Great Squats!

I don’t have a stat on this, but my personal experience is that more people hate doing squats than love them. However, there are ways to modify squats to make them easier on your body (especially knees and low back) while you develop lower body strength.

“Your knees should never go past your toes!” How many times have you heard this from people, professionals or not? I take a bit of a controversial stance on this when I say this is a poor instruction for a few reasons. As you squat, your knees move forward and your hips move back. The problem with stopping your knees when they reach your toes is that to go any lower, your hips have to keep moving back, taking the weight of your upper body with them leaving you unbalanced. To compensate, the upper body has to come forward to maintain balance. You can feel this yourself by standing with your toes against a wall and trying to do a squat.

That being said, letting your knees go past your toes can be damaging if your knees are not strong enough to handle the load (bodyweight or otherwise) at that angle. If you have knee problems, there are ways to modify your squat. Check out the video to learn more.