Squats and sliding knees - same for low bar and high-bar?

[Sqwt]

Hello coaches. This is just a theoretical question regarding sliding knees in the squat, as well as bouncing on the knees in the bottom of the squat. In the low bar squat that you guys advocate the knees stop at about 1/3 of the way down in the descent and stay put for the remainder of the movement. I'm curious - does this apply to the high bar squat as well?

I'm not sure how the mechanics between the low bar and high bar squat differs here, as I've only read about the low bar mechanics in SSBT3 and on this board. As the low bar squat involves the posterior chain to a greater extent than the high bar, there might be some differences in how knee position affects the squat mechanics.

If you look at videos of weightlifters who typically use the high bar squat you see all kinds of different versions. Knees stop about halfway or so during the descent, others where the knees travel forward during the entire descent and sometimes the lifter bounces of the knees at the bottom. As far as my rudimentary understanding of squat mechanics goes, the typical quick descent and subsequent bouncing of the knees in the bottom of the high bar squat leads to a shortening of the hamstrings and thus a grinding mid-part of the ascent.

If I've understood this correctly this can be seen during the ascent of the squat, where the initial bounce out of the hole is quick and then bar speed slows down substantially during the mid-part of the squat where the quads do the majority of the work if the hamstrings have shortened. As far as I can tell from looking at videos, bar speed is much more consistent when the lifter doesn't bounce of the knees. You guys obviously have way way more experience than me, so I thought it'd be interesting to ask.

So basically, is the sliding knees issue relevant to both the low bar and the high bar squat?


Here's a couple of videos that demonstrate what I'm talking about. All kinds of shit going on here:
California Strength squats
Kendrick Farris squat

[Nick D'Agostino]

In a high bar squat the knees will set into the correct position lower in the squat and will be in a more forward position relative to the low bar. This is probably about half way down. The knee sliding issue is relevant in both squats. You still need to stay tight in the bottom of a high bar squat. This means cutting depth an inch or 2 below parallel. If the goals of the squat mechanics are still to lift the most weight through the largest range of motion using the most muscle mass, with the bar in the high bar position, then the squat must rebound off of tight stretched muscle tissue not bounce off the impact of your hamstrings hitting your calves and the elastic energy stored in your knee joint capsule.

[Sqwt]

Well, there we go. I imagine bouncing of the knees and using the elastic energy stored in your knee joint capsule instead of tight stretched muscle tissue must be bad for knee health in the long run. This was indeed part of the reason for my asking. Thanks for the consice answer.

[Sqwt]

Okay, I've been reading that last sentence in Nick's reply over again. At first I was thinking about knee health, then I started thinking about what Nick actually wrote.

If I understand this correctly, rebounding of a stretched muscle is what we want because this leads to a greater effect of the stretch reflex, yeah? Basically the nervous system gets a powerful signal that a contraction is about to occur so the muscle better get ready to contract. This opposed to bouncing the hamstrings of the calves and stored energy in the knee, as this will lead to a slight shortening of the hamstrings, and thus the contraction won't be as effective due to the stretch reflex not being in full effect. Am I on to something here?

For what it's worth, I found a thread over at California Strength where they said "Bouncing saves the knees, it doesn't hurt them. Whoever is telling you that it's bad doesn't understand human physiology."

I might have jumped to conclusions regarding knee health, but Nick's comment made even more sense once I focused on the stretch reflex. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the sliding knees issue is still relevant because it changes the mechanics of the squat compared to getting the knees where they're supposed to be and keeping them there, be it high-bar or low-bar. That's all I have, thanks for putting up with this overthinking of mine.

[Nick D'Agostino]

You are on the right thought track here. The question is how do you define knee health? Bouncing (relaxing) will probably not structurally destroy the knee. It is inefficient and will probably cause tendonitis, as it did for me. The low bar squat model we teach balances forces at the knee so tendonitis does not happen.

[Sqwt]

That's a good point regarding knee health. My training partner squats high-bar and did so with sliding knees for a long time, as knee position supposedly wasn't all that important with high bar squats. I never quite agreed with that, but I squat low bar and don't know much about details of high bar technique. He got tendonitis once he switched to 5/3/1 with the BBB template where you do 5x10 squats at 50-60% of 1RM after the work sets of squats. That's a lot of reps, even though they're done with light weight. Once he stopped the sliding knees thing and avoided squatting a few sessions while doing some flossing with Voodoo Bands the knee problems stopped. Who woulda thunk.

[Nick D'Agostino]

Your friends experience sounds like a typical one. It's not uncommon for the tendonitis to reoccur when training is continued if the mechanical problem is not fixed. You should make your friend stay tight in the bottom; it will help his knee pain.

[Sqwt]

Will do, thanks.