Why it’s Okay to Train Knees Over Toes
Many people have been taught over the years that they SHOULDN’T allow their knees to go past their toes when they squat, and that generally this is a poor way to train. However, there are many arguments to support why you SHOULD train this way. We believe that adopting the mindset that knees over toes is healthy can help you tremendously with your training and ultimately how you feel in your life, here’s why…
In your daily life, you’ll be exposed to knees over toes frequently
One way that we can think about training is preparedness for your daily life. You lift weights, you squat, deadlift, carry, clean, snatch, so that life can feel easier to handle. Now let’s think about all the times your knees goes past your toes in your life, such as squatting, kneeling, stairs, downhill, and many more. From a preparedness standpoint, it makes sense to train you knees to be more comfortable with these movements and positions. The way to prepare your knees for knees over toe is not to avoid knees over toe, but rather to slowly expose them to more knees over toe. Imagine getting into a swimming pool, when you first get into the pool it’s often cold BUT over time it feels less cold. This is a well known phenomenon called ‘habituation’, which is your body becoming less responsive to the same stimulus over time. Meaning, the pool in that scenario is just as cold but your body is less responsive to it because it has recognized that the temperature is not a threat. This is the same phenomenon that you’re trying to take advantage of by training and moving your knees over your toes frequently. The goal is to reduce how intense it feels on your knees over time.
When people have pain with knees over toes, it’s not because the movement is bad
This is a common error in reasoning that people make, so if you’ve felt this way don’t worry because you’re not alone! The mistake is equating that event ‘y’ happens after event ‘x’ which means ‘x’ must have caused ‘y’, which is known as the ‘Post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy’. Another way to think about this is that ‘correlation doesn’t equal causation’. For example, you wouldn’t blame your best friend for the rain delay at the baseball game just because they didn’t wear their lucky socks. In the same way, it doesn’t really make sense to blame knees over toes for causing knee pain just because you’re having knee pain when your knees go over your toes.
This is a helpful diagram to the right, which shows tolerance lines. MOST of the time when you have knee pain with knees over toes, what’s happening is you’re working above your tolerance line. Typically this means you’re not causing damage but you’re beyond your body’s ability to tolerate that movement. Often what happens is we see that line go down in an effort to protect and so movements / forces that were not previously painful are now painful. This is like when you started running at the same time a new bootcamp class and then didn’t sleep well and wake up the next day and now just going down the stairs hurts…we’ve all been there!
But the reality is what caused it wasn’t knees over toes, what caused it was the combination of factors including poor sleep, and too much too fast. It’s important to note, that the specific contributing factors to an episode of pain are individual and this is just one example.
In conclusion, it’s not entirely accurate to blame knees over toes for your pain and training it can actually help to prepare your knees for life. As always, the devil is in the dosage!
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