 Question is from Jules Tealman. Are squats and lunges bad for your knees? That depends. Depends on, a lot of it depends on your form and your technique and your muscle activation and control and stability. And some of it depends on your knees. Now for most people, this is based on my own experience, I'd love to hear you guys' input, I would say probably no joke, 90% of the time squats and lunges bothered a client's knees. It had to do with muscle imbalances, form, stability, control. One out of 10 times it actually had to do with their knees themselves, that their knees had an issue. Well, you know, this is where the box squats came in and we talked about the other day. You know, this is a lot of times when you show like a client how to squat and they don't know how to squat and they just try and mimic what you did. The first thing that you see is they bend their knees, let their knees go travel really far forward until they can't travel anymore and then what stops it is the pain. They're not had no hip involvement. Yeah, very, very little bit of the hip hinging back and so they feel all the stress in their knees. So, yeah, no, of course, you take that ankle mobility to its end range of motion and then the stress runs right up into the patella and that's why they feel that. So that's where the box squat came out as a really good tool, not just for power lifters who are trying to increase their squat, but also for trainers trying to teach good mechanics to a client that feels squats in their knees. Also, to that point, reverse lunges is what I teach for people that feel stress in their knees from lunging because when you lunge forward, the same thing happens. You take a step forward. Get that forward travel. Yeah, that forward travel, they push, they have their weight traveling over the top of their knee, then their knee goes over their toe and then again, it goes right to that end range of ankle mobility and then it feels like also you feel the stress in the knee and you take somebody and you tell them to stand upright and then step back into a reverse lunge. You're going the opposite direction that causes that and then all of a sudden they have no pain in their knee. So it's not squatting or lunging is what causes you to have bad knees or you have bad knees because of those things or they're bad for your knees. It's that your mechanics are off and we need to work on that. Even speaking to that 1% because I have had a client that didn't have ligaments, tore their ACL, was completely devoid of stability in that direction, but in terms of everyday functional activities and doing things, tell me a situation where you're not going to have to squat down or get up from a chair or toilet, split your stance and drop down a little bit, pick things up. It is to their benefit to still try to pursue certain ranges of motion so they can have an able lifestyle. I think that this whole red taping over a lot of exercises like that is such bad information to then push on to the patients. Squats and so this was prevalent for a while. I don't know if you guys remember. I was guilty of this. I was guilty of avoiding lunges and squats to clients. They'll be like, oh, that bothers my knees. Okay, let's go over to leg extensions and fucking leg curls and leg press instead. That's what I was going to say. It was not that long ago that it was actually a widespread myth that lunges and squats were bad for you. You'd actually hear trainers say that. Now here's the deal. Bad squats and bad lunges are bad for your knees. They're also bad for your hips and ankles and back. Good squats and good lunges are not just not bad for your knees. They're amazing for your knees. If you want knees that'll last you for the rest of your life with good mobility, stability, and strength, with much, much lower risks of injury, do good squats and good lunges and do them forever. Well, because you train the muscles that are supporting those joints. Activating the muscles and getting them involved so it disperses the force so it doesn't just stop there. Well, you get an example. I remember when I tore my MCL and ACL and when I was doing rehab, they're so blown away on the stability that I still had in my knee. They said that was due to all the muscle that I had built around. I built so much muscle around my knees from training squats and all the major exercises that when I even lost my ligaments that I was still very supported. And we know that the knee is like floating and it's mostly getting its support from those ligaments. You lose those ligaments and you'd be all over the place unless you've done a really good job of building a lot of muscle around there to help support and aid that. Well, we need to get away from the notion that the joints of the body are like a machine that you would have. For example, if you look at your shocks on your car or you look at a joint on a door, the more you move it, the more it wears down and eventually over time. If you keep doing that, it'll degrade. The body isn't like that. The body adapts. It actually gets stronger through use. Not only does it regenerate, but it adapts to become stronger. So if you want bad knees, which one would cause worse knees? Not moving at all and just laying down. That's it. Or doing good squats, laying down. Laying down would cause terrible degeneration of the joints. You would actually lose function within a very short period of time if you did that. So the human body's not like everyday machines and moving parts on certain things. As you move things the right way, the body adapts and actually makes it stronger and able to move better and move more. The example that I talked about at the beginning of the episode of Jane Fonda, when you watch her on TV at 82 years old squatting, walking, moving, good posture, it's not because she didn't squat and didn't lunge. It's not because she sat down and let her joints stay fresh and didn't move them. It's because she moved them, the body adapted by making them stronger, producing more fluid in between the joints, strengthening cartilage, strengthening legaments and the joints themselves. Movement is good for you. It's good movement that you need to focus on. So if your knees hurt you from doing squats and lunges, it's probably not because you have bad knees. It's probably because you can't squat and lunge properly. But a good regression for trainers that are listening to this, for clients that don't have the mechanics yet or still working on it, that's where the box squat and the reverse lunge I think are very valuable. So day one you're trying to teach those movements, clients, ah, my knees, I can't do those. Okay, we'll try a reverse lunge, try a box squat. And you should, I mean, most those people are getting up and down from a toilet, they're getting up and down from their car, they're getting up from a chair at dinner table, like, so they can squat, you know what I'm saying? They can go down. The problem is when you ask them to do it in the gym setting, their mechanics are awful. And one of the things that will help them with their squatting will be the box squats and that will help them with their lunging is a reverse lunge instead of a forward lunge.