Kniebeugen – die 6 größten Fehler und wie Du sie vermeidest | Fitness mit Mark [Audio]

Fitness with Marc, episode 426. And here is a host. He is a well-known nerd and smart home fan. Marc Maslow. Moin Moin, I'm Marc Maslow, your stay-at-home fitness coach from Marathonfitness.de. Today we're going into training, into real strength training. Let's talk about squats. Squats are a very demanding exercise and many people have problems with it. And if you're wondering why I always have pain in my squats or it doesn't feel good, then this episode is for you. You'll find out the most common causes of problems and how to deal with them. Advertising partner of this episode is AG1 from Athletic Greens. There are countless sports nutrition supplements and you can save most of them. In general, I only recommend a few food supplements. One of them I've been using for over eight years every day. And that's AG1 from Athletic Greens. It contains 75 vitamins, minerals, secondary plants and other healthy substances like prebiotics and adaptogens, which come from a variety of natural organic vegetables and fruit varieties. AG1 is a natural product and that also distinguishes it from synthetic preparations. It also contains the many secondary substances that you can only find in real vegetables and fruit. The overall composition is not achieved by any other manufacturer. Especially not in this quality and pollutant-free. For me, AG1 is something like an all-in-one health insurance. There is a special offer for Fitness with Mark Hörer. As a new customer, you get five travel packs for free for your first delivery. A year's supply of vitamin D with K2 in it plus a welcome package with a fancy stainless steel can and a shaker. Go to fmmag.de, fmm like Fitness with Mark and then ag.de. Maybe you are one of those who sometimes have a bit of a cramp in the back when bending your knees. It hurts or on the knees. Then you are in the right place. You learn how to solve these problems, how to get more out of your knee bends, more strength, more effectiveness in training and at the same time protect yourself from injury. The knee bend is often referred to on one side as the queen of exercises, as one of the most effective exercises to lose fat, to build muscles. Yes, and on the other hand, it is also an exercise that many people do not train. The knee bend is probably one of the most prominent exercises, one of the timeless strength exercises in general. Yes, and it is also often very controversial. Because no matter how you look at the knee bend, it is a basic exercise that you do every day, even outside of the gym, if you sit down or get up again. And it doesn't matter how you do it, whether with weight or just with body weight. Those who are more prone to cramps with the knee bend usually do so from a point of view of safety. There are people who believe that it is an exercise that can easily injure you. And that's why they avoid the knee bend. And maybe it's the same for you, or maybe you are one of those who have already had a little pain, or maybe even injured themselves. The point is, if you let go of the knee bend completely from your training program, then you will probably also do without positive effects, because it is now a basic exercise. So let's look at the knee bend from a different perspective. If you can sit down and get up again, then you are already doing the knee bend. And you usually do that without hurting yourself, without having pain. And it doesn't matter if you want to do the knee bend with weight on your back or not. That's your business, but no one will stop you from doing this movement properly. And that's what today's episode is about. If you want to achieve better results through your training, then there are some simple things you can do to get more out of the knee bend. And at the same time, these are also things that protect you from having pain or even injuries. The first question is, why do knee bends actually cause pain in some cases? Part of what makes knee bends so great on the one hand, is on the other hand also what connects them with injuries. Knee bends are a complex multi-jointed exercise, which means that many muscles are involved in this movement. These are your thighs, forearms, the knees, the gluteal muscles, your back is involved. And even your abdominal muscles are strongly stressed when you go into the squat. And all these muscles are involved, but you don't necessarily want these muscles to be over-stressed and then take over the heavy lifting. Because it is so complex, such a knee bend can sometimes lead to miscarriage. And you would notice that if it hurts your back, for example. If you want to move pain-free with the knee bend and want to keep the tension on the muscles as the whole thing is intended in the exercise, then you may recognize where you may have been a little off track so far, if we want to put it that way. It is important to recognize that the way you go into the squat depends on your body. This is partly due to the layout. There is not even the general right depth for the squat, how deep you should go with the knee bend, that depends on you. So you may consider that individuality is an important component of your strength training. So I don't want to tell you what a proper knee bend looks like for you, but I want to address problems that often lead to problems with the knee bend and find out why you may have had difficulties so far and then adjust them as well as possible. No matter which variant of the knee bend you train, whether it's the back squat with the weight of the longhand on the back or the front squat or the goblet squat, there are many variants of the knee bend. There are also one-legged knee bends. No matter which exercise you are training so far, the tips are universal and can be applied to all these variants. Even if you train the knee bend without any problems, these tips will help you to work a little more on the exercise and get even more out of it. So let's just go through five common problems with the knee bend and see how you can solve them. Problem number one is the weak grip. When I watch someone knee bend, it often amazes me that I first pay attention to the grip and the upper back. Why? Because most people don't pay attention to how important it is to hold the longhand. This activates the muscles that protect your body. Many people have a blind spot at this point, if we want to put it that way. Most people pay more attention to where the bar is and that it feels comfortable. And they overlook an important first step. How do we solve the whole thing? If you position yourself for a knee bend, then you can grab the bar as tight as possible and try to pull your elbows under the bar. And if you just let yourself fall into the squat, then you feel unstable during the movement. More tension in your hands and in your upper back creates a whole body tension. And you want to have that. This tension helps you to perform the knee bend with greater and better body control. And this way you protect your spine and your lower back. Not to mention that the activation of these muscles helps you to generate more strength, to lift more weight and thus to train more effectively without injuring yourself. And that brings me to the second problem that I often observe. The leaning forward during the knee bend. A tip that you often hear during the knee bend is to take your chest out. And there's a good reason for that. If you lean forward too much in the hip, it's really hard to keep the tension on the muscles in your lower body. If you would fall forward in this way, the weight would shift to your quadriceps, i.e. the front side of your thighs, to your gluteal muscles and to your knees, and possibly also to your lower back. And that can lead to overload. How do we do it right? Well, we can actually say that about every exercise, but start by taking the weight down first and making sure that your body can handle what you lift. Especially during the knee bend, your body sends a lot of signals that tell you that this is just too much. And if you fall forward when you lower down and go into the squat, then that's one of these signals. And then you can work on bringing your elbows down, i.e. towards the floor, and bring your chest out. The chest up, the elbows down. And that leads to your upper body being more upright. And you can also concentrate on your mobility. That's also an important focus for the knee bend. I'll get back to that in a moment. Often there is a lack of mobility in the ankles, in the hips and in the upper back. And that prevents people from doing a really good knee bend. And the crux of the matter is, if you increase the weight while the mobility is still missing, then it actually only gets worse. The issue could also be related to a weak thoracic musculature, i.e. the abdominal muscles, the complete thoracic muscles. It could also be related to weak quadriceps. And instead of putting the barbell on your back in such a situation, you would then first work on the knee extension and strengthen stability with exercises such as step-ups, Bulgarian split squats and other variants of fall steps. So that would be a small construction site first. First train like this and build up the strength you need to do knee bends with a long barbell. And that brings me to the next topic that I often see, and that is mobility, especially in the ankle. Mobility in the ankle is a problem for most people because most people just don't work on it. And that is also because we often wear stable shoes in everyday life. And we are used to it, the feet feel comfortable there. And at the same time, this also ensures that our ankles become immobile. If someone loses their mobility in their ankles, then the shin bones no longer move, as it should actually be the case, forward when you go into the squat. And if your shin bones don't move forward, then the movement pattern changes. And that can burden the knee unnecessarily. On the Internet, on social media, you often find pictures of babies and grandchildren who go into the squat to show how natural it is for people to go deep into the squat. And my tip at this point is, don't focus on the depth of the knee bend, but instead you should look at the angle that the shin bones form at the feet. And what is even possible if you have a higher mobility here. Because that brings the depth. So the solution is the following. If you need more depth, then you can simply put a 2.5 or 5 kg bar under your heels and then go into the squat. This little change helps you to lower your heels when going into the squat and to make an even deeper knee bend. Alternatively, you can also use weightlifting shoes or shoes that raise your heels at the back and thus compensate for the lack of mobility in the ankle. That would be a workaround, so to speak. And if you want to work on the cause to get more mobility in the ankle, that would be my recommendation, then you can do additional exercises for the mobility of your ankle. They contribute to the fact that you work on the normal mobility of the ankle again. And this way you can get into the squat better, you can hold the squat better and you can get even deeper with the knee bend even without raising the heels. How can you do that? Well, a popular exercise looks like this. You stand in an offset position in front of a wall, where your front foot is about a foot away from the wall. And then you try to push your front knee as far as possible to the front of the wall. There is a second exercise, which is also quite funny. You try to draw the ABC with the big C of each foot. Try to draw every letter to then move your ankle in every direction. And that also leads to that your ankles become more mobile. It also feels good afterwards. You can then invest the time in this exercise. A third possibility, that's something I've been doing for a long time, every morning, is to just go into the squat and hold it. Just sit down. The goal is to create 30 minutes a day. And I use the time, for example, to learn a language. I work every day with the app Duolingo. And at the moment I'm learning French. And I actually always do that in the squat. So I take my cell phone with me, try to get to 30 minutes a day. And that also brings more mobility in the ankle. And that brings me to the third common problem. And those are the collapsing knees. If you go into the squat the next time with an additional weight, then tip at this point, let someone record a video of it and watch your knees. Or you do the whole thing in front of a mirror and watch your knees. How strong are your knees, or just one knee, towards the inside? A little movement can be okay. But if it looks like one knee wants to kiss the other, or both knees do this movement, then the time has come to take a closer look at the whole thing. Then it often presents a problem and can also lead to injury. You can change that before it gets that far. How do we solve this? Well, these subsequent, towards the inside, subsequent knees, which is also called Valgus Collapse, can be a mistake in the technique. But it can also be a problem in terms of mobility or muscle weakness, i.e. a disbalance somewhere, which you can dissolve, which you can train. A simple method to find out if it really is a problem is the so-called Wall Squat. You can do it everywhere, you don't need any weight for it. You just stand with your feet at a distance of about 10 cm in front of a wall. And now you go as far into the squat as you can. So you stand in front of the wall, 10 cm away from the wall, you go as far into the squat as you can. And you will see if your hip, your ankle, your upper back have problems with mobility. And you will notice how your knees move. If you have a problem here, then my recommendation is to leave the knee bend or the long bar outside for the so-called Goblet Squat. How to do it? I'll leave it here. You can watch it on YouTube. Goblet Squat is the name of the exercise. You need a long bar for it or you can also do it with a kettlebell. And while you train the Goblet Squat, you make sure that on the one hand you go as deep as possible, but on the other hand you also tighten your latissimus, your middle of the body, your abdominal muscles, your lower back, your whole core and you push your knees out while you go into the knee bend. This ensures a dynamic mobilization of your hips. If this is not enough to fix the problem, then my recommendation is to strengthen your gluteal muscles. Because the gluteal muscles help to keep you out of the knee bend. Exercises that help are glute bridges or hip thrusts with the long bar. These are wonderful exercises with which you mainly train your gluteal muscles and these are the most important hip abductors, i.e. muscles that can reduce the weakness that lead to these collapsing knees. And that brings me to the next point and it's about breathing. Often the breathing during the knee bend is not optimal. What do I mean by that? If you do not breathe in during the knee bend so far, breathe in deeply before you go down and breathe out when you move your body up again out of the hole, then you do not bring your horsepower on the road during the knee bend so far and you do not build up this intra-abdominal pressure. The breathing together with the tension of your gluteal muscles is basically your natural weightlifting belt. You need it at this point. How do we solve this? Well, before each repetition you breathe in deeply and tense your entire body in the middle. Then you go into the knee bend, and when you come up, you breathe out powerfully, like through an overpressure valve. Can you imagine that? That sounds like this to me. So a hissing sound when exhaling. And that's how you keep the intra-abdominal pressure in the most demanding part of the exercise. This way of breathing and at the same time the tension of your gluteal muscles protects you on the one hand from injury and on the other hand it also helps to bend heavy weights. And that brings me to the last point that I would like to point out in this episode. And the problem is a problem that I often see in commercial fitness studios. These are people who always use a weightlifting belt. They use a weightlifting belt for every set of knee bends. And do I understand correctly? Weightlifting belts are not a bad thing. Just like pull-ups, for example, when lifting a cross. But you must know how to use them correctly. Weightlifting belts are a tool that you can use, but they are not something you absolutely need when you train the knee bends. And there are people who always use the belt for the knee bends. And my thesis is that whoever always uses a belt for the knee bends does not use its potential to build strong functional gluteal muscles. How do we solve this? Well, if you want to use a weightlifting belt, then please take it off first. Especially for the warm-up sets, the weightlifting belt is intended for the heavy sets. And as long as you don't train without the belt, there is a rule of thumb. As long as you are not at least 70% of your one rep max, i.e. your maximum possible weight with which you can just do one repetition, you don't need the belt yet. These sets below 70% of your one rep max, you do without a weightlifting belt. And that brings me to the end of today's episode. Today it was about the knee bends. We talked about five common problems and how to solve them. It started with the first problem, the weak grip, which leads to the lack of body tension. So pay attention to the grip. Point number two, leaning forward. Leaning forward leads to an unfavorable knee strain. You just learned how to solve the whole thing for yourself. Point number three, lack of mobility in the ankle. You can help yourself by simply raising the heels and working on your ankle mobility at the same time. Thirdly, the collapsing knees. This can be a technical issue. It can also be a matter of dysbalances. There is a nice test in the knee bend on the wall. You can go through it and see where you may lack mobility. If there is a problem here, it would be my recommendation to leave the bar out and to train goblet squats. A second point are the glutei, the gluteal muscles. You can often strengthen them to become more stable in the knees. Point number four, we talked about the breathing, that you want to build up the intra-abdominal pressure. Point number five, the weight lifter belt. If you use one, start with 70% of the OneRepMax. Just as a rough number. I wish you a lot of fun and success in your training. Stay tuned. If you want, we will hear each other again in the next episode. And here again the advertising partner. This episode was presented to you by Athletic Greens. Athletic Greens is the green powder that I have been using for 7 years now. I do not recommend a lot of food supplements, but this is one of my basic recommendations. It contains 75 vitamins, minerals, many secondary plants and other healthy substances. Prebiotics, adaptogens and so on, which strengthens the immune system, which is good for regeneration, as a starter. As a new customer, you get 5 travel packs, an annual supply of vitamin D with vitamin K2 and a welcome package with a fancy ceramic can and a shaker. You can get it at www.fmmag.de www.athleticgreens.de