I have heard this a lot in my many years of training.
“But I heard your knees shouldn’t go past your toes when exercising or you will have knee problems”..
They were right weren’t they? NOPE!
Unfortunately this is another myth and has probably caused you, and people you know problems with their knee joints.
Check out this short video where I explain how and why your knees SHOULD go in front of your toes
Transcript:
Mark: Hello. This is Mark from The DoubleVision Conditioning Centre and you’re watching TheDVCC TV.
So, today, I want to dispel a little myth that I’ve seen bandied around a little bit on Facebook amongst other fitness professionals. And unfortunately, they are basically getting it slightly wrong. So, a lot of people, when you talk about knees and your knee joint feel that your knee should not go past your toe. And that’s been spoken about for quite a few years.
Now, unfortunately, a lot of people haven’t obviously read the latest research. I say, “Latest.” It’s been around for quite a few years, but they perhaps haven’t kept up to date. And that thought of not having your knees go in front of your toes is, actually, incorrect. And actually can be causing knee pain. So, you’ll see people when they squat, I’m kind of just going to show, they only squat. They squat like that. They stand up like that when they go to there.
And now what happens when you bend your knees as you get down. You use different parts of your body. So, first motion, that when you bend, you use your vastus medialis oblique. As you go through, you start using your hamstrings, your glutes. Then as you get to the bottom of a squat, which is this position, you’ve used your vastus medialis oblique again to get back up out of that position.
Now your VMO, this muscle here, is very important for your knee health and no basically not causing any knee pain. So, in sports, in skiing, as it is ski season now, you really need to have a strong VMO to make sure that you don’t have any problems. So, I just wanted to show you the proper form of a lunge.
And now this is a, obviously, if you only if you do have the flexibility but is something that you want to be aiming towards. And a lunge, a proper lunge, healthy knee lunge, is that position there, hamstring, calf touching. Your knee, you’ll see and you’ll see my knee is in front of my toe. My foot is flat. That is a perfect lunge as long as you have the, the knee strength, or the muscle strength, to get into that position. But that’s your aim.
Now, people getting others to lunge like that is incorrect unless they’re doing it for a specific reason, that’s actually incorrect and it is worse for your knee than that position. So, I would love to hear your comments. As always, the conversation continues, continues over at TheDVCC.com. So, go there now and agree or disagree with me. This is Mark from TheDVCC TV.
