Knee Pain?: What You Need to Know
Knee is a common condition seen in around 25% of people presenting at our physio clinic in Madeley, Perth.
If there hasn’t been a specific incident or trauma, often the pain will be preceeded by a spike in activity, or unaccustomed activity that challenges the strength of your knee.
This can sometimes be confusing and frustrating to experience with tissues around the knee becoming inflamed, irritated and painful eg osteoarthritis and patellofemoral (knee cap) joint pain.
This is often noticeable during stairs or walking on uneven ground. Is the knee damaged. Or worn out?
Research suggests the link between degenerative changes and pain experience is not black and white (see below). So we do take into consideration imaging findings, but as per the research, find there’s more to be gained by focusing on your goals and functional strength activities.
Where non-operative management is preferred, often people have focused on strengthening muscles around the knee. However without a strong and flexible base to work from at the hip and ankle, the knee is still susceptible to extra strains and pains. This is why a holistic strengthening approach is key.
The initial phase is focused on hands on therapy to work on settling down the pain (approx 1-2weeks), and next to strengthening the entire lower body through targeted exercises , and finally a self management program which will make the long term improvements for your knee.
Just like any gym program, it may take 6-8 weeks to get the strength gains and new habits around exercise and knee health.
The exercises will help get you stronger through things like squats, deadlifts, bridging and heel raises.
They will just need modifying relative to your fitness and goals, to help get your knee rock solid again!
As with anything in life there are ups and downs throughout the rehab process.
Some days your pain may be slightly worse, other days you’ll feel on top of the world.
That is the nature of recovery, it is anything but straight forward.
However, the key is to focus on what you can do and just how far you’ve come.
Function is the best indicator of recovery, pain is not and this is reflected in much of the research. If you could only walk 20 minutes before your knee hurts, but now you can walk 40 minutes then you are making great progress!
So what should I do?
Don’t worry about scans, the findings are often considered ‘normal’
Consider if you are ready to put in the hard yards to get yourself strong again
See your local health professional for a holistic assessment
Commit to a program that will challenge you to get your knees rock solid again.
Osteoarthritis of the knee: association between clinical features and MR imaging findings. Radiology. 2006 Jun;239(3):811-7.