Get-Fit Guy

How to assess and fix common squat errors

Episode Summary

Today I will talk about the most common errors and how to fix them.

Episode Notes

Everyone should be performing squats, but how do we know if they are being performed correctly? And if they're not, how do we address that?

Get-Fit Guy is hosted by Kevin Don. A transcript is available at Simplecast.

Have a fitness question? Email Kevin at getfitguy@quickanddirtytips.com or leave us a voicemail at (510) 353-3014.

Find Get-Fit Guy on Facebook and Twitter, or subscribe to the newsletter for more fitness tips.

Get-Fit Guy is a part of Quick and Dirty Tips.

Links:
https://www.quickanddirtytips.com
https://www.facebook.com/GetFitGuy
https://twitter.com/GetFitGuy
https://www.kevindon.com/ 
 

Episode Transcription

Hi, it’s Kevin Don, the Get-Fit Guy. Last week on the podcast, we discussed the importance of squats and how to perform them, but what do we do if we find that our technique is down to physical deficiencies? Today I will talk about the most common errors and how to fix them.

First of all, I think it would be a good idea to recap the learnings from last week, which are that in terms of the squat, we are looking for the following points of performance:

  1. You are able to bend at the hips and knees simultaneously. It’s very common due to sedentary lives and office-based work, sitting most of the day, that people lack the ability to make this pattern. Most commonly I see knees bending first. This leads to the heels lifting off the floor as we approach the bottom of the squat, which, of course, is unstable. 
  2. Whilst you perform the squat (or lunge) the knee stays tracking over the middle of the foot, with a vertical shin. If the knee drifts inwards, that is called knee valgus and has been positively correlated with knee injury. It’s more common in women because of the differently shaped pelvis causing more of an angle of the thigh bone (the femur) from hip to knee. It’s called the ‘angle of Q’ 
  3. Similarly, it’s important that we have a strong core, able to hold our torso in a fixed position as we move because once we add load, we will find that a deformable lever (the torso being the lever here) is a poor transmitter of force.
  4. We always want to squat as deep as we can while maintaining the above. Deep squats are NOT bad for the knees if they track centrally. Strength is gained in the range it is trained. If you do shallow squats, you won’t ever be strong in a deep position. (The SAID principles we have covered in the past defines specificity). 

Now, it’s important that we distinguish things in terms of there being two major camps that any loaded movement will fall into:

  1. Poor motor control, meaning you just can’t make the pattern
  2. Just not strong enough

It’s pretty easy to tell the difference between the two, and which one you find yourself in will affect the way you will address the problem. Let's say you go to the gym and warm up your squats starting with some unloaded ‘air squats’, which by the way, I would ALWAYS recommend. The best warm-up for squats is squats. So, they look great. So, you move to a 45lb barbell, still looking good; 65 lbs, 95 lbs, 135, 155, 185 all look and feel great. At 195, your knees collapse, your back rounds and your eyeballs come out on stalks. This right here is a case of ‘just not strong enough.’ I know this because every preceding set and rep was good. 

If, on the other hand, you are making any of the major points of performance issues mentioned above from the get-go, including in the warm-up, well, you, my friend, don’t have the motor control yet.

So how do we go about fixing these problems? Well, if you just aren't strong enough, it's pretty simple: you get stronger. You back off the load and increase the dose. Like in the example above, the squats were good at 185 and the wheels fell off at 195. So you back off to 185 and perform a higher volume of reps there to groove the pattern at what will be a high percentage of your rep max. This increase in dose-response might be enough to break the plateau. So, let's say you are doing sets of 5, you might push it to 6’s or 8’s or one of my personal favourites: failure minus one rep where you will stop one rep before you can feel things are about to go awry.

In terms of a motor control failure, it’s very likely you need to squat without any heavy load right now and focus on tempo air squats or goblet squats. 

But let's look at the common errors listed above and some ways I may choose to help my clients fix those:

  1. Early knee bend/ lack of hip movement. This one is easy to see, the client will have their weight mostly on the toes in the squat and may, as they approach the bottom position, have the heels begin to lift. There are myriad ways to fix all these things, some verbal ‘put your weight on your midfoot/ put your heels down but I prefer to use tactile cueing because it can be hard to implement a verbal cue if it's a new movement or something you are unsure of. A great coach called Mark Rippetoe uses a TUBOW (terribly useful block of wood) which he puts in front of a client's knees and the goal is to not let the knees touch it on the way down. I like to use a plyo box and set a lifter up with the calves touching the box and perform a squat. If the calves leave the box, we know they did a ‘knee slide’ and reset and keep going until they are starting to use the hips more as they settle into the squat and keep the calves in contact with the box. 
  2. Knee Valgus, this is where the knees cave in or collapse towards the midline of the body. This one again we could use some tactile cueing, if I were with this lifter in person, I could place my hands outside the knees and tell them to push their knees out to touch my hands as they squat down. I could also use what's called RNT (reactive neuromuscular training) where I would take a band and place it around the quads, just above the knee and they would have to be actively pushing out against the band, which would be pulling the knees together. I love this one because many times, we find that this strengthens the glutes (lateral hip rotators) and this really goes a long way to helping address knee valgus and mitigating any injury potential. 
  3. Torso collapse in the squat, this one is going to be more about static, isometric holds than ‘ab’ exercises. Doing 100 crunches is one thing but it doesn't carry over directly to having to maintain a single isometric contraction in the torso over a 3212 tempo (6 seconds of contraction) so things like hollow holds on the floor, GHD Sorensen holds and planks will all be super useful here.
  4. Shallow squats. This is normally down to simply not having exposure to the correct range of motion. I have had plenty of lifters who claimed to lack the mobility to perform a deep squat, but when I have thrown them a ball to sit on to rest while I ‘go get something,’ they have no problem doing so. Therefore, this is literally the fix, to have lifters squat to an object and over time lower the target so they end up where we want them in terms of depth. 

Like I said there are many fixes and also many problems. In the absence of injury or actual mobility issues, it's going to be a motor control or a strength problem and I hope some of the ideas discussed today will help you overcome any squat issues you may have. As always, feel free to reach out to me with any specific questions I can help you with!