Nova Performance Weekly Blog
by Adam Smith on Sep 2, 2021
HOW DO I STOP MY KNEES CAVING INWARDS?
What is a knee cave?
The knee cave is when your knees come in and are no longer tracking over the toes.
This happens mostly when coming out of the hole in a Squat, Clean and snatch. Anything that evolves coming out of the bottom of the squat.
Now that being said this can occur during a Deadlift and the dip in the Jerk or Push Press.
This happens when we get tired and become lazy when performing heavier weights.
This is a big issue if the athlete keeps caving their knees when squatting, cleaning ect… because this is going to cause a knee injury, so therefore this will slow down progress.
I will often say this to my athletes and my coaches say this to me too.
“The athlete who stays injury free for the longest will improve for the longest amount of time”
I say this because it's so true.
If you are consistently fixing yourself you will not have the time or momentum to progress or train at the correct intensity to improve compared to someone who is injury free.
How do we fix this?
Now it's actually very simple.
This happens due to poor technique and fatigue.
Let's look at a squat and how we perform this.
Ideally our feet are going to be shoulder width and our toes slightly pointed out (left foot at 10 am and right foot at 2 pm. This may vary depending on the athletes mobility and stature.
Next the athlete will brace their core (If you want to learn more on this click the link https://www.nova-performance.co.uk/post/how-to-brace-your-core)
The athlete will then descend to the bottom of the squat in a controlled fashion keeping their knees tracked over the toes.
When doing this, think of your feet as train tracks and your knees as trains. For the trains to move efficiently they have to stay on train tracks.
This is the same for the squat.
When standing up the athlete needs to make the effort to keep the trains on the train tracks.
This is how we stop our knees caving in when squatting.
To sum up, we need to keep our knees over the toes to avoid injury and to move efficiently.
Contact
I hope you enjoyed the read and stay posted for the next one. If you have any questions just shoot me an email on contact@nova-performance.co.uk
If you want to see some of my training logs and videos follow me on Instagram @thicc__astley or @npbarbellclub
See you all soon!
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