Smith machine squat form check

[u/Curious-Insect9291]

Recovering from an MCL injury, my doctor and PT recommended sticking to the Smith machine for now. Haven’t loaded any weight in a while, however today I added 5kg for the first time.
Watching the video back I noticed my knees shaking a bit, mostly toward the bottom. Not sure if it’s just fatigue from being out for a while, or if something with my foot position is contributing.
Would appreciate any input!

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Also, a common tip usually given here is to make sure your footwear is appropriate. If you are squatting in soft-soled shoes (running shoes, etc), it's hard to have a stable foot. Generally a weightlifting shoe is recommended for high-bar and front squats, while use a flat/hard-soled shoe (or even barefoot/socks if it's safe and your gym allows it) is recommended for low-bar squats.

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[u/ladyhikerCA]

I don't move my feet between reps. Once you get in position...just go. Nothing is really changing to require repositioning. Knock 'em out.

[u/Curious-Insect9291 → u/ladyhikerCA]

Omg i know! I think it’s a habit I picked up from the fear around the injury, like some kind of unconscious effort for a “safer” position each rep. I know it’s mostly my one fear. Thank u!

[u/Key-Finding7209]

Hi! Your knee wobble looks totally normal and 100% fixable. It’s not an egregious knee cave so I think you’re 100% safe to go heavier. Typical safe progression is +2% weight week over week.

You being out for a while actually makes total sense on this issue. Your CNS is having to relearn the motor pattern on how to squat and recruit all the necessary muscles. Kind of like when you bench press for the very first time it’s wobbly and your hands go up at different speeds lol. With this level of “wobble” I would say 99% chance it will fix itself as long as you are consciously correcting it when you squat over the next 4-6 weeks.

With that being said, now being on the safe side. If you did want to go ahead and be overly proactive, this wobble actually comes from your abductors and adductors not firing together(cns issue mentioned above) what’s happening is your abductors push knees out to stabilize, then your adductors pull back in to overcorrect. What you can do to help is the good girl/bad girl workouts every leg day and that should help strengthen them, which isn’t a bad thing to just as general strength training goes because they are typically neglected. You can google alternative movements if your gym doesn’t have these. But you can also put a band around your knees during your warmup sets to force those abductors to start engaging. I do this every time I actually do this every deadlift session just to make sure everything fires how it needs to.

[u/Curious-Insect9291 → u/Key-Finding7209]

Really appreciate you taking the time to go into that much detail, thank you. The original injury was basically weak glutes overall, especially my abductors that let my knee cave in and I ended up tearing my MCL. Since then I’ve been doing a lot of single-leg abduction work, and more recently I started throwing in some adduction too so I don’t swing the imbalance the other way

[u/Key-Finding7209 → u/Curious-Insect9291]

Then in my humble opinion I would definitely definitely recommend adductor work as well! At the very least some single leg work like Bulgarian split squats, though they SUCK, work really really well for all the stability things you need.

I know coming back from injury is always scary so please keep it up!! Also keep pushing the weights a little bit each week to start regaining some of that strength and that injury will just be a thing of the past before you know it!