I’m experiencing some right knee pain during/after high-bar squatting for a couple of years. The pain is mostly right above the knee cap and I don’t think the issue is technique (here’s an old video of me squatting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1HoXR92BkI ). 

I’ve spent a lot of time recently doing mobilizations from Supple Leopard with special attention to hips and ankles and I’m just not seeing an improvement. I always thought it was probably lack of range of motion in my right ankle: my right foot tends to want to externally rotate at the bottom of the squat. Back when I was doing Olympic lifts, when I’d catch the bar after a clean or snatch, my right foot would often be severely externally rotated–much more so than the stance that I began the lift with. Here’s an (again, old) example:

To further support this, if I sit upright on a chair and put my feet on the ground in front of me, I cannot move my right foot closer to me without the heel lifting off the ground (which again, seems like an ankle range of motion issue to me). I took a photograph to illustrate this:

So in the photo I simply attempted to move both feet as close to my body as possible without the heel lifting off the floor. As you can see, my left side is doing much better.

So what confounds me about the ankle mobility is that no matter how much I work on it, this issue doesn’t seem to improve. Additionally, I’ve had a few superfriends compare the mobility between my two ankles and they all say it looks about equal. 

The final bit of information I have is that I often feel a bit of soreness right above my right glute (sort of at the junction of the glutes and lower back) after squatting. I had a pretty severe back injury in that location from a clean a couple of years ago (and that’s about when the knee pain started). I’m not sure if that’s a factor (I have tried resetting my pelvis multiple times but never hear/feel a pop).

Any input would be really appreciated!