Most People are Squatting Wrong

I see a lot of dancers that come to me with knee issues. The pain and discomfort they experience differ, but all have a similar, root problem. Knee pain can occur for various reasons, but there is however a very specific technical problem that a lot of athletes and dancers seem to run into. Medically, it’s called genu valgus, or knee caving.

This faulty positioning of the knees can be caused by multiple factors – muscle weakness, habit, flat feet, and poor technique – just to name a few. Even professional athletes and dancers do this to some small degree if they are not careful. The easiest solution is to practice squatting in front of a mirror and push your knees over your pinky toes. 

If you haven’t been doing this correctly, this will feel very different than before, and you might find one knee is harder to correct than the other. Next, you have to apply this correction to all the places that require you to bend your knee. Some examples are squats, lunges, stunt work, pliés, jumping (take-off and landing), and descending stairs.

This is a crucial technique correction to keep painful knees at bay and to decrease the incorrect loading through the knee joint, tendons, ligaments, and meniscus.