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I am 43 with 21 years in the military, all combat arms. I have all the usual owies (knee, back, shoulder, blah blah) but none of them are debilitating or have required surgery. I just finished training for a ruck event using C/CAT, and have now switched over to I/CAT for the next year, and am on the 3rd week of the first phase (Zulu H/T). Last week I noticed some knee pain that is making it so that I often cannot do front squats in my typical shoulder width, slightly toes out stance. Knees straight ahead, feet hip width apart is OK, but that feels weird for squatting. Sumo deadlift is also OK, strangely. I may need to replace squats in my cluster as I flow into Operator-Pro next week, and was looking for suggestions. I was thinking maybe weighted lunges since they keep my knee/foot pointed straight forward. It seems like this is OK, whereas the motion of keeping straight posture in a slightly wide stance while dropping my butt between my knees (i.e. front squat) hurts. One thing I thought about was just dumping squats, and sticking with bench and dead lift, with some KB swings, pullups, and core work as extras throughout the week?

What's are squat alternative suggestions, or should I just dump them??

Lunges are a great option to mix things up.

Another option would to drop squats like you said as a main movement but keep them in as some form of warmup.

You could use goblet squats or similar to keep the pattern, but not aim to progress them. It's weird that pointing your knees out is causing knee pain, it's usually the other way around.

Thanks. I am thinking I will do dumbell or KB snatch to reverse lunge. This takes some of the total skeletal loading off, introduces a nice explosive movement which is good on it's own merits, and still gives me a pretty solid exercise for my quads.

A squat alternative some people switch to is Bulgarian split squats, you can load them progressively and heavy using Trap Bars e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VGmqdlb9Bg. One word of warning - start lighter than you think you can, it takes a while for all the stabilizers to develop when switching to one legged exercises.

TheCookieMonster wrote: ↑Mon Feb 19, 2024 2:16 am Thanks. I am thinking I will do dumbell or KB snatch to reverse lunge. This takes some of the total skeletal loading off, introduces a nice explosive movement which is good on it's own merits, and still gives me a pretty solid exercise for my quads.

My advice wou;ld be to avoid complicated movements trying to cover all avenues. I would recommend just doing both exercises separately.

The good thing about not using a heavy movement like a back squat is you can get away with an extra exercise in your cluster. I have always enjoyed pairing snatches with bulgarian split squats and alternating the movements, but still having rest periods.
e.g
Kb snatch x5 each side (es)
2 min
Bulgarian split squat x5es
x 2min rest
repeat for 3-5 rounds

I then do the same for my upper body work (Press and pullups). It really cuts down on training time and allows you up to 4 mins rest between rounds of the same exercise. I have a rack with two barbells at home and this is how I progress most of my strength work to finish my main session in 30-45 mins.

I wouldn't do them together in one set for this style of training (Moderate linear progression focus). I may be misunderstanding you though.