One way to address this is to decrease your foot angle by 5-10 degrees


Why? Attempt this test in 3 different stances to get an idea of wtf im talking about

1 = feet at 0 degree angle(parallel/pointing foward)

2- feet at a 30 degree angle

3- feet at a 45 degree angle

At the angle above, while standing straight up, attempt to externally rotate your legs(typical verbal queue is screw your feet into the ground). At zero degrees you will notice you can build up some tension in your legs with the external rotation, which rotates your knees outwards a bit. Once you have this tension built, perform a squat and maintain this outward torque in your legs to keep your knees out.

As your angle gets bigger, you are able to do less of this external rotation. At 45 degrees you can barely get any, you will also notice as this wide angle, your knees probably cave in slightly when you press out of your squat. This caving in is what is causing stress in your knees, while squatting with actual weight it gets worse.

I've found the best way to get good knee tracking(knees not caving in) is to lessen the angle of your feet so you can use this external rotation to keep 'knees out' throughout the squat. This alleviated all of my knee issues when squatting.

I typically squat with around a 10-15 degree foot angle