A common complaint I hear from people prior to joining the studio is that squatting hurts their knees. Squats are a main movement in our program design because of the strength benefit. I also like it for the metabolic benefit, which makes it ideal for anyone looking to drop body-fat. Squats come up day one because we have everyone perform an overhead squat when we administer the Functional Movement Screen (FMS) during their initial assessment. The screen is a great tool, but it’s a screen, not a diagnostic test. I want to be clear that I’m a certified personal trainer, NOT a medical doctor. We use it to determine if we should eliminate specific movements from someone’s program and which exercises will be challenging for them. After performing hundreds of screens, a common trend I’ve seen is that poor squat depth and knee pain is rarely from an issue in the knee joint. The program tends to be more weakness and tightness of the lower leg muscles or poor ankle joint movement or motor control.
I recently added a new workout at the studio called Mobility Worx. During this workout we spend an extended amount of time working on tissue quality. We spend time rolling on balls and rollers. The purpose is to change and improve the quality of the tissue. We spend time in areas often ignored in foam rolling. One of those areas is the anterior portion of the lower leg. Members are always surprised by the level of sensitivity and tightness in this area. It’s not uncommon to have an improvement in squat depth instantly, after rolling the lower leg.
Conditioning the tibialis anterior and extensor digitorum longus can do wonders for the quality of your squat. The poor squat and knee pain aren’t always limited to weakness and tightness of the lower leg only. Poor ankle joint movement is commonly mixed in.
The Talus and calcaneus are the 2 prominent bones of the ankle. The Talus articulates with the tibia and fibula above and the calcaneus is below. The interesting point is that there are no muscle inserts on the talus. It is moved indirectly via the structures surrounding it. This dismisses the theory that you may have “weak ankles”. A better way to describe it may be that you have poor mobility at the ankle joint. Calcium tends to also accumulate in this area adding to the poor movement.
There is a simple drill we perform at the studio that can help improve the movement at this joint. To watch me demonstrate this simple exercise click the link below:
Finally, I couldn’t talk about poor ankle mobility without mentioning motor control. You may be asking yourself what does this have to do with it? Let me respond to your question with another question. Have you ever rolled or sprained your ankle? Did you walk on it immediately after? It’s commonly suggested to “walk it off” when someone rolls their ankle. This is probably the worst thing you could do. Pain is a sense and will change the way your body distributes weight on that joint, to avoid further pain. The R in the RICE principal (Rest, Ice, Compress, and Elevate) may arguably be the most important step when using that protocol to treat an ankle sprain. The problem can arise when after the ankle heals and is past the trauma phase, your brain is still sending messages to that joint not to move. The pain sense is a strong factor in controlling movement patterns. Try foam rolling the lower leg in your next warm up prior to squatting and grooving the ankle joint with that exercise demonstrated above and see if it helps.
If you’re in the Las Vegas area and would like to experience a workout focused on improving mobility throughout your body, email me at Doug@janddfitness.com. If coming to the studio isn’t convenient, train with us online. You can sign up Here.
See you at the studio.