Body and rehabilitation · beweging

Training with a knee that protests

24 augustus 2026 · 3 min lezen

Most people do one of two things when they are in pain. They stop completely, or they push straight through. Both cost you months.

Most people do one of two things when they are in pain. They stop completely, or they push straight through. Both cost you months, and both are avoidable.

I see it every week. Someone has a knee that plays up on the stairs, so they leave legs alone entirely. Six months later that knee is no better, because a joint that does nothing does not get stronger. The muscles around it have got weaker, and those were exactly the muscles that had to carry that joint. The problem grew through caution.

Or the opposite. Grit your teeth, because pain is part of it. Until it is no longer a niggle but a real injury, and then it is not six weeks off but six months.

There is a middle road, and it starts with learning to feel what kind of pain you have.

There is pain that nags and there is pain that warns. Nagging is dull, spread out pain that gets less as you warm up, that is not worse the next day, and that does not radiate anywhere. You can usually keep going with that, as long as you adjust the load.

A warning is sharp, sits on one point, gets worse during the movement instead of less, radiates, comes with swelling or a feeling of giving way, or it keeps you awake at night. That you stop. Not reduce, stop.

Not sure? Then it is a warning. Your body is not a quiz.

If it is nagging, there is almost always more possible than people think. A knee that is unhappy about squatting deep is often fine with the same pattern through a smaller range. With a slower tempo. With a variation where the joint bends less far. With strengthening the muscles around it first and only then taking the range back.

That is not watering it down. That is setting the load at a level your body responds to instead of fights back against.

And then the part almost nobody does: the rest of your body carries on as normal. A knee that needs rest is no reason to shut down your upper body, your core, your conditioning and your habits. That is precisely the period in which you can make gains on every other front, so that you are not starting from zero when that knee joins in again.

What I start with in practice when there is a complaint is not the schedule but the question: when does it hurt, what does that pain feel like, and how is it the next day. Those three answers decide what we do. After that I build the program around the complaint, with movements you can do, in a range you can handle, with a build up your body can follow.

That is also why the app asks about your pain on every set. Not to frighten you, but because a pattern across three weeks tells me more than what you feel on the day itself.

One more thing, and I am strict about this. A coach is not a doctor. If there is swelling, a joint that gives way, radiating pain into your lower leg, pain that continues at night, or something that started with a blow or a twist: then you go to your GP or your physiotherapist first. I am happy to build around your complaint, but I am not going to guess about something that belongs in an examination.

Starting from a body that is working against you is not the worst starting point. It is just a starting point that asks for a different plan than the schedule you pull off the internet.

Geschreven door Réangelo Willems, RW Coaching.