Often times, athletes of all sports commonly associate "locking out the knee" with pain, injury, and death(JK but at the same time not). Coaches in volleyball, football, or any other ball will often tell you that in order to keep an athletic stance, it is necessary to maintain a slight bend in the knees. They will tell you to bend your knees to absorb impact and to prevent hyperextension. Some may even tell you not to lock out your knees when stretching. These all have some merit(except the last one; Do your stretching!!), but they create a stigma around the idea of locking out your knees as a whole. Locking out your knees isn't inherently bad at all. In fact, it may be the one thing you're missing!
What is "Knee Extention"?
The knee is a Hinge joint. This means it moves on only one axis. In the knee's case, it means flexion and extension. In simple terms, knee flexion is when you bend your knee, and knee extension is when you lock out your knee. Knee flexion uses your hamstrings and calf muscles. Knee extension uses your quads and hip flexors. Another way to think of the flexion and extension is to compare the knee to the elbow. The hamstrings are like the biceps of the legs and the quads are the triceps of the legs.
Why do You Need to Train Knee Extension?
The quads are some of the strongest muscles on the human body, along with the glutes. It is the primary function used for jumping. Obviously, in tricking, we jump A LOT. When we lack the ability to forcefully contract the quads and lockout the knee, it impacts our takeoffs, transitions, and even kicks. It creates energy leaks, making our takeoffs slow and low. We aren't able to keep a straight swinging leg which means we lose potential momentum. We have awkward, stumbling transitions that lack power and stability. Lastly, when we kick, our legs look like noodles flopping around and we lack leg lines and clean form.
How to Implement Knee Extention
Deliberate Activation
The best way to improve virtually all your tricks is to focus on locking out the knee when you jump. Take a trick like a tornado kick. There is, of course, many different cues and aspect you need to focus on, but the best way to improve your tornado kick is to jump higher. The best way to instantly jump higher is to use your muscles to their full capacity. In short, try doing a tornado kick right now; Don't think about anything but the tornado kick. Now, do it again but repeat in your head "Lockout knee". Immediately, your tornado should feel higher. Some may try to get more air by fixing their set, which makes perfect sense, but focusing on jumping alone will inevitably mess up your kick as you may travel sideways and/or your kick will lack hip turnover. Focusing on locking out the knee allows you to direct your focus away from jumping high and instead use your set to generate flip and twist. Here's another example: A Cheat Gainer. If you try to gainer and set for height, you will lose a lot of flipping momentum. you might even land on your head! If you set for flip, you might end up drilling into the ground as you have no air time to work with. If you were to do the same but focus on extending the knee, you are able to generate massive flipping momentum whilst not losing too much height. This is just for the jump, however. By being able to straighten your kicking leg in a tornado kick, you are able to do a bigger, better kick with more momentum for the transition out of the tornado. For the Gainer, a straight swinging leg generates more momentum than a bent leg. Think of a straight leg as a wrecking ball and a bent leg as a key on a key chain.
Training Knee Extention
Here are a couple conditioning exercises that you can use to strengthen your ability to extend the knee:
TKE
TKE stands for Terminal Knee Extention. You anchor a resistance band to a pole or whatever and place the other side behind your knee. Then you take a step back so that there is some resistance. Then, you just lock out your knee and then bend your knee and repeat for reps. You can use TKE as an exercise variation. You can do lunges using the same technique.
Leg Raises
There are two leg raises that I'm talking about here. One is hanging from a pull-up bar or on a roman chair and you use both legs(This is the Bodybuilding/Calisthenics type). The other is when you stand in place, hand on wall if needed for balance, and you raise one leg at a time(This is the Ballet/Dancer type). They are both great exercises. The first one works your core more and the other one is more of an isolation exercise, but they both work the hip flexors. Here's some boring anatomy for y'all.
There are four muscles that make up the quads(hence the name, quad=four). Three of which extend the knee. One, the Rectus Femoris, does both knee extension and hip flexion. This is important to consider. By doing both leg raises with straight knees trains maximum contraction of the quads, despite there being no actual movement occurring at the knee. If this is too easy, you may add ankle weights.
Leg Extensions
Now this one is an iffy. If you don't know what a leg extension machine is, it's a machine you sit in and there is a pad on your shins that add resistance as you extend your knee. This exercise is good because it targets your quads and nothing else. But there is some evidence that is may cause injury to the knee. It really depends on the person, but leg extensions may cause a shearing force on the tendons of the knee. The good thing about this though is that you can easily feel shearing force. Personally, I love the knee extension. I experience no pain at all. Some feel pain at lockout or at full stretch. If you do experience any pain at all, DROP IT. Don't risk ruining your knees, do something else. Generally, shorter people feel less pain then taller individuals. In conclusion, do it if you can, but don't sweat it if you can't.
Final Disclaimer
Don't overdue knee extension training. You risk tendonitis and overuse injuries. Do it sparingly. Also, make sure to train the opposing muscles: The Hamstrings. Do leg curls and deadlifts. This will help improve overall stability and prevent hamstring strains when training.
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