Overhead Squat Assessment 7 - Knees Bow Out

The Overhead Squat Assessment 7 focuses on assessing stability in the lower body by measuring forward knee tracking in the bottom position. With the barbell in an overhead position and feet hip-width apart, the athlete should sit back into a squat so the thighs reach parallel to the floor. Knees should stay in the same relationship to the feet as the descent. The knees should not bow or turn outward during or after the squat. A positive result would show minimal to no movement of the

Transcript

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This is Brent coming at you with another
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overhead squat assessment video. In this
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video we're going to go over the sign knees bow out. So I'm gonna have my
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friend Leanne come out, she's going to demonstrate knees bow out for us. I'm
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going talk to you guys about some of the details here. So first things first, i'm
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going to go ahead and have her set up with feet hip width. We know that her
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hips are just behind her ASIS here, so she can go a little wider than that, just a
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little bit. There you go, and then she's going to make sure her second toe is
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pointing forward. Ideally I know that the knees should track, so that the patella
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goes over the second and third toe. Now Leaane's going to throw her hands up over
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her head, and show us what knees bow out looks like, and she's doing a pretty good
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job demonstrating what you would commonly see here. You can see here her
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patella starts tracking over her pinky toe, or just passed her pinky toe. Now I
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know most of you guys are probably expecting to see more of a exaggerated
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knees bow out. Let's go ahead and show that. But the truth of the matter is
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that just doesn't happen all that often. Most of the time when you guys see the
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sign, it is going to be just a little bit of splaying out to the pinky toe, and i
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would say even more common than that is only on one side. So I'm going to have
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Leanne kind of bow out, try to show bow out just on the right side, and all I
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would do on my overhead squat assessment, as if I saw that, if it was only on the
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right side, i would just knees bow out 'r' circle right, to make sure I
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understood it was just the right side. If it was right side more than left but
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both of them did it it would be 'r' greater than left. Keep your
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documentation simple, easy for you to read, so that you can reproduce the same
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way every time. Thank you Leanne. Now let's analyze this dysfunction. Unfortunately
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this dysfunction is not as obvious as some of the other dysfunctions we've
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put up. So knees bow out, you would think towards abduction, but the truth of the
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matter is it's actually femoral external rotation, and then at the ankle that
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knees bow out is being driven by eversion. So you guys remember the joint
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action eversion is like this with my feet, unless
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its tibia on foot eversion, then if I did this with my feet and laid them back
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flat, my tibia would be pointed outward, so hopefully you guys can follow
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that. When we get into actually breaking down femoral external rotation, we have
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to add yet another layer. So some of you guys are already aware of this idea of
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agonists versus synergists, and this idea of synergistic dominance. In this
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dysfunction this all plays a role. So if I were to just throw my external
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rotators up there for the femur, I would end up with the glute max and the glute
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medius on my short and overactive side. I can honestly tell you guys an overactive
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glute max and glute medius almost never happens, these are what we call phasic
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muscles. They have a propensity to get really under active. What is actually
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happening in this dysfunction is that has happened .The glute max and the glute
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medius have definitely become inhibited and reduced in activity, and you have the
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takeover of the synergists for that, which are not quite as good as extension
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but better at external rotation. So we get displaying of the knees. Those three
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muscles are the piriformis, biceps femoris, and posterior head of the
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adductor Magnus. So those are going to be muscles you want to treat with release
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and stretching, and of course you guys know our eversion from previous videos of
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the fibularis and lateral gastrocnemius. So now what are we going to activate to improve
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this dysfunction, well my inhibited agonists, the muscles that are allowing
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the center just to become dominant. Once we release and stretch them and reduce
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their activity, we need to get the glute max and the glute medius involved again. So
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that's where you guys are going to do your glute max and glute medius activation,
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and then of course you're going to go after your inverters, being your
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posterior tib and your anterior tib to fix that dysfunction in the ankle. Now
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one small thing i will say about this dysfunction, this is one of our first
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dysfunctions within a dysfunction. Believe it or not if you guys started
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with knees bow out, corrected the dysfunction, and ended up with knees bow
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in, that's actually a step forward. I
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actually find that most people who have knees bow out, it's just knees bowing in
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disguise. We need to get past this synergistic dominance relationship and
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then once we do that, we go back to our knees bow in sign, and we start
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correcting that way. I hope you guys enjoyed this video. I hope you guys get