Knee Pain.How we help.

How we help

• ✓A thorough assessment of your knee, hip and ankle movement
• ✓Treatment to help reduce pain and swelling
• ✓A strengthening and mobility plan built for your knee
• ✓Guidance on getting back to walking, sport or daily activity safely

What to expect

We assess how your knee moves and how it's affecting your daily life, then build a step-by-step plan to help you move and function better.

What knee pain is

Your knee is built from three bones: the thigh bone, the shin bone and the kneecap. Muscles, tendons, ligaments and cartilage hold it together and let it move, and pain can come from any of them.

Knee pain is a symptom rather than a diagnosis on its own. Patellofemoral pain, osteoarthritis, tendon problems, ligament injuries and meniscal injuries all sit under the same two words, and they call for different plans.

How the pain behaves is useful information. Some people notice it mainly on stairs or in a squat. Others feel it after a long walk or a run, or simply on getting up after sitting. If it started with a twist, a fall or contact in sport, a ligament such as the ACL or MCL, or the meniscus, may be involved.

Pain and damage are not the same thing. A sore knee does not always mean something is torn, and changes that show up on a scan often sit quietly in knees that feel fine. Your physiotherapist looks at your symptoms, your movement, your strength and what your day asks of the leg alongside any imaging you already have.

What causes it

Knee pain usually builds from more than one thing at once. How much you are doing, how much the leg can handle at the moment, an old injury and the state of the joint itself all feed into it.

• ✓A sudden jump in activity. A new running routine, a harder week at the gym or a sudden stretch of much more walking than usual can ask more of the knee than it is ready for.
• ✓Repeated loading. Running, jumping, squatting and stairs add up, and symptoms show up when the total goes past what the knee can take at the moment.
• ✓An acute injury. A twist, a fall or contact in sport can injure a ligament, the meniscus or other structures in the joint.
• ✓Weakness through the thigh and hip. When the muscles that control the leg lose strength, the knee gets less help with the demands you place on it.
• ✓Age-related joint change. The changes linked with osteoarthritis become more common as you get older. Sometimes they come with pain and often they do not.
• ✓An earlier knee injury. An old problem leaves its mark on how you move, how strong the leg is and how much it tolerates now.
• ✓A change in body weight. Extra weight puts more load through the knee every time you walk, climb stairs or stand up.

Pinning it all on one thing, bad alignment or one exercise you did, rarely holds up. What matters more is the gap between what you are asking the knee to do and what it can comfortably handle right now, along with how you move and how much recovery you get in between.

What it feels like

Knee pain looks different from one person to the next. Symptoms commonly include:

• ✓Pain around the knee, or deep inside the joint
• ✓Pain while walking, or after standing for a long stretch
• ✓Pain going up or down stairs
• ✓Discomfort in a squat, or when you kneel
• ✓Pain with running or jumping
• ✓Stiffness, swelling, or less movement in the knee
• ✓Weakness in the thigh or leg, or trouble getting up from a chair
• ✓Clicking or other noises, or a sense that the knee might give way

Some signs need medical assessment rather than a wait and see approach. After an injury, that means significant swelling, a knee that will not take your weight, a knee that locks, or one that feels properly unstable. It also means swelling that will not settle, pain you cannot account for, significant pain at night, or knee pain that arrives with a fever or a general feeling of being unwell. Those get checked rather than assumed to be an ordinary muscle and joint problem.

What the assessment looks at

The knee does not work on its own. It sits between the hip and the ankle, with the trunk above them, so how much load lands on it depends on what the rest of the body is doing. That is why the assessment does not stop at the sore spot.

Your assessment looks at:

• ✓how the symptoms started, and how they have changed since
• ✓how far and how freely the knee moves, and how strong it is
• ✓what the hip and the rest of the leg can currently do
• ✓how you manage the movements your day is built on, such as stairs, squatting and standing up
• ✓your training, your work and anything you play
• ✓earlier injuries to the same leg
• ✓what you want to get back to

What comes out of that is a picture of what the knee tolerates today set against what your life asks of it, and the gap between the two is what rehabilitation works on. For someone who runs or plays a sport, that means working from basic strength towards running, jumping and the movements the sport asks for. For someone with long-standing knee pain or osteoarthritis, it means strength, walking further with more confidence, and making the ordinary parts of the day easier, such as stairs and getting up from the floor.

Naming what is going on inside the joint, and any decision about an injection or knee surgery, is a medical judgement that sits with a doctor or an orthopaedic surgeon. Physiotherapy works alongside that rather than in place of it.

Common questions

Related treatments

• Geriatric Physiotherapy
• Dry Needling
• Home Visits
• Orthopaedic Physiotherapy

Related conditions

• Shoulder Pain
• Frozen Shoulder
• Tennis Elbow
• Arthritis

This page is educational and does not replace a proper assessment. Outcomes vary by individual; Trivayu Physio Center makes no guarantee of specific results.