Modify Your Squat

How to temporarily change weight and depth to reduce knee pain.

Do you have knee pain while squatting or after squatting? It may be time to modify your squat.

Maybe you tried progressing your squatting volume too quickly. You may have added too many reps or too much weight too quickly not allowing your muscles, bones, and connective tissues to gradually build strength. When this happens you need to modify the squat movement until your pain reduces.

While needing to modify your squat may feel defeating, these changes are temporary. If you implement other tactics to reduce your knee pain and gradually increase your squat weight and depth, you will likely be able to get back to squatting the way you want.

Here are my top 3 strategies to modify your squat and reduce knee pain.

1. Modify Your Squat By Reducing Your weight.

This is where I would start. If you have knee pain while squatting, reducing the amount of weight you squat will take stress off your knees. How much do you reduce? Follow your symptoms. I would start with half. If you can squat half of your regular weight without pain, then you can gradually build up your weight with time.

If don’t usually squat heavy, you may need to be creative with how you reduce your weight. Moving to a leg press machine or Total Gym may be right for you if you usually do body weight squats or if you squat with dumbbells vs a loaded barbell.

When you find a weight that you can squat without pain and your knee pain reduces during your daily activities, you are likely ready to start increasing your weight again. In general, you should not increase the weight you squat more than 10% per week. But make sure that you can still perform the squat without pain as you start to increase weight.

If reducing your weight doesn’t reduce your knee pain while squatting, my next tip is for you.

2. Modify your squat by reducing your depth.

The deeper you squat, the more you ask of your whole body. This includes the strength of your quad, hamstring, core, and glute muscles. But it also includes the range of motion of your ankles and hips. For exercises to strengthen your core and glute muscles, see my post here. If you aren’t working on your range of motion, see my blog post describing a functional warm up here to learn exercises to work on the range of motion in your ankles and hips.

As you improve your glute and core strength and ankle and hip range of motion, you may need to modify your squat by decreasing how deep you squat.

This will give you time to improve strength and range of motion but also give the structures in your knees like your ligaments, tendons, and joints time to adapt to squatting gradually.

So reduce your squat to a range that is pain free. Work on your strength and range of motion. And over time you will be able to squat deeper.

3. modify your squat by reducing your “quad dominant” exercises.

Examples of quad dominant exercises are: squatting (any type), lunging (any type), leg extensions, and step ups.

Are you squatting AND lunging with heavy weight? This may be too much stress on your knees during one workout. Although this is not a true way to modify the squat itself, it is a way to modify your workout routine to reduce stress to your knees.

Try moving one or two of your quad dominant exercises to another day. You could perform them on your upper body strength day or cardio day. If you don’t want to move any of your quad dominant exercises to another day, then change when in your workout you perform the exercise to create more space between the quad dominant exercises.

Creative ways to build strength while you modify

While modifying your squat may feel defeating, it doesn’t have to. Just because you modify your squat, doesn’t mean you have to make it easy. Try these tips to continue to build strength as your knee pain reduces. These are great ways to make the squat challenging even if you reduce your weight or depth.

1. Hold your squat at the bottom for 10 seconds.
2. With a band around your knee, hold your squat at the bottom and perform standing clams.
3. Use a band for anchored squats to isolate and challenge the quads.
4. Perform heel raises at the bottom of your squat.
5. Perform squat variations like narrow feet, wide feet, or sumo squat stance. More squat variations.

For videos of each squatting challenge, subscribe to my YouTube channel!

Remember it’s temporary

While seeking to reduce your knee pain, you may need to modify your weight, depth, or exercise selection temporarily. But don’t let this discourage you. If you are working on your core and glute strength, ankle and hip range of motion, and frequently checking your form, you will likely be able to return to your previous squat weight and depth.

But remember, that you must slowly and purposefully progress your squat weight and depth. Choose weight and depths that are pain free, and gradually increase them without increasing your pain.

To know how much you need to reduce weight, depth, or quad dominant exercises you’ll need to be able to listen to your body’s response to what you do. Read my post here to learn how much pain is safe during exercise.

And stay tuned for an upcoming post on isolated quad and hamstring exercises.