11/04/2025
Deep squats are NOT bad for your knees!
I often hear patients and clients tell me their physician, former rehab provider, or even personal trainer has told them not to squat below parallel (or even to parallel) because it’s bad for their knees.
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🔹This couldn’t be further from the truth and, in fact, deep squats are one of the best ways to both treat and prevent knee pain when programmed appropriately. Obviously care needs to be taken to progress into them slowly as ANY novel movement you’re unaccustomed to can cause issues if your body isn’t ready for it.
🔹The idea of deep squats being bad for your knees is entirely unfounded and based on incorrect interpretations of research showing deep squats put more stress on your joints than more shallow squats. Obviously any movement done with more weight or through a larger range of motion (which is essentially increasing resistance as deeper squats are harder than more shallow squats) has to by definition put more stress on your body. BUT the stress is what we want and is how we adapt and become stronger.
🔹Furthermore, squats just ABOVE parallel actually put MORE stress on your knees, in some ways, than squats below parallel. With this being said, you have to look at stress at the knee in three different ways by what occurs at the true knee joint (tibiofemoral joint), the patellofemoral joint, and ligaments of the knee. No singular position puts the most stress on all three areas.
🔹Increasing your squat depth may be a several month long process but the benefits for knee health and overall lower body strength and mobility are worth it. I’ll be discussing the benefits of deep squats and methods to improve squat depth throughout this series
