Hi, is Kevin Don the Get Fit Guy. Last week on the podcast, we discussed the importance of squats

and how to perform them. But what do we do if we find that our technique is down to physical

deficiencies? Today I'm going to talk about the most common errors and how to fix them.

Now, first of all, I think it would be a good idea just to recap the learnings from last week,

which are that in terms of the squat, we're looking for the following points of performance.

Firstly, that you're able to bend at the hips and the knees simultaneously. It's common due to

sedentary lifestyles, office-based work, sitting most of the day, that people lack the ability

to make this pattern. Most common thing I see is people bending their knees first. This leads to

heels lifting off the floor as we approach the bottom of the squat, which is, of course,

unstable. Secondly, whilst you perform the squat or lunges, the knee should stay tracking

over the middle of the foot with a vertical shin. If the knee drifts inwards, that's called

knee valgus, and that's been positively correlated with knee injuries it's more common in

women because of differently shaped pelvis causing more of an angle of the thigh bone or femur from hip

to knee which is called the angle of cue similarly it's important that we have a strong core

able to hold our torso in a fixed position as we move, we add load and you'll find that a deformable lever, the torso being the lever here, is a poor transmitter of force.

We also want to squat as deep as we can whilst maintaining the above.

Deep squats are not bad for your knees if they track centrally.

Strength is gained in the range it's trained, so if you do shallow squats, you won't ever be

strong in a deep position. We've covered the said principles in the past which define specificity.

Now, it's important we've got to distinguish things in terms of there being two major camps that any loaded movement will fall into. First of all, you'll have poor motor control. That means you just can't make the pattern required. Secondly, you're just not strong enough. It's pretty easy to tell the difference between the two, which one you find

yourself in will affect the way you address the problem. So let's say you go to this gym, you warm up

your squats, you start with some unloaded air squats, which by the way I would always recommend,

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