Sore quads=improper form?

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DiscusJessie

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After I did a combination of squats and lunge walks (without weights) I noticed my quads were sore the next day, but not my hamstrings. Not necessarily a bad thing from a tough workout; I'm just concerned of the lack of impact to my hamstrings compared to quads. This made me wonder if I was using improper form that was putting all the work onto my quads instead.

I have good form for squats. I have past knee injuries so my knees aren't the greatest. I pay close attention to make sure my knees aren't going beyond my toes and to keep my weight back on my heels. Since I've got bad knees I can't lift as much so I tend to do lower weight with higher reps focusing on upward speed since I'm a track and field thrower and need quick motions.

I've done walking lunges with just body weight before in knee injury prevention clinics and started that up again since I'm not maxing out on either squats or weighted lunges. I thought I was keeping my weight back on my heels and not lifting off the ball of my foot and my knee wasn't going past my toe. I'm guessing the sore quad problem is coming from these as I usually don't have this problem with just squats: my hamstrings and quads seem equally tired after the workout.

I don't want to end up having the strength imbalance between my hamstrings and quads. I heard that can cause even greater knee problems and is also dangerous to have such an imbalance. Any thoughts or suggestions on this would be much appreciated, thanks.
 
squats and lunges are typically more quad than hams. It depends a bit on how you do them, though. Longer strides in lunges will probably be more hamstrings. If you want to train the hams you should do deadlifts, romanian deadlifts, etc, they will hit them better.
 
Of the basic movements you are indeed missing the deadlift. You should start doing them. Once or twice a week depending on recovery ability.

Failing that (and there's no reason you should if you aren't prevented by injury in some way, it's pretty inconceivable not to have the equipment for an exercise that consists of picking something up off the ground, haha), try widening up your stance (pointing your toes outward if necessary) and getting really low when you squat and/or lengthening and deepening your lunges to the point of the non-working shin not-quite-touching the ground at parallel.

Obvious disclaimer: don't stick do it if it hurts your knees.
 
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