"Don't lock your knees."
It's one of the first movement cues many of us learn, and one of the first cues many teachers learn to give. Yet despite how common it is, "soften your knees" may be one of the most misunderstood instructions in fitness.
At first glance, it seems obvious. Locked knees place stress on the knee joint. A small bend creates muscular support. End of story. But if you've taught movement long enough, you know that's only a fraction of what is actually happening. The most interesting thing about softening the knees isn't what happens at the knees. It's what happens everywhere else.
As teachers, we often begin our careers looking for movement in individual parts. We watch the shoulders. We watch the hips. We watch the feet. We watch the spine. Over time, experience teaches us something different. The body does not organize itself in isolated pieces. Every joint influences the joints above and below it. Every habit has a ripple effect. The cue "soften your knees" is a perfect example. When a client stands with locked knees, they are rarely only locking the knees. More often, they are settling into a familiar strategy for holding themselves upright. The skeleton becomes the primary support system. The ligaments become tensioned. The muscles begin to contribute less. The body essentially hangs on itself. This isn't necessarily wrong. The human body is incredibly efficient. If there is a way to conserve energy, it will find it. The problem is that efficiency and adaptability are not always the same thing.
A body that hangs in its joints may require less muscular effort in the moment, but it also loses options. And movement quality is often determined by the number of options available. When I see a client lock their knees, I don't just see the knees. I start looking upward. What is the pelvis doing? What is the rib cage doing? Where is the head positioned? What strategy has this person developed for standing?
Many clients who lock their knees also shift their pelvis into a habitual position. Some will drift into an anterior pelvic tilt, creating an exaggerated arch in the lower back. Others will tuck the pelvis underneath them and flatten the natural lumbar curve.Neither position is universally right or wrong. The issue is not the position itself. The issue is whether the client can move out of it.
When the knees lock, movement options at the pelvis often become limited. Think of the pelvis as the bridge between the lower and upper body. If the bridge becomes rigid, everything above it must adapt. The spine adjusts. The rib cage adjusts. The shoulders adjust. The neck adjusts. Eventually, what started as a standing habit becomes an entire postural pattern. This is why movement assessment is rarely about identifying a single problem. It's about recognizing relationships.
A client may complain of neck tension, but the pattern may begin much lower. A client may struggle to find abdominal engagement, but the challenge may be connected to how they organize their pelvis when standing. A client may feel stiffness in their lower back, but the body may simply be lacking movement options elsewhere. The cue "soften your knees" often becomes an invitation for the entire system to reorganize. Suddenly the pelvis is no longer trapped in its favorite position. The femurs have room to rotate. The hips become more responsive. The spine can stack differently. The rib cage can settle. Breathing often improves. Even balance can change.
One of the fascinating things about teaching movement is observing how quickly these shifts occur. Sometimes a client will spend months trying to fix their posture by pulling their shoulders back. Nothing changes. Then they soften their knees. Within seconds, the shoulders settle naturally because the foundation underneath them has changed. The body is remarkably intelligent when given options. The challenge is that most people don't realize how strongly they identify with their habitual positions. Every person develops movement preferences over time. These preferences come from sports, occupations, injuries, pregnancies, stress, personality, and thousands of hours spent performing the same activities. Eventually those preferences stop feeling like choices. They start feeling normal. A client who habitually locks their knees often has no awareness that they are doing it. In fact, when asked to soften their knees, many people feel as though they are squatting. What appears to be a tiny adjustment to an observer can feel enormous to the person experiencing it.
This is one reason teaching is far more than delivering exercises. Teaching is helping people recognize what they can no longer feel. The cue itself is simple. The observation behind it is not. A newer teacher often hears "soften your knees" and immediately delivers the cue. An experienced teacher asks additional questions. Did anything change? Did the pelvis respond? Did the ribs respond? Did the client's balance improve? Did tension appear somewhere else? Did the client simply replace one compensation with another? These observations transform a cue from a script into a teaching tool. This is also why there is no perfect cue. The words themselves are rarely the magic. The magic is knowing why you are saying them. I've seen clients soften their knees and immediately discover greater freedom in their hips. I've seen others gain access to abdominal support that had previously felt impossible. I've seen chronic shoulder tension diminish because the body no longer needed to create stability at the top when it found stability lower down. None of those changes happened because we were focused on the knees. They happened because the knees became the entry point into a larger conversation. And perhaps that's the most important lesson hidden within this cue.
Movement is never about a single body part.
The body functions as an integrated system. Every cue is connected to something bigger. Every observation leads somewhere else. Every compensation tells a story.
As teachers, our job is not simply to identify what is moving. Our job is to identify what isn't moving. We look for the places where options have disappeared. We look for the habits that have become so familiar they feel invisible. We look for opportunities to restore adaptability. When I cue a client to soften their knees, I am not trying to create a perfect knee position. I am trying to create possibility. Possibility at the hips. Possibility at the pelvis. Possibility through the spine. Possibility in the way that person organizes themselves against gravity. Because when the knees lock, people often lock into their history. Their favorite posture. Their preferred strategy. Their unconscious habits. When the knees soften, the body has an opportunity to explore something new. That exploration may be tiny. It may be barely visible. But those small moments are often where meaningful movement change begins.
The best movement teachers understand this. They know that cues are rarely about the body part being named. A cue about the feet may actually be about the hips. A cue about the ribs may actually be about breathing. A cue about the shoulders may actually be about the spine. And a cue about the knees may be about the entire body. That's the real lesson behind "soften your knees." Not knee safety. Not knee alignment. Not even knee movement. It's a reminder that movement is connected.
It's one of the first movement cues many of us learn, and one of the first cues many teachers learn to give. Yet despite how common it is, "soften your knees" may be one of the most misunderstood instructions in fitness.
At first glance, it seems obvious. Locked knees place stress on the knee joint. A small bend creates muscular support. End of story. But if you've taught movement long enough, you know that's only a fraction of what is actually happening. The most interesting thing about softening the knees isn't what happens at the knees. It's what happens everywhere else.
As teachers, we often begin our careers looking for movement in individual parts. We watch the shoulders. We watch the hips. We watch the feet. We watch the spine. Over time, experience teaches us something different. The body does not organize itself in isolated pieces. Every joint influences the joints above and below it. Every habit has a ripple effect. The cue "soften your knees" is a perfect example. When a client stands with locked knees, they are rarely only locking the knees. More often, they are settling into a familiar strategy for holding themselves upright. The skeleton becomes the primary support system. The ligaments become tensioned. The muscles begin to contribute less. The body essentially hangs on itself. This isn't necessarily wrong. The human body is incredibly efficient. If there is a way to conserve energy, it will find it. The problem is that efficiency and adaptability are not always the same thing.
A body that hangs in its joints may require less muscular effort in the moment, but it also loses options. And movement quality is often determined by the number of options available. When I see a client lock their knees, I don't just see the knees. I start looking upward. What is the pelvis doing? What is the rib cage doing? Where is the head positioned? What strategy has this person developed for standing?
Many clients who lock their knees also shift their pelvis into a habitual position. Some will drift into an anterior pelvic tilt, creating an exaggerated arch in the lower back. Others will tuck the pelvis underneath them and flatten the natural lumbar curve.Neither position is universally right or wrong. The issue is not the position itself. The issue is whether the client can move out of it.
When the knees lock, movement options at the pelvis often become limited. Think of the pelvis as the bridge between the lower and upper body. If the bridge becomes rigid, everything above it must adapt. The spine adjusts. The rib cage adjusts. The shoulders adjust. The neck adjusts. Eventually, what started as a standing habit becomes an entire postural pattern. This is why movement assessment is rarely about identifying a single problem. It's about recognizing relationships.
A client may complain of neck tension, but the pattern may begin much lower. A client may struggle to find abdominal engagement, but the challenge may be connected to how they organize their pelvis when standing. A client may feel stiffness in their lower back, but the body may simply be lacking movement options elsewhere. The cue "soften your knees" often becomes an invitation for the entire system to reorganize. Suddenly the pelvis is no longer trapped in its favorite position. The femurs have room to rotate. The hips become more responsive. The spine can stack differently. The rib cage can settle. Breathing often improves. Even balance can change.
One of the fascinating things about teaching movement is observing how quickly these shifts occur. Sometimes a client will spend months trying to fix their posture by pulling their shoulders back. Nothing changes. Then they soften their knees. Within seconds, the shoulders settle naturally because the foundation underneath them has changed. The body is remarkably intelligent when given options. The challenge is that most people don't realize how strongly they identify with their habitual positions. Every person develops movement preferences over time. These preferences come from sports, occupations, injuries, pregnancies, stress, personality, and thousands of hours spent performing the same activities. Eventually those preferences stop feeling like choices. They start feeling normal. A client who habitually locks their knees often has no awareness that they are doing it. In fact, when asked to soften their knees, many people feel as though they are squatting. What appears to be a tiny adjustment to an observer can feel enormous to the person experiencing it.
This is one reason teaching is far more than delivering exercises. Teaching is helping people recognize what they can no longer feel. The cue itself is simple. The observation behind it is not. A newer teacher often hears "soften your knees" and immediately delivers the cue. An experienced teacher asks additional questions. Did anything change? Did the pelvis respond? Did the ribs respond? Did the client's balance improve? Did tension appear somewhere else? Did the client simply replace one compensation with another? These observations transform a cue from a script into a teaching tool. This is also why there is no perfect cue. The words themselves are rarely the magic. The magic is knowing why you are saying them. I've seen clients soften their knees and immediately discover greater freedom in their hips. I've seen others gain access to abdominal support that had previously felt impossible. I've seen chronic shoulder tension diminish because the body no longer needed to create stability at the top when it found stability lower down. None of those changes happened because we were focused on the knees. They happened because the knees became the entry point into a larger conversation. And perhaps that's the most important lesson hidden within this cue.
Movement is never about a single body part.
The body functions as an integrated system. Every cue is connected to something bigger. Every observation leads somewhere else. Every compensation tells a story.
As teachers, our job is not simply to identify what is moving. Our job is to identify what isn't moving. We look for the places where options have disappeared. We look for the habits that have become so familiar they feel invisible. We look for opportunities to restore adaptability. When I cue a client to soften their knees, I am not trying to create a perfect knee position. I am trying to create possibility. Possibility at the hips. Possibility at the pelvis. Possibility through the spine. Possibility in the way that person organizes themselves against gravity. Because when the knees lock, people often lock into their history. Their favorite posture. Their preferred strategy. Their unconscious habits. When the knees soften, the body has an opportunity to explore something new. That exploration may be tiny. It may be barely visible. But those small moments are often where meaningful movement change begins.
The best movement teachers understand this. They know that cues are rarely about the body part being named. A cue about the feet may actually be about the hips. A cue about the ribs may actually be about breathing. A cue about the shoulders may actually be about the spine. And a cue about the knees may be about the entire body. That's the real lesson behind "soften your knees." Not knee safety. Not knee alignment. Not even knee movement. It's a reminder that movement is connected.
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