We all are familiar with the idea that we should never let our knees go ahead of our toes during squats or lunges, but is it true? Do we really need to demonize the movement?
So first let us see how this myth started.
This belief originated from a study that was conducted in 1978 in Duke University where the researchers found that maintaining a vertical lower leg as much as possible reduced shearing forces on the knee during a squat and this is completely true, but we are missing a lot here.
In 2003, research conducted by university of Memphis conducted a similar study, where they found that when knees are allowed to move ahead of the toes, knee stress is increased by 28%, which sounds scary right? But when knees were restricted to move forward, the hip stress increased by 1000%. Well, this should sound scarier than 28%, right?
Just because something puts stress on your joints, does not mean it is bad? Your joints, tendons, ligaments are totally capable of handling that load in a complete deep squat position and over time with your training your joints will adapt, they will become stronger and you will be able to add moreweight and repetitions.
Moving your knees ahead of your toes is completely fine if you do not have any existing knee issues.
However, if you have any injuries like ACL tear or any other knee injuries then moving your knees ahead of your toes is not a good idea. If you are having knee pain without any visible damage then moving your knees ahead of your toes might or might not be a great idea and you should consult an expert in such a case
If you feel you have pain in your knees when you move your knees ahead of your toes but you are fine when your knees are behind the toes during a squat or a lunge then you might need to avoid moving your knees ahead of your toes.
But if your knees are healthy and pain free than you do not need to worry about that. Just focus on your recovery and load management.
In fact,most of the people are not able to perform a deep squat because of this exact reason. They try to restrict their knees from moving ahead which leads half repetition squats. So, this gives us another reason to let our knees move ahead so that we can squat deep
Apart from these here are some athletes with their knees ahead of your toes. All these athletes have great knee health and strength while some also being on the top of their sports and they all started from the very basic level like all of us.
So, we think that is a lot of anecdotal evidence along with the above stated research which proves that it is a myth that “moving your knees ahead of your toes will damage your knees”.
REFERENCES:
THE 2003 RESEARCH: Effect of knee position on hip and knee torques during the barbell squat – PubMed (nih.gov)
- WEIGHTLIFTING AS A SAFE SPORT: Hamill_Relative_Safety-3.pdf (athleticperformanceacademy.co.uk)
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