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"Knees Bow In" Breakdown

Learn the correct form of knees bow in with this helpful breakdown by a Certified Yoga Instructor. Understand the benefits, proper alignment, and modifications with this step-by-step guide.

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Transcript

00:00 - 00:04What do you think most of that comes from? Knees move inward. What do you
00:04 - 00:15think the biggest joint responsible for this is going to be? Hip, right. Yeah. We've
00:15 - 00:20got a couple things going on at the hip. This one gets a little complicated. I'm
00:20 - 00:25going to be honest with you, we'll start with the easy one. Knees moving
00:25 - 00:31inward is what joint action? Adduction.
00:34 - 00:38What muscles adduct my hip?
00:39 - 00:44The adductors. Right? You knew that right? Sometimes we get a "give me" in the
00:44 - 00:48whole functional anatomy game. You know, it's like, what is the levator scapulae
00:48 - 00:59do? Uh, elevate the scapula? Sometimes we get "give me"s. Adductors.
01:01 - 01:06However, here's where things get a little confusing. The other part that's causing
01:06 - 01:09the knees to buckle in, and this is where it's also related to lower leg
01:09 - 01:18dysfunction, is what my friend Rick likes to call the bowstring effect. The same
01:18 - 01:27muscles that pull on the lateral knee, will also duck the knees in. You
01:27 - 01:33kind of follow me? Here's the easy visual. So if these muscles right here
01:33 - 01:42pull down this way, like the string on a bow and arrow, if these are on the
01:42 - 01:50outside and I shorten that string, what's going to happen to the bow? It's
01:50 - 01:56going to go that way, right? Can you kind of see that? If I drew my knee this
01:56 - 02:06way, this is my femur, this is my knee, and this is my tibia.
02:07 - 02:11I drew a little string right here.
02:11 - 02:19I'm dramatizing. If I shorten this string, what happens to my knee? Can you see
02:19 - 02:33that? What muscles pull on the outside of my knee? TFL. You're not done yet.
02:35 - 02:46Short head of the biceps femoris. Why not the long head?
02:48 - 02:50It's actually a little bit more complicated than that. So what ends up
02:50 - 02:56happening is it's hip adduction and
02:56 - 02:59internal rotation.
03:03 - 03:10This is where things get even more complicated. Femoral internal rotation,
03:10 - 03:16this is my femur, this is my tibia, this is my knee, if I have femoral internal
03:16 - 03:23rotation, it is the same thing as tibial external rotation. So all of the muscles
03:23 - 03:28that we listed for externally rotating the tibia, will also turn the femur
03:28 - 03:39inward causing this. Are you with me there? So we did TFL, biceps femoris. The
03:39 - 03:43reason why it's only the short head of the biceps femoris, is the long head of
03:43 - 03:48the biceps femoris crosses the hip, right? Connects into my ischium.
03:48 - 03:54What is my the long head of my biceps femoris do as a joint action at
03:54 - 04:01the hip? It extends the hip and externally rotates. Are you with me
04:01 - 04:11there? So the long head is actually long, and the short head is short. Darn, crazy
04:11 - 04:17muscles. Make up your mind! One head's short, one head's long. But it's true.
04:17 - 04:29So TFL, biceps femoris, possibly even what was the other external rotator of our knee?
04:29 - 04:34Lateral gastroc, right? We could even, it's not on the next slide,
04:34 - 04:39but we could even put lateral gastroc.
04:44 - 04:47Crazy, huh?
04:48 - 04:55Just gets wilder and wilder. So, if this is the case, adduction internal rotation,
04:55 - 04:59what would our long muscles be?
05:08 - 05:15My abductors and external rotators which are going to be, you already hit it,
05:15 - 05:30who are my big abductor and external rotator? Glute what? Yes. My favorite
05:30 - 05:39muscles. They are. They're my favorite muscles. Not saying necessarily visually,
05:39 - 05:43although that's not bad either, but they do have extremely important functions. As
05:43 - 05:47we start tracking up all of our dysfunctions, you will see the glute
05:47 - 05:51max and glute med are almost always weak. And then we wonder why so many
05:51 - 05:56people have droopy glute syndrome. You know droopy glute syndrome, right? No?
05:56 - 06:06I know a couple of people in here are going, "uhg, droopy glute syndrome". So, what
06:06 - 06:16would we do to these muscles? Activate, and then we would try to integrate. Okay.
06:16 - 06:19One thing I need to
06:19 - 06:25specify: we have to activate, and we have to isolate
06:25 - 06:30and activate as much as we can. If you go, 'well I need stronger glutes', and you
06:30 - 06:34decide that you don't do corrective exercise, you decide you're just going to
06:34 - 06:40do squats to try to strengthen your glutes, is that going to work? Why isn't
06:40 - 06:43it going to work?
06:45 - 06:49You're going to continue using the compensation pattern you've always had.
06:49 - 06:56You with me there? You can't control that. If your glute max and glute medius
06:56 - 07:00is shut down because your knees duck in, your biceps femoris is going to take
07:00 - 07:04over, this is something called synergistic dominance.
07:04 - 07:09I don't care how many times you do squats, your glutes aren't
07:09 - 07:13all of a sudden on your 15th squat going to go, "oh yeah I'm supposed to work now."
07:13 - 07:19You've learned to this compensation pattern until you release and stretch
07:19 - 07:24the short muscles, and activate these guys, they're not going to get involved.
07:24 - 07:29You're just going to keep using that compensation pattern.

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