How To Build Strength In Your Knees When You Can’t Squat

If you have aches and pains in your knees, then I get it. Trust me. I've had five knee surgeries, and sometimes people tell you, go ahead and squat to build that strength, but you can't. I'm going to show you how to build strength in your knees even when you can't squat in this video. Hey there, my name is Coach Tyler from WeShape, where our goal is to help you feel amazing in your body again. We do this by showing you movements that you can actually do, and then giving you stepping stones to progress through slightly harder variations of those movements, so you can build strength, flexibility, balance, and coordination all at the same time. Because it's not about changing the way your body looks, it's about changing the way your body feels. Now, one of the things that can happen in your life is you can get an injury, or you can end up with arthritis, and you can have a lot of aches and pains, and things like your knees are a constant reminder because you're walking, you're standing, and so you're constantly in pain. People tell you the best way to build strength in your legs is to do things like squats, but what happens when you can't squat? When you squat, it causes inflammation, it causes pain, and you need movements that are much simpler for you and easier for your body to do that will actually lead you towards being able to squat again by strengthening the important muscles and the coordination that you also need. Well, I'm going to show you those three movements right here that are going to help you strengthen your knees even when you can't squat. I'm also going to show you three really important principles for you while you do any movement that's going to help keep your knees healthy involving your feet, your knees, and your hips. Make sure you watch that section first, and then go on and try and see which movement feels right for you. Let's dive in. Okay, the first thing I'd like to go over is three principles for healthy knees. We're going to start all the way down at your foot. When most people do lower body movements, they don't even think about their foot. The first thing you want to do is instead of just letting your foot sit on the ground like this, is you want to think about spreading your toes almost the same way you're spreading your fingers, and then grip the ground with your toes just like this right here. The moment you do that, you activate the muscles of the foot, and you activate that innate intelligence in the foot that helps you learn how to balance without even having to think about it at the same time. As you're doing lower body movements, after you grip the ground with the toes, you want to keep the majority of the weight in your heel, about 70 percent in the heel, and then about 30 percent in the front, and try to pay attention to how much weight is distributed between your big toe and your pinky toe. It's really important to keep those things balanced, because the more you have on one side, the more wear and tear you put on one side of your knees, but if it's balanced, then your knee's functioning properly. The next thing is, let's take a nice wide squat stance with the toes turned out a little bit. Good. Grip the ground with those toes. The next thing that happens is when people do any sort of squat movement, they tend to cave their knees in like this, so show them a bad rep, right? If you look down, and your thigh bone is not going the same direction as your toes, then we've got a little bit of a problem. We're putting a lot of pressure on the inside of the knee joint, which is going to cause a lot of knee pain, so as you do your squat, look down and try to make sure that your thigh is going the same direction as your toes. For most people, this means pushing your knee out in order to accomplish this, and making sure that this bone is going the same direction as these bones right here in the center of your foot. Now the last piece is, as you do any sort of lower body movement, oftentimes people will squat through their knees like this, so show us a knee squat, right? What that does is it puts a ton of pressure on the quad joint to stabilize your knee, which is usually pretty weak, and it's going to cause a lot of pain in the knees if they aren't strong, so instead of using our knee joint for support, we want to focus on using our hip joint for support, so to start that, imagine your shins are buried in sand, and don't let them come forward by pushing your butt back, so weight on the heels, push your butt back, knees out, come down to a comfortable level, and then stand back up, good, and even more weight in the heels, even more weight in the heels, all the way there, the less your shins move forward, the less pressure you're going to put on your knees, okay? So remember this, place your foot on the ground, grip the ground with your toes, keep the weight on your heels, and find the balance between your big toe and your pinky toe, make sure your knees go in the same direction as your toes, and make sure to push your butt back and load through the hip rather than the knee when doing any lower body movement, and that's going to immediately help your knees feel significantly better. If you enjoy the way we explain how the body moves, and even the simplicity of some of the movements that we're teaching in this video, then you'll love the other videos that we post on our channel, so go ahead and click that subscribe button right now, and remember to hit that little bell icon, because when you do, you'll get a notification every time we post a brand new video to help you feel better in your body. Okay, the first movement I'm going to show you that's going to help you rebuild the strength in your legs, that hopefully someday you can squat again pain-free without having to feel your knees have aches and pains, is called the supported half sumo squat. So what you'll want is you'll want a chair, either a dresser or something, a countertop, something that is really sturdy, that's not going to wobble around, that you can use for support as you do this movement, and I'm going to walk you through it with perfect form, and really pay attention to the cues I'm going to give you in this movement, and how they relate to the three things I just shared with you for healthy knees, because you'll see they really, really help to stabilize the knee joint and not cause damage or pressure on the knees. So we're going to start with a really wide stance, okay? So nice and wide, significantly wider than hip width, toes are turned outward, and play around with the toe position, it could be anywhere from 30 degrees out to 45 degrees out, whatever feels most comfortable for your own body. Now from there, we want to think about planting those feet flat, gripping the ground with our toes, making sure the weight is primarily in our heels, and feeling the balance between the big toe and the pinky toe. Then we're going to push our butt back like this, hinge to the hip, and as we start to get to a position where we feel like we get a little bit of tightness in the hamstrings, you're going to descend by coming down in the movement, and you're going to use your hands for support, and then you're going to press into your heels and your arms if you need to, and think about extending your hips. Now this is the really most important thing you have to focus on. If you're thinking about extending your knee, meaning like you're straightening your leg in order to stand up via extending your knee, it's going to cause knee pain. But if you're thinking about pushing your hips towards the chair, meaning you're trying to extend your hips like this, using your glute muscles and your hamstrings, it's going to prevent that knee pain and help stabilize the knee. So again, weight on the heels, push the butt back, use your arms for support, come down as far as you can. How do you know how far you can go? Well, it shouldn't hurt, and you shouldn't be rounding your back like this, it should be a nice, tall spine from tailbone to the top of the head. Drive into the heels, extend the hips, okay? Inhale as you go down, slow and controlled, exhale as you come up, and you can repeat the supported half sumo squats for about one minute at a time, resting for 30 seconds to a minute in between, and you can do anywhere from three to five sets of this, three days per week. If you do this for a couple weeks, and they start to feel comfortable to you, or if it already feels comfortable to you, then you can go on to the next variation I'm about to teach you that's just a little bit harder and involves a little bit more balance and control. Okay, this second movement is called the half sumo squat, and it's going to be very, very similar to the supported half sumo squat, only you will have nothing in front of you for support. So, if you're feeling a little bit cautious, then what you can do is you can always do this while standing in front of a couch, just in case you lose your balance, you have something soft to fall back into. But just like the other sumo squat, you're going to take a nice, wide stance, turn your toes outward, then you can do the same stuff. Imagine you have that support in front of you. Put your weight in your heels, push your butt back like this, hinge to the hip, nice flat back, tall spine, and then descend down, imagining that your shins are buried in sand. So, remember, we don't want the knees to cave in like this, we don't want the knees to come super far forward like that. We want to imagine that nothing really moves here. We're just pushing our butt back and descending our entire center of gravity in between our feet, coming as far down as we can with good form, meaning no pain on your knees and a nice tall spine, not a rounded back like this. And then press into your heels, and again, really focus on extending the hips, okay? Inhaling as we go down, arms come up for balance and support, exhaling as we go up. And just like the last one, you can repeat this for about a minute, rest 30 seconds to a minute in between, and repeat three to five times, three days per week, to build the strength to eventually work up to doing those squats pain-free. Now, if you can do these ones pain-free, then let's move on to the last variation. Hey, before we get to the last movement, if you're enjoying how we take movements and show you simple steps to go to slightly harder variations, then you're going to love the workouts that we create over at WeShape. Every single movement we do is chunked down to 10, 15 different levels, so it doesn't matter where you're starting from. From complete beginner, barely able to do anything, all the way to someone who's already athletic. We'll have a workout and movements that are appropriate for you, and the best part is, you can try our workouts for free. So, go ahead and check out WeShape.com or click the link below, answer some questions in our quiz, and we'll personalize a workout just for you. Okay, this last movement is called the Sumo Squat, and it is identical to the Half Sumo Squat, only we're really going to strive for more depth in this movement. So start by taking a nice wide stance, turning your toes outward, putting your weight in your heels, pushing your butt back, starting to descend your whole center of gravity between your feet, and then right here, pay really close attention to when you get to a spot where it feels like either you have a hitch in your knee. If you have a hitch in your knee, like a little tweak or something, then you can pause there, look down at your thigh, and make sure it's going the same direction as the toes. If it's not, adjust that, see if it fixes that. Or if you're descending and you start to see your tailbone, so from a side view, if you start to see your tailbone go whoop, and tuck under like that, that means you're going too deep for your current level of flexibility. So go as far down as you can, pushing the butt back, weight on the heels, until you start to feel your butt wanting to tuck under, pause for a second, drive into the heels, and think about extending the hips again. Every single time you go down is an opportunity to reach a new range of motion or a new depth. Inhale as you go down, exhale as you go up, and just like the last two variations, you can practice this for one minute, rest for 30 seconds, repeat that three to five times, and do it three days per week. And if you can do this one, eventually, you'll be able to do those squats with pain-free knees again. All right, there you have it. Three awesome movements, each one a little bit more challenging than the last, that are going to help you build the strength in your legs so that you can squat again. Remember, just start out with the first movement, and only move to the next one when you feel like you can do it with perfect form and with no aches and pains. And once you're able to do the final movement that I just showed you for a couple months, I'll bet you anything, you'll be able to do squats again pain-free, and you'll finally be back on the road to being able to do fun things in your life because you won't be worrying about your knee pain. All right, I really hope you enjoyed this video, and if you really want to strengthen your legs big time, then check out this video right here called How to Strengthen Your Quads. It's going to teach you a few more movements that are going to help you activate your quads even more, which are going to further stabilize your knees. I'll see you there.