Ground Up Strength

No matter how many times trainers shout "your knees should never come over your toes!" it will never cause the universe to morph into an alternate universe where the physics make this statement true.

Here is a lunge instructional video from ACE:

It's not perfect in every way. But the user comments are focused on the "knees over toes" myth. There are a couple of people just shouting the myth and then there is the one guy talking about bringing the hips back and blah, blah…..again, lunges are not that complicated.

Most gym trainers still believe this knees over toes nonsense to be true. I made a post on it years back and I looked around today and not much has changed.

ACE has provided an excellent article in response to the questions about this video, written by Fabio Comana and Pete McCall:

Knee Movement & Proper Form during Lunge Exercises

Here are a number of other resources:

Tony Gentilcore
Knees Beyond Toes pdf from Diesel Crew
ExRx
18 Tips for Bulletproof Knees by MR

I would like to point out for all the "elite" out there (Mark Rippetoe) that the organization I just pointed to at the beginning of this is ACE not NSCA or some other quasi authoritarian "strength" organization. Good mechanics is good mechanics and I have found that certain organizations are more set on dogma than on growth of knowledge. NSCA is excellent but is just as prawn to dogmatic nonsense as any other, not withstanding the "studies" in their joke of a journal. Any time knowledge is "institutionalized" it becomes something that builds walls instead of tearing them down. But I am sick of this dismissive attitude by many coaches of any institution that they themselves don't happen to be certified by. Never limit your horizons based on authoritarian attitudes.

The idea that "this organization is for strength" and "this one is for exercise" is just stupid. What is strength? Depends on your needs, goals, and YOU as an individual. But I digress…

Yes, the length of your legs and your body's specific geometry have everything to do with it but it comes down to this…good form is good form. Where your knees end up is a combination of good technique and body mechanics. How anybody could ever have come to the conclusion that FORCING your knees to stay in a position that is entirely unnatural is a good thing is beyond my comprehension.

When I say "unnaturally" I mean something that has forced you to purposely force your body to do something that works against it's biomechanics. I could just as well could say "mechanically inefficient" but that doesn't quite cover it.

Tony Gentilcore's reference says it all. It IS easier on the knees to restrict them (22% reduction) BUT (big but), the increase at the hip and lower back was over 1000%.

I guess you have to ask yourself how well you'll be able to walk with those perfectly stress reduced knees and severly screwed up hips and lumbar, lol.

Its an easy decision for me because I threw away my knee restricting plywood a long time ago.

…the screwed up hips lead to the screwed up knees anyway.

Right on time here's a little post by Mike Robertson on that subject: Hip Dysfunction = Knee Pain

Maybe he's watching over us, lol.

Bump on this.

This whole "knees not going over toes" myth is ACTUALLY making a lot of people lunge & squat badly.
I mean if you are going to try to prevent your knees from going past your toes, then you'll invariably end up compromising on depth. The problem is the same guys who say "knees should not go over toes" then follow it up with "GO DEEPER" which lead to knees going over toes. Its a vicious cycle, but hey it makes some trainers & arm chair experts think they know what they doing, even if their totally demotivating the trainee.

I started that way
and then when the weights started to get heavy I realized that my lower back was taking a load of stress
knees over toes feels SOOOOO natural

But I think the hoopla started from the fact that some people lead with the knees in the descent, that might be one of the reason to propagate this

Yes that kind of thing does propagate but it started from some "study" way back when. You'd be amazed at how many strength training myths started from one guy saying something or one study being published. "Replication" is not something that the strength training world seems to be aware of in general, and like I was saying in the other thread, there is not much awareness of what evidence is good evidence. You put in a journal and people will repeat it like it's Gospel.

This whole "knees not going over toes" myth is ACTUALLY making a lot of people lunge & squat badly.
I mean if you are going to try to prevent your knees from going past your toes, then you'll invariably end up compromising on depth.

Don't we see this happening all too often around us? :-D