Squats are generally taught appallingly badly in the UK. We are taught to initiate the squat by moving the hips backwards as if sitting into an invisible chair. I often ponder if this dreadful advice was given out by knee surgeons looking to buy the top of the range Mercedes.
The simplest way of teaching squatting is by teaching bone rhythm: when a long bone, in this case the thigh bone, moves, each end of the bone moves at exactly the same time. Grab a pen. Hold it in the middle and vertically. The top of the pen is your hip, the bottom your knees. Now turn the pen to the right, so the top of the pen moves downwards whilst the bottom of the pen moves upwards. This is how the thighs move during the downward phase of a squat. To get back up, just reverse the rhythm.
Which equates to as you initiate the squat, knees move forwards and UP, hips move back and DOWN. To stand, knees go back and down, hips go forwards and up. Simples.
Also feet should be straight for the basic squat. Then the thigh muscles work much more evenly, so the inner thighs get involved in the action.
The squat should be full – hips go below the level of your knees. To achieve this, you may need to stand on a heel raise. This is a good use for that yoga wedge gathering dust….
The video is taken from the preliminary study guide prior to doing S Phase as part of the Z-Health curriculum. The ‘S’ stands for sports, so the course teaches more advanced eye drills along with the basic sporting moves.
In the video, you can see that they can squat with the feet pretty much under the hips. If you do as much Z-Health neurology as these athletes have, then so can you. But most people need to start with the hips more like shoulder width apart. As long as the feet are straight and the thighs moving smoothly, you will develop healthy squatting technique.
And healthy knees!
It is common for knees to make crispy noises at first when squatting properly. In a suprisingly few sessions, the noises will abate and the cartilege will get healthier too. Yes, knee cartilege can repair!! But you do need to eat properly and not exist on bags of crisps/coke/Danish pastries and milky coffee….