exercise modification question

[calligrafiti]

Hello all. I'm new here, but rydra_wong suggested this would be a good place to ask about modification to an exercise I'm trying to do. There aren't any weights involved other than my own body, I'm afraid. However, it is a heavy thing.

I've recently started the LifeHacker exercise challenge (although I question the use of the term "normal" in their subhead, "exercise for normal people"), and I'm having some trouble with the squats section of the program. I'm quite fat, and doing more than one or two squats makes my knees hurt a lot. While they show modifications for most of the exercises, they don't show any mods for squats other than using a chair or pole for stability. I'm using a chair. My knees hurt while I'm squatting in a very stable manner.

If anyone here has suggestions for modifications to the standard squat exercise, or alternate exercises that work the same muscle groups, I'd love to hear about them, please.

Comments

[buddleia]

I am also pretty fat and have had knee pain in the past. I luckily have no trouble with squats and in fact haven't had any knee pain since I started doing regular back and goblet squats. Goblet squats were my 'in' to squatting because the counterweight made it easy to get down low and push my knees outward, which I think helps a lot. I would echo what has been said already about making sure your knees track over your feet.

Not very helpful but good luck and I hope you post about how you get on!

[calligrafiti]

Goblet squats? OK, thanks! I'll check that out and see if I can incorporate it.

[calligrafiti]

This turned out to be tremendously helpful. I looked up goblet squats and tried them on my Friday round of exercises. I was able to do 30 of them with minimal knee pain. The time before I had barely managed 10 "regular" squats, and they hurt like hell. So this was a considerable improvement! (I also keep hearing them as "goblin squats" in my head, which makes me unreasonably happy.)

So thank you!

[buddleia]

*beams* Bet you're feeling your quads today! And, yes "goblin squats" is pretty happy-making.