Yeah, that could cause knee pain. If your knees aren’t tracking over your toes it basically puts pressure on the knee joint at a weird angle. And collapsing ankles will cause that.
How are the collapsing exactly, caving inwards like the arch in you foot is flattening?
You have to maintain even pressure between your big toe, little toe, and heel, and trying to twist the floor with your feet will help too. Kabuki and Squat University have a bunch of stuff about this, look them up on Instagram. Kabuki/Duffin has a lot of youtube videos related to this too.
Your descent is a bit fast but if you can do that without any issue then it’s nothing to worry about. But if your ankles are collapsing and so on then you need to slow it down to the point where you can stay tight and maintain proper technique.
It could be a lot of things. My vastus lateralis (outer quad muscle) sometimes gets tight and can cause some pain in various places between the knees and the hips. Rolling it with a lacrosse ball or foam roller will help, if you can find sore spots then focus on those with the ball. This is actually what a lot of people are rolling when they say they are rolling out their IT bands, IT bands are apparently too hard and fibrous to respond to any sort of myofascial release stuff.
No, I would personally try to avoid doing anything like that even the day before because sometimes it feels sore and messes with your workout. Only if absolutely necessary. I don’t know what your training setup looks like, but if you have two lower body days a week then from the day before until the workout is done is the time you don’t want to do anything to the muscles involved more than light stretching. The same goes for upper body. There was something on one of the Kabuki IG pages saying that if you are doing soft tissue work right before training then you waited too long.
I believe what you have is called navicular drop. You have to learn to keep your feet and ankles stable because you can fuck yourself up bad if you keep doing that, and your knees are already feeling it. I have never dealt with that myself so I don’t really have any specific advice, but Kabuki and I think Squat University have some stuff about strengthening the feet, that would help for sure. Part of it has to do with the muscles that push your big toe down being weak and inactive, but there might be more to it.
For now I would slow down the descent and focus on maintaining foot and ankle position. A 405 squat isn’t worth a busted knee.
Thanks man. I’ll read up more on navicular drop. I did some light goblet squats today, really focusing on the tripod feet and screwing it to the ground, as well as pushing the knees out. Hip width, very little toe flare. No pain, just very slight discomfort (.5 of 10) so that’s really good, happy with that. I’ll work my way up on those first and drop the back squats for now. Thank you everyone for the inputs.
You can do a few goblet squats every day to work on setting your feet properly. Normally I wouldn’t advise training anything every day, but if you do them light enough then it doesn’t really count as training. For the last year, every day that I’m not squatting I do goblet squat stretches (just sit in a full squat, the weight is for counterbalance) and about 8-10 reps after with a 25lb plate.
I was doing that because I have tight hips and sometimes have trouble squatting to depth, but you can also just practice the squat movement without any significant weight. If you don’t have weights at home then just hold a heavy object, like a backpack full of books for example.
Deadlift 135x5 205x5 225x5 245x5 275x5 ss pushups
Deadlift 5x5 at 225 ss decline crunches
Kettlebell press 5x10 ss rows
5 hrs sleep last night, really felt like shit. 245 felt heavy and bar was slow so decided to do the 5x5 at 225 instead. Knees were okay, no flareups during the deadlifts, still bothering me on walks/stairs though. Thinking of substituting box squats for squats once knees are better. Thoughts on this?
Hey man thanks for checking. Was really sick for the past week and took some time off. I’m feeling a little better now, and ready to start a new 531 cycle!
W1D1
Bench 115x5 135x5 155x5 ss Chinups
Bench BBB 5x10 at 130lbs ss DB SLDL
Tricep Extension ss Curls 3x12
Not really feeling it, just went through the motions. Wife is back at work so another adjustment at home with sleep, chores, taking care of the baby etc.
Sorry to hear about your knee problems. I have also had plenty of knee issues along the way. Rest seems to be the number one fix for them! I did a bunch of box squatting last year (coach had me running conjugate) and I do think it was easier on my knees and do not think that I lost much/any strength. This could be an option for you until you feel your knees can handle regular squats again.
I watched your video above a few times and I would suggest working on controlling your descent better (slowing it down - even though this may not be the popular opinion). While this may reduce some stretch reflex out of the hole, I think it will benefit you. Watching the set you posted above, there were a few different reps in that single set. Each rep should be nearly identical once you have found your optimal groove. You end up back on your heels (toes look like they physically came off the ground) in rep one, and I think it was our last rep your knees shot forward more than the other reps.
I get a lot more lateral knee movement if I divebomb my squats, so this could also contribute to some pain.
I would also recommend finding what depth of squat works best for you. It may be just 1" higher (still legal depth) is as deep as your knees will allow. You might just have to retrain yourself to find the depth which is going to work best for you.
Last thing I will say is; hamstrings. I did 100’s of lying banded hamstring curls each week which seemed to get me through some knee pain. I am a pretty quad dominant squatter, so I think the imbalance also played a role in my troublesome knees.
Good luck John, knee pain sucks.