Knee wraps - how they work and how to maximize rebound

[Leeroid]

There seems to be a lot of confusion about how knee wraps actually help you to lift more weight in the squat. I have written this piece according to my understanding of how they work. Feel free to contribute if you have a different view.

Knee wraps work by stretching the fabric and storing elastic potential energy on the descent. A little carryover may come from the compression of muscle fibers resulting in improved muscle recruitment but I think the main carryover comes from the stretchingand rebound of the elastic fabric. As a result, you'd want to maximize the stretching of the knee wraps. The area where the most stretching would occur is directly over the kneecap as it is the hinge. So it would make sense to have as many revolutions over the kneecap as possible and that would also mean you'd want to minimize the amount of coverage over areas that don't cover the kneecap.

Here is how I wrap my knees and I get at least 40kg, maybe 50kg, out of 2.5m wraps. The leg needs to be as straight as possible to maximise the stretch. If you wrap with the knee bent at a 15 degree angle then you miss out on 15 degrees of stretch. My first wrap starts below the kneecap, with the top of the wrap just touching the base of the kneecap. The quad must be contracted which brings the kneecap up into its correct place to prevent injury. I perform 5 revolutions in a spiraling fashion upwards and the 5th revolution finishes with the top of the kneewrap below my contracted quad sweep and the bottom of the wrap touching the top of the kneecap.

If your quad is not contracted and you wrap over the quad sweep, when you do contract the muscle will travel up and create loose space inside the wrap, meaning you lose tension in the wrap. You want to maximize tension on the wrap for maximal rebound. On a related note, if you wrap too high up the quad even with the quad contracted; not only do you waste wrap that could have gone over the knee joint but when you descend into the bottom of the squat the quad stretches and flattens out, again creating loose space causing the wrap to lose tension. You want to wrap just high enough to anchor the wrap so it has something to stretch against. Also a good idea to chalk your wraps and knees to prevent slippage of the wraps. Slippery wraps will slide together and again this will cause loss of tension.

After the 5th revolution, I then wrap in an X manner over the knee cap. I try and center the X over a spot slightly below the kneecap, about an inch. Next time you squat with wraps observe and you shall see that the point of maximum stretch is slightly below the kneecap. I get 3 revolutions over the knee cap, making 8 revolutions in total. Only 2 of those revolutions are over an area where they will not stretch, the top and the bottom wrap.

I see a lot of people wrapping their calves all the way to halfway up their quad. This is a waste of wrap and you are not getting as much as you can out of them.

[maccaz]

Good post and relevant to my interests cos i been trying a few diff ways off youtube.

[Skeletor]

Yeah man awesome post bro thanks for that.  No wonder I don't like knee wraps , ive been doing it all wrong.  Didn't even know half of that and going to practice wrapping tonight.

[yeelang]

personally prefer sleeves for general lifting because it keeps the tension the same accross different workouts, where as you're more likely to have varience with the former. You will however always get more weight out of wraps.

 

I'm assuming wraps would benefit those with a larger ankle-knee moment arm?

[Leeroid]

personally prefer sleeves for general lifting because it keeps the tension the same accross different workouts, where as you're more likely to have varience with the former. You will however always get more weight out of wraps.

I'm assuming wraps would benefit those with a larger ankle-knee moment arm?

I don't think lower leg length has much to do with it? I think an oly style squat with greater knee travel therefore a more acute angle at the knee joint would get more simply due to the extra extension of the wraps.

Also I can vary carryover depending on how tight I wrap my knees. When warming up I'll get 6 revolutions and when doing training sets I'll get 7. I only do 8 revolutions for max attempts and I really have to crank them up as hard as I can