The Squat: Hips and Knees Together!

A) Becky correctly initiates her descent by bending the hips and knees simultaneously.

A problem that sometimes shows up in the squat is that of breaking at the hips first; in other words, instead of bending the hips and knees at the same time as we start to descend in the squat (which is what we want to happen), a lifter makes the mistake of breaking (i.e., bending) at the hips first followed by bending the knees. Let’s solve this problem.

In a correctly executed squat, the hips and knees will start to bend at the same time. As Becky shows in Figure A, her hips travel backward at the same time her knees travel forward and outward (i.e., in the direction of her toes) - this is what we would like to see, and this allows Becky to maintain her balance over the middle of her foot.

B) Becky incorrectly initiates her descent by bending at the hips first. Becky is exaggerating the error in the image on the left, but it tends to be a bit more subtle as Becky demonstrates in the image on the right (note that her hips have begun reaching back while her knees seem frozen in place).

In contrast, in Figure B, you can see Becky incorrectly initiating her descent by reaching back with her hips - which is correct - but she’s not forcing her knees to simultaneously move forward and out early in the descent. This is usually accompanied by the knees too far forward as the lifter reaches the bottom of her squat as well.

If you notice that you tend to break at the hips first, the simplest approach is to cue yourself, “Hips and knees at the same time” or “Hips and knees together.” If that approach doesn’t work, you can use an overcue and tell yourself to go “knees first” - in other words, you’re cueing yourself to shove your knees forward and out before you reach back with your hips. This overcue (like all overcues) is a bit of a lie as we actually want the motion of the hips and knees to be simultaneous, but it can be a potentially useful lie if it does the job and fixes the problem.

Becky breaks out the TUBOWs.

If those cues don’t work, go ahead and break out a TUBOW (Terribly Useful Block Of Wood) or two and make sure that your knees touch the TUBOWs about one-third to one-half of the way into your descent. If you’ve never used a TUBOW before, check out our video on that topic by clicking here or scrolling down to the end of this article.

As always, we hope this helps you get stronger and live better!