Squat cues - "hips out" vs. "knees out"

[blowdpanis]

Not sure if anybody will find this useful, but as an alternate cue for "knees out," the concept of "hips out" seems to work well with some people. This is advantageous for a couple of reasons:

1) "Knees out" isn't really about the knees in the first place - knees out is a cue to spread the hips to keep the femur/tibia/ankle in the same vertical plane, so placing the focus on the actual joint which is performing the movement has a certain logic.

2) In putting your attention on the hips themselves, it seems a little easier to keep the balance "back into the hips," versus putting the focus on the knees, where some trainees seem to shift their balance ahead of midfoot.

How to cue hips out:

* As per Rip's suggestion, have the person adopt the bottom position of a squat with only their bodyweight, back locked in extension, heels ~shoulder width apart, with the knees jammed apart by the elbows. I.e. the "squat stretch" position.

* Have the person hold this position for several seconds (assuming they are capable), finding their balance and making sure everything looks right.

* Now, instruct the person to remove the elbows, but to keep the knees in place, i.e. don't let the knees come in at all. Explain that "hips out" is the feeling that they experience in this position, with their hips spread open at the bottom position of a squat. The idea, then, is to "find" the hips out position each time they descend (along with the back locked in extension and balance properly over midfoot).

So yah, just a useful, alternate cue I've found for people having trouble interpreting/using "knees out." It's the same idea as "spread the groin" or "open the groin" that people like Wendler, Louie Simmons etc have cued over the years, just different ways of thinking about the same concept.

[antony]

Yes sir, this is some solid and correct advice.

[Steve Hill]

Alternate cues are good, because not everyone will process acue the way the trainer / coach intends. It's interesting how many ways there are to cue the same desired result. Good summary of the ones for "knees out," blowd.

As an FYI to everyone, one of the reasons that Rip uses knees out is because a trainee can observe the knees moving out him/her self, simply by looking down.

[blowdpanis]

Just as an update to this thread, after tinkering with this cue more with myself and a friend (Cheech on the board, all-around beast working on a 500 lb squat), I'd say the above logic is pretty good, but as an addition to the logic presented here, for a way to sort of automagically make this happen, literally focus on the external femoral rotation as a means of "finding" that hips out feeling. This is probably something that's going to make more sense to trainees with some time under the bar, but I figure it's still worth describing.

One way of thinking about this instead of "pushing the knees out" is sort of corkscrewing your feet externally all the way down in the squat (left foot counter-clockwise, right foot clockwise). What you'll find doing this, magically enough, is that your knees will go out without you thinking about it. It also produces a very specific "opening of the hips" type feeling that, in my opinion, becomes the thing to focus on, which gets you to that "hips out" bottom position which you can find with the sequence in the first post.

Relatedly, in Stuart Mcgill's Ultimate Back Fitness and Performance, he describes the "westside" method of squatting as a combination of externally rotating the feet and pushing the knees out (he measures the differences with this style of squat on resulting EMG activity, finding it activates all the glutes significantly more), which I believe is how Louie has described the cue before, which is pretty much exactly what the above is describing. It's literally rotating your femurs out as your thighs move out of the way.

So, again, I'm not suggesting this as a replacement for "knees out" per se, but I do think it's more reliably producing EXACTLY the type of motion we want, the femoral external rotation that allows our femurs to be outside the ASIS(es), with comparatively more engaged glutes/external rotators/adductors, and a better back position. I.e. the "active hips" Rip is attempting to get people to have for their squatting.

[Cheech32917]

As Blowd has said I've recently been using this cue and it has worked out very well for me. It seems as focusing on the external rotation of the hips get the knees out sooner rather than later. If you notice in most people's videos they tend to start shoving the knee out about half way down. "Hips out" I've noticed, starts this process at the start of the descent. This seems to allow you to hit the stretch reflex at the bottom harder so you can gain more speed out of the hole. I also noticed that my quads aren't as sore as they use to get. Blowd I dont know if you've noticed this, but I think it give the conventional squat more of a sumo feel, as in I able to notice when I hit the bottom better. This is good from my point of view because I've had trouble with going too low at high intesity attempts. I've also used it on some of my clients who have had trouble with the "knee outs" cue and its actually got them to squat right.