Hey,
Iv been doing deep squats (bellow parellel) for the last while and have loved them. However, iv heard people say that deep squats are really bad for your knees. Is this true? Has anyone ever had a bad experience with deep squats?
As long as you keep tension in the muscle at the bottom and don’t rest on ligament tension, you should be fine. And don’t bounce at the bottom.
Check out Doctor Squat’s website. he covers this in detail. Best of Luck.
In one of the older interviews with Dr. Ken Kinakin at T-mag, he explains the origins of this myth. Just look up “Kinakin” with the search engine at T-mag (not here at the forum) and all his stuff will pop up. Chris Shugart did the interview. I think the title was “train smart” or “smart training” or something like that. My walking table of contents skills are failing me!
Dude, the “squats are bad for your knees” is complete and utter fucking bullshit and has probably set back my training a year. I talked to a doctor and he said squating had “great potential for injury.” No shit, if you put 300 lbs 6 feet in the air, of course there’s a “great” potential. I should be doing leg extension instead, he said. BTW, the doc was a great guy, but just wrong. I talked to chiropractor who runs every day (he said he averages 150 mi/week) and I asked him about leg ext vs. squat. He only weighs 145 lbs, mind you, but he told me squating was the way to go, b/c leg ext. is damaging for the first 60 degrees of motion–I confirmed this with some homework I did. Yeah, so tell the doc to fuck off, load a bar as heavy as you can, and go ass to grass.