Well now I have heard it all...
Most say the knees should not go in front of toes. Furey says it's all good... So how to squat and if to squat?
I don?t think Bethaks are bad for the knees I do them for years without problems and I feel that they are very good vor your joint mobility.
I think it is very important to do an exercise in a controlled way. Don?t let yourself just fall into the squat. I always say that you should do any exercise in a way that you can stop immediately at any point of the movement. Always move with control.
i've always been under the impression that the "no
knees past toes" rule applied to "barbell"
squats....not bodyweight squats.
of course, i've also seens pics of people doing
"hindu" squats with a weighted barbell.
Im pretty sure that the 'no knees over the toes' rule is just an 80's bodybuilder myth anyway.
Im pretty sure that the 'no knees over the toes' rule is just an 80's bodybuilder myth anyway.
That's my impression....just watch someone walking up stairs, for example.
When I do a bodyweight squat, it's similar to a weighted squat in that the first movement is to sit back.
Kirsta has a excellent tutorial on all things squating. And she addresses the impact of squats on knees in the first part.
" Im pretty sure that the 'no knees over the toes' rule is just an 80's bodybuilder myth anyway."
Correct imo. Look at olympic lifters when they hit rock bottom. Their knees are way out front. They seem to walk pretty ok to me.
I did lots of hindu squats and it surely made me stronger but also had some impact on my knees, cant say it hurt though. Lately I've been checking out Crossfit style workouts and squats with heels planted and I must say I like them more, they seem to have 0 impact on knees compared to hindu squats and work the muscles more thoroughly through the ROM. I'll stick with them for a while, just feels good. Regarding knees over toes, I slightly let them go over my toes but as long as it feels/looks natural I dont think there's a problem. I can see how children with great flexibility and people with flexibility problems could get hurt that way in the long run, but hey.
Actually walking the stairs is very bad for the knees. Especially coming down. And this comes from some top orthopedians from my country...
Funny, i would have imagined that walking up and down inclines, like stairs, would have been one of the most fundamentally important and natural movements for the human knee to make.
I think Pavel also talks about not letting the knee go too much forward when doing pistols.
my understanding is that knee coming past foot is OK as long as your knee goes in the direction your foot is pointing. Otherwise there are twisting forces on the knee.
I would imagine thats right CockneyBlue. Pretty much anytime your knee and foot are going in different directions under stress you're looking for an injury.
I'm not sure how everyone's doing the bethaks, but I read somewhere that the toes should face outwards when performing them.
I tried this method (plus keeping my back fairly straight and looking slightly above parallel) and found that my knees do not hurt at all when I track them over my knees.
Also, everything Crossfit found lacking about Hindu Squats were negated, i.e. I could concentrate on my glutes and hams (really piston myself up using my posterior chain), absolutely no knee problems, etc. It really became a whole body exercise using my entire body to just pump up and down all night long.
Now, when I did it according to Matt Furey's close-to-non-existent instructions, feet parallel to each other, I found that my knees felt very not "with it", and my quad was way too much targeted, so I couldn't really think about getting to do "500 straight Hindu Squats in 15 minutes" which makes you ready for something.
The difference between the two methods(toes facing outward vs. parallel) is so extreme that it had me for a while playing with notions of suing Furey's ass for criminal negligency or something.
Anyways, best of luck to all of you bethaking your way to happiness. It really is a good exercise, and really lends itself to the high-rep range because of the lack of repetition stess.
Peace.