spkchem - 24 August 2010 09:51 AM
Love it Metric!
I’m doing the 10 min deep squat as I type.
What specifically did he recommend/did you do to help your knees?
Scott
I need to write this up properly, I’ll take a run at it here and refine it elsewhere for future reference.
After taking a look at me air squat the first thing he started talking about was keeping your core active at all times. Creating space between your “belt and your stomach” was the cue I remember best.
Then he worked on my knee, feet and hip placement.
My feet pronate badly, ie I’m flat footed and Kelly had me correct that by getting my in a toes forward stance with feet closer then I normally would for a squat, then squat, pushing my knees out as soon as I broke at the hips. I had to keep my knees out and toes pointing forward all the way down, which was a feat of contortion at the time.
When I got it right the drive to keep my knees out originated in the deep muscles in my butt. When I did it wrong and my toes tried to turn out those deep muscles were turned off and I was using what felt like my ITB.
Doing it wrong my butt winked, doing it right my pelvis didn’t turn under.
Having got to depth he put his hand in front of my shins, which were much closer to vertical than they were for a start BTW, and cue me to push my shins back from his hand as I ascended. If you do that wrong with long femurs like mine you can wind up in a good morning type position, but when you do it right with your hips turned on, everything came up evenly.
The effect was to recruit my medial quadriceps very strongly, which I don’t normally do. It was interesting that instead of trying to tell me to use the medial head, Kelly put me in a position that made me recruit them.
Then he went to work on some issues with my hip capsule, manipulation and stretching there. The do it yourself version of that is shown in several of Kelly’s videos, but most clearly in Jami Tikkanen’s video here http://mobility.thamescrossfit.com/?p=457.
More retesting with air squats, more improvement.
A lot of this is covered in the “Rebuilding Khalipa” series in the CF Journal BTW and Kelly talks more about knee and foot position in the first post on his new mobility blog, the 10 minute bottom of the squat one.
He talked about how to apply the same knee, hip and core techniques to the deadlift then he put me through some of those shoulder stretches while laying on a lacrosse ball, the ones he shows in his “2 minute drill” series of videos.
Boy those hurt!
Boy those work!
My takeaways, besides that I need to go back becuase I forgot too much of what he said and Kelly is even better in person than he is on video are:
Knees out hard at the start of the squat.
Drive the knee spreading from the back of the hips. If I don’t feel it there and/or my toes start turning out, I’m doing it wrong.
The toes forward cue is an aid. I don’t think it’s essential, but it’s hard for me to get the feeling of my hips driving the movement without it. Given 46 years of bad habits I can probably never afford to stop using the toes forward method at least some of the time or I’ll revert.
Work on stretching my hip capsule and rotators.
Work those lacrosse ball shoulder stretches because they really work.
I should have the keep the core engaged thing on that list too, but if I’m honest I’ll admit that I keep forgetting that one as I slouch in my office chair.
