10 Minute Tip 14: Anterior Knee Pain With Deadlifting | Why & How To Address It
While the deadlift is not as tough on your knees as the squat, you may experience anterior knee pain when deadlifting. If you’re wondering what to do when your knee hurts while deadlifting, we’re here to help!
As with the squat, in the deadlift the knees are bent. However, there is less knee bend, less concentric muscle motion, and almost no eccentric muscle motion in the deadlift. Because of these reasons, we tend to see less knee pain with deadlifts than the squat. However, that does not mean you’ll never experience knee pain with the deadlift.
In this episode of the PRS Podcast we discuss the “bottom” position of the deadlift and how suboptimal positioning has the potential to contribute to knee pain.
Similar to the squat, the main factors that contribute to knee pain with deadlifts include:
Depth (or hip height in the start position)
Bar Placement
Eye Gaze
Tension
Balance
Torso Position (in the start position)
Footwear
However, in the deadlift, there is one additional technical contribution to knee pain that we do not see in the squat.
Listen to the full episode on the PRS Podcast to learn how to address knee pain while deadlifting and what the secret issue is that you may be doing.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
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Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC : [00:00:40] in this ten-minute tip Tuesday, we are talking about the deadlift and knee pain, and I think we will be talking mostly about the conventional deadlift, but I think that these all kind of definitely apply to the sumo deadlift. So mainly, this little ten-minute tip will focus on the conventional deadlift, but you can apply them to the sumo deadlift, and if they don't work, then don't blame us. So what we do in these ten-minute tips is we set a timer for 10 minutes, and we just give it all to you and 10 minutes. So sometimes we go over, sometimes we go under, but most of the time we go over the 10 minutes.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC : [00:01:34] So I'm going to start a timer for 10 minutes, and when that timer beeps, we'll probably keep talking. So here we go. We'll be talking about the deadlift and modifying it or addressing it for knee pain and then modifications we can make if we need to take a break from it for some time. So here we go. Three, two, one, start. All right, Alyssa, what are things that affect the knee and might contribute to pain in the deadlift for the knee?
Dr. Alyssa Haveson, PT, PRSCC, CSCS: [00:02:10] So if anybody is listening to this and hasn't listened to the ten-minute tip from last week on squat should because a lot of these things carry over and apply. One of the first things we look at and talk about with deadlifts is the start position, where the hips are, and where the bar is. And really, it's like the depth and torso position of the deadlift. With the deadlift, we're not looking for a specific hip height in the starting position that will affect the knee angle, but we're not setting up based on where your hips should be in space and only that alone. We also have a ten-minute tip on the deadlift.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC : [00:02:53] Yeah, we also have a YouTube video on the deadlift.
Dr. Alyssa Haveson, PT, PRSCC, CSCS: [00:02:57] Yeah.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC : [00:02:57] We will put both in the show notes. All these things affect the torso position. As you said, the hip height and bar placement affect the start or depth of the deadlift, which will contribute to the angle of the knee in the start position. If you go back to our last Ten-Minute Tip, we talked about the knee pain in the squat and things that affect the knee angle. All those things will affect the knee angle in the start position of the deadlift. So that's important. We're not going to talk about the deadlift's actual start position in this episode because we do have the ten-minute tip on the deadlift and the YouTube video on it. But the main thing for identifying the appropriate hip position in the deadlift is having the bar over the middle of the foot. That's from the toes to the heel, not the toes to the front of the shin. Then making sure that your shins are touching the bar but not pushing the bar forward. And if your shins are touching the bar, it should put you in the right position.