet!

First off, here is my non-professional declaration.  I am in no way, shape or form a professional of medicine, exercise, nutrition or health or anything related.  I am simply a 35-year-old woman who struggles with knee issues and has done a bit or research.  You should consult your doctor before starting any exercise program.

That being said, I wanted to take a moment to tell you why I think doing squats and lunges can be precisely the best thing for your knee pain.  When I was 14, I was running as a kid does, with a random burst of energy, when my left knee hyperextended.   Long story short, unfortunately it was diagnosed as a sprain, and for the next year, I walked around on a torn ACL, until it finally gave out on me.  I had to have an ACL replacement as well as 2 meniscus repaired.  Four years ago, I had to have cartilage repaired in the same knee, and at that time the doctor said they were able to see damage to the ACL and that probably in the next few years it would need to be replaced.  (So right about now?)

I started going to BodyPump classes at our Y in fall of 2011.  The squats were so, so hard for me, and I questioned whether I should even be doing them or not with a bad knee.  Then I read something in the book The New Rules of Lifting for Women by Lou Schuler.  There’s a really great section on how the muscles of the body are connected from head to toe and how muscles in one part of the body can affect others.  The eye-opening part for me was this:

 “At the start of an exercise program, women tend to be stronger on the front of their thighs than on the back.  Trainers use the phrase ‘quad dominant’ to describe this imbalance.  Put another way, women’s hamstrings tend to be weaker than they should be, in relation to their quadriceps. 

The problem is a big one to sports scientists.  Female athletes have several times the risk of knee injuries as men, and this strength discrepancy is thought to play a role.  Research shows that when the quadriceps are more than a third stronger than the hamstrings, a woman is at greater risk of damaging the ligaments that hold her knees together.

A remarkable study performed at Columbia University and published in 2006 discovered the source of the problem.  The researchers looked at male and female soccer players between the ages ten and eighteen.  The preteen, prepubescent girls were already at high risk of injury, due to the fact that their quadriceps were 75 percent stronger than their hamstrings.  But the teenage, post pubescent girls had an even bigger problem: their quads were 100 percent stronger than their hamstrings.  The strength imbalance actually gets worse with time.  Their mature hamstrings were stronger than before, but those gains were more than offset by even bigger gains in their quadriceps.

That’s the perfect illustration of quad dominance – because the used the muscles more, those muscles got even stronger as their bodies matured, and exacerbated what was already a problem.”

This opened my eyes to the fact that what would most help my knees was precisely the exercises I’d avoided for so long – squats and lunges.

It took me quite a while to truly get the hang of correct squat form.  What finally did it for me was the shower.  Yes you read that correctly.  I struggled to find a way to do squats that didn’t make my knees hurt.  I was in a state where I would stop in the middle of doing things around the house to try out a squat or two and see if I could get it.  One morning I decided to try one in the shower and it worked!! I did a squat and it felt right and didn’t hurt my knees.  I came to realize that the width of the shower only allowed me to put my feet so far apart, and that one of my issues must have been that my feet were not proper distance for the squat to be truly effective.  This went along with the “test” my BodyPump instructors would do in class for your set stance – in the beginning they would walk around with the 5 lb. weights and put them between students’ feet.  If your feet didn’t touch the weight, it was too far apart.

Once I got the stance right, I started oh so slowly.  In classes I would do just a few at a time.  It was a bit embarrassing to be in class and feel so weak, but I did what I needed to do.  To help myself out, I would do some every day, in the middle of my daily activities – while sweeping or doing dishes or whatever.  I also went down just a few inches at first, what I felt like I could comfortably do and as I built strength I would challenge myself to go down a little further each time.

The last thing that helped was advice from the Pump program videos.  The instructors are constantly reminding you to drive up from your heels.  Concentrating on putting your weight in your heels as you lower yourself and driving up through your heels on the way up really helps engage those muscles you need to strengthen. 

This advice is mainly for squats (to be truthful, I am STILL trying to work out my lunges properly, they are that difficult for me) but the summary should work for lunges as well:

 

1.       Proper foot spacing

2.       Go as slow as you need to in order to really feel/”get” the proper form

3.       Put your weight in and drive from your heels

I still have a long way to go with squats and especially lunges, but I've come a long way as well.  I can now squat down beside my children and use my legs to push myself up from that position as opposed to using my hands to push myself up like I used to do.  Take it slow, work on form and you can get there too.