עקבו אחר הסרטון הבא כדי לצפות כיצד להתקין את האפליקציה של האתר על מסך הבית של המכשיר שברשותכם.
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Look at the origin and insertions of the gluteus medius and minimus. How efficient are they at actually keeping that much femur out from that point of insertion? I’ll bet you that with a rubber band I can probably keep your knees together at the bottom if you are actively trying to abduct your knees. You don’t actively abduct your knees. What you are doing is not abduction. You’re putting your legs in an abducted position at the top and going down that way so that you don’t have to actively abduct at the bottom position with the TFL and the two little baby glutes. That’s all the abduction that takes place.
That abduction takes place at the top in a mechanically goofy position on a long femur. So there’s not really any abduction taking place. If you point your toes out properly and keep your knees in line with your toes, then you are in an abducted position from the initiation of the movement. The abductors have the function of keeping the knees in that position when you set them there in the first place. But you don’t actively shove the knees out. When I give that cue—to shove the knees out—I tell people to do that before they get adducted. It really is not hard to do if your toes are right, etc.
The question now becomes, “Why do the knees stay out as you come up?” I understand that this is hard to visualize. Look at what the adductors do on the way up. They originate at some point on the medial pelvis, and they attach on the medial femur. If you understand this anatomy, the question then becomes, does that distance increase on the way down and decrease on the way up? If it does, then the muscle is contracting and the muscle is contributing to the movement out of the bottom.
The fact is that when you get down to the bottom position with your knees out, those adductors (just like the hamstrings) form part of the rebound platform that involves the pelvis and the femur out of the bottom of the squat. If you allow your knees to come together at the bottom—notice I didn’t say adduct your knees, but if you actively allow your knees to come together at the bottom—you are doing exactly the same thing as you would do if you shoved your ass up in the air before the bar leaves the floor on a deadlift. You’re moving a joint without loading it.
In other words, when off the floor in the deadlift, if you shove your ass in the air and then pull the bar off the floor, the quads are supposed to help pull the bar off the floor. If you go ahead and contract them without moving the weight, then the weight hasn’t moved but your quads have moved the knee joint. So how much work have they done? They haven’t done any work. It’s now left up to the hip extensors to do the whole damn thing without much help from the quads. Now, in the bottom of the squat, the adductors are supposed to help you come up. On the way down, the adductors get longer and on the way up they shorten, correct? So that means that thesemuscles are contributing to hip extension. Now if I let my knees cave in, I have just contracted my adductors, but I didn’t make them do anything if I haven’t raised anything with them! If I make my knees stay out, then I have to use my adductors. They have to get strong enough to contribute to the movement.