Articles
Knee Valgus in the Squat
August 3 2024
August 3 2024
I’m updating this article after many years (ten and a half, to be exact) both because my thoughts on correction methods have changed with practice and experience, and because the original was a turgid mess with a bad attitude. I’ll summarize it for those of you who missed it: people on social media love offering unsolicited advice, and I don’t care for it.
My thoughts about the phenomenon itself haven’t changed. I still have the same lack of concern regarding injury risk—my concern remains focused on its effect on the overall position and motion of a squat. I’ll explain in detail below.
What We Want
Generally what we want to see in the squat is the thigh and foot in line with each other (knee approximately aligned with second toe). Some minor divergence exists based simply on anatomical variation, so understand the goal with this is to maintain the proper hinging of the knee rather than introducing torque on the joint it’s not designed for. This is more of an issue with excessive stance width forcing the knees to twist.
We want the feet turned out to some degree to open the hips adequately to allow the lifter to sit into full depth with an upright posture. To what degree the feet must be turned out to achieve this is dependent on the body structure of the lifter—some will need to turn out very little, maybe 5-10 degrees, and some will need to turn out more, possibly as much as 20-30 degrees. When looking at a lifter in the bottom of a squat with such a stance, if the thighs are approximately aligned with the feet, the knees could be fairly described as “out”—that is, they are not oriented straight forward. However, the knees being out and being pushed out are two different things.
The “Knees Out” Cue & Ensuing Confusion
If you watch the training videos I post of Catalyst Athletics lifters, you’ve likely heard me yelling “knees out” at times to certain lifters. Unfortunately, this cue is often misunderstood and taken out of context to be applied improperly. Additionally, some influential people are actually instructing people to actively push the knees out while squatting irrespective of the knee position or the overall posture of the athlete.
The previous section should have made it clear the position I want my lifters to be in—the thighs approximately in line with the feet. If a lifter is maintaining this relationship reasonably well during a squat, I’ll never cue them to push their knees out—that would bring the knees outside the feet, which we don’t want. This particular lifter should be left alone to worry about standing up.
In other cases, the knees will cave inward as the lifter enters the sticking point of the squat. In such a case, I will often cue them to push the knees out. But not because I’m concerned about potential injury.
I’m not using the action of pushing the knees out as a contribution to the recovery of the squat directly. However, there is a direct and immediate benefit to pushing the knees out from a valgus position during the recovery of a squat—as the knees move inward, the hips tend to move backward, which inclines the lifter’s trunk forward. This forward lean means a greater moment on the hip and spinal joints, meaning as it increases, so will the likelihood of the trunk collapsing forward and the lifter failing.
Pushing the knees out in this case is specifically to allow the lifter to move the hips forward again to regain better posture. This is why you’ll very often hear me say Hips in immediately after Knees out—the combination of these actions is intended to correct the loss of upright posture to avoid collapse or failure.
Who is at Risk
Generally, the longer-legged and more female an athlete is, the more likely the tendency for valgus knee movement in the squat, but it happens with lifters of all proportion. I’ve heard reams of explanations for the prevalence of the issue in female athletes, and none make sense to me. Some have suggested it’s related to the typically great Q-angle in women, but considering that the two worst examples of valgus knee movement among my lifters are in women with particularly narrow hip structure, I have a hard time getting on board with that.
The most popular explanation across both genders is a lack of strength or activation of the lateral hip rotators and abductors. But strengthening these things virtually never corrects the problem, so if it’s a contributor at all, it’s not a primary one.
What I do know for certain is that it has nothing to do with mobility as I hear said often—if a lifter’s knees are aligned during the eccentric movement of the squat, they clearly have the mobility for that position.
Correcting the Problem… If You Can. Or Want To.
My experience has been that correcting the valgus knee problem completely is impossible short of avoiding heavy squat efforts. My sense is that if an athlete is possessed of the natural valgus tendency (or borderline natural after many years of training with it), it will always remain, however attenuated through training and practice, and it will become increasingly pronounced as the effort of the squat and fatigue increase.
As I said above, training the lateral hip as is the common corrective approach has little to no effect in my experience. Over the years it’s become apparent that the problem is more likely the opposite of what seems intuitive—weakness of the adductors and internal rotators. In other words, the knees move in not because the lateral hip isn’t strong enough to keep them out, but because the inner hip is weak and the legs need to move inward for them to be able to contribute to the motion more. That said, there is very clearly more going on because many athletes with severely weak adductors exhibit no knee valgus in squats.
We can also look at the problem as just one of global hip instability and choose to try to correct that, not to fix knee valgus in squats, but because generally we’d like stability and control for all the obvious reasons.
I’ve abandoned corrections I tried for years like squatting with a mini-band around the knees because they’ve been ineffective and kept the more systemic work like unilateral squat and hinge variations for that general hip stability—things like single-leg or staggered RDLs and split squat and lunge variations. These are good for a range of things other than knee valgus in squats, so they’re contributing to a lifter’s development regardless.
Slow eccentric and pause squats during certain phases of a training cycle (usually early ones) are valuable for many reasons, but also can give the lifter an opportunity to develop better control.
With regard to valgus specifically, I’m more inclined to focus on the adductors and internal rotators with prep or corrective work with exercises like these:
The End
I want to add that I remain concerned about knee valgus in the jerk dip and drive and the pulls of the snatch and clean—again, not because of a concern for injury, but because the motion negatively affects the execution of the lifts. These are things I will actively try to correct in a lifter, using the same methods described above.
So to summarize, don’t panic over knee valgus in a squat recovery—ensure the lifter’s stance is proper and that the moment globally is sound (e.g. posture, bracing, control, etc.). Add some corrective work if you want to attenuate the valgus motion (I would do this if it’s severe). Definitely add corrective work if the lifter demonstrates knee valgus in the jerk and pulls.
My thoughts about the phenomenon itself haven’t changed. I still have the same lack of concern regarding injury risk—my concern remains focused on its effect on the overall position and motion of a squat. I’ll explain in detail below.
What We Want
Generally what we want to see in the squat is the thigh and foot in line with each other (knee approximately aligned with second toe). Some minor divergence exists based simply on anatomical variation, so understand the goal with this is to maintain the proper hinging of the knee rather than introducing torque on the joint it’s not designed for. This is more of an issue with excessive stance width forcing the knees to twist.
We want the feet turned out to some degree to open the hips adequately to allow the lifter to sit into full depth with an upright posture. To what degree the feet must be turned out to achieve this is dependent on the body structure of the lifter—some will need to turn out very little, maybe 5-10 degrees, and some will need to turn out more, possibly as much as 20-30 degrees. When looking at a lifter in the bottom of a squat with such a stance, if the thighs are approximately aligned with the feet, the knees could be fairly described as “out”—that is, they are not oriented straight forward. However, the knees being out and being pushed out are two different things.
The “Knees Out” Cue & Ensuing Confusion
If you watch the training videos I post of Catalyst Athletics lifters, you’ve likely heard me yelling “knees out” at times to certain lifters. Unfortunately, this cue is often misunderstood and taken out of context to be applied improperly. Additionally, some influential people are actually instructing people to actively push the knees out while squatting irrespective of the knee position or the overall posture of the athlete.
The previous section should have made it clear the position I want my lifters to be in—the thighs approximately in line with the feet. If a lifter is maintaining this relationship reasonably well during a squat, I’ll never cue them to push their knees out—that would bring the knees outside the feet, which we don’t want. This particular lifter should be left alone to worry about standing up.
In other cases, the knees will cave inward as the lifter enters the sticking point of the squat. In such a case, I will often cue them to push the knees out. But not because I’m concerned about potential injury.
I’m not using the action of pushing the knees out as a contribution to the recovery of the squat directly. However, there is a direct and immediate benefit to pushing the knees out from a valgus position during the recovery of a squat—as the knees move inward, the hips tend to move backward, which inclines the lifter’s trunk forward. This forward lean means a greater moment on the hip and spinal joints, meaning as it increases, so will the likelihood of the trunk collapsing forward and the lifter failing.
Pushing the knees out in this case is specifically to allow the lifter to move the hips forward again to regain better posture. This is why you’ll very often hear me say Hips in immediately after Knees out—the combination of these actions is intended to correct the loss of upright posture to avoid collapse or failure.
Who is at Risk
Generally, the longer-legged and more female an athlete is, the more likely the tendency for valgus knee movement in the squat, but it happens with lifters of all proportion. I’ve heard reams of explanations for the prevalence of the issue in female athletes, and none make sense to me. Some have suggested it’s related to the typically great Q-angle in women, but considering that the two worst examples of valgus knee movement among my lifters are in women with particularly narrow hip structure, I have a hard time getting on board with that.
The most popular explanation across both genders is a lack of strength or activation of the lateral hip rotators and abductors. But strengthening these things virtually never corrects the problem, so if it’s a contributor at all, it’s not a primary one.
What I do know for certain is that it has nothing to do with mobility as I hear said often—if a lifter’s knees are aligned during the eccentric movement of the squat, they clearly have the mobility for that position.
Correcting the Problem… If You Can. Or Want To.
My experience has been that correcting the valgus knee problem completely is impossible short of avoiding heavy squat efforts. My sense is that if an athlete is possessed of the natural valgus tendency (or borderline natural after many years of training with it), it will always remain, however attenuated through training and practice, and it will become increasingly pronounced as the effort of the squat and fatigue increase.
As I said above, training the lateral hip as is the common corrective approach has little to no effect in my experience. Over the years it’s become apparent that the problem is more likely the opposite of what seems intuitive—weakness of the adductors and internal rotators. In other words, the knees move in not because the lateral hip isn’t strong enough to keep them out, but because the inner hip is weak and the legs need to move inward for them to be able to contribute to the motion more. That said, there is very clearly more going on because many athletes with severely weak adductors exhibit no knee valgus in squats.
We can also look at the problem as just one of global hip instability and choose to try to correct that, not to fix knee valgus in squats, but because generally we’d like stability and control for all the obvious reasons.
I’ve abandoned corrections I tried for years like squatting with a mini-band around the knees because they’ve been ineffective and kept the more systemic work like unilateral squat and hinge variations for that general hip stability—things like single-leg or staggered RDLs and split squat and lunge variations. These are good for a range of things other than knee valgus in squats, so they’re contributing to a lifter’s development regardless.
Slow eccentric and pause squats during certain phases of a training cycle (usually early ones) are valuable for many reasons, but also can give the lifter an opportunity to develop better control.
With regard to valgus specifically, I’m more inclined to focus on the adductors and internal rotators with prep or corrective work with exercises like these:
The End
I want to add that I remain concerned about knee valgus in the jerk dip and drive and the pulls of the snatch and clean—again, not because of a concern for injury, but because the motion negatively affects the execution of the lifts. These are things I will actively try to correct in a lifter, using the same methods described above.
So to summarize, don’t panic over knee valgus in a squat recovery—ensure the lifter’s stance is proper and that the moment globally is sound (e.g. posture, bracing, control, etc.). Add some corrective work if you want to attenuate the valgus motion (I would do this if it’s severe). Definitely add corrective work if the lifter demonstrates knee valgus in the jerk and pulls.
