MONDAY MOVE
A Simple Tip to Help Your Knees Enjoy Squats
Sick of the snap, crackle, pop? Try this small but powerful tweak.
A funny thing happened approximately five minutes after I turned 34: My knees turned into Rice Krispies. I’ve been fit and active for most of my adult life — including plenty of squats, which I maintain everyone who can sit and stand should be doing regularly — so this sudden sign of joint aging took me by surprise. I soon learned that crackling, popping sounds in a joint are called crepitus (I’m choosing to ignore the extremely rude fact that that word sounds kind of like “decrepit”), and thankfully, if they’re not accompanied by actual pain, they’re pretty harmless.
Still, they’re a little disturbing, and for me, they’ve made squats uncomfortable: not because they actually hurt but because the popping sounds are just kinda yucky. Luckily, I’ve learned a super-simple way to make squats less creaky: adding a loop band.
Looping a mini band (or, if you don’t have one, a pair of tights, leggings, or pantyhose tied in a loop) just above your knees for squats will encourage you to drive your knees out rather than allowing them to collapse in toward each other, and that outward-driving effort fires up your glutes. In turn, those fired-up glutes do more of the work of…
