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Unlikely that ACL tightness is relevant. Most people aren’t limited by knee mobility in squatting, but by hip and ankle mobility. For those few limited by knee
by dpark 7y ago
Unlikely that ACL tightness is relevant. Most people aren’t limited by knee mobility in squatting, but by hip and ankle mobility. For those few limited by knee mobility, I would imagine it’s generally the quadriceps limiting range of motion, as opposed to the ligaments of the knee.
- gojomo 7y agoI'm average BMI, raised with western desks & toilets. I've got no problems getting the thighs parallel to the ground, for a typical exercise-squat. But getting the rear any lower than the knees forces my heels off the ground, via ankle resistance (& pain-against-forcing). That puts me on my toes/forefoot/balls-of-foot. I can get quite low that way, but without heels-on-ground and butt-on-calves, the stance is effortful, and thus can't be held for long. Earnest attempts to force heels-to-ground face resistance from ankle & knee/quadriceps-just-over-knee (but not hips), such that if heels do reach ground, ankle & knee can't flexion enough to keep my center-of-gravity forward, forcing a fall backwards.
- dpark 7y agoSure. Your currently lack the mobility to get that low. Lots of people do. The recommended cure is unsurprisingly to spend more time in a deep squat. You can either work on simply getting as deep as you can or go deeper holding something for support (so you don’t fall over backwards), but the end goal would be to deep squat without support. My mobility isn’t nearly as good as it should be and I can’t deep squat well either. I can get deeper with weight on my back because it helps to counter the tendency to fall backwards, plus it provides additional force to encourage the connective tissue to stretch. I should probably spend time working on squat mobility, but it’s frankly just not that high on my list of priorities right now.