Knee Pain Treatment, Brighton
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Knee pain is one of the most common complaints people come in with — and one of the most misunderstood. The instinct, when your knee hurts, is to think the knee is the problem, that you need to strengthen it and treat it directly. But in most cases, when there hasn’t been a direct trauma to the knee itself, the knee isn’t where the problem starts. It’s where it shows up.
When I’m working with someone who has knee pain, I very rarely start at the knee. I start by looking at what’s happening around it — above and below — because that’s almost always where the answer is.
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What’s Actually Going On..
When we talk about knee pain, the quadriceps — the muscles at the front of the thigh — tend to get all the attention. But rehabbing a knee means looking at the whole system, not just what’s happening at the front of the leg, because what’s happening behind the leg matters just as much. The hip matters too, as it has a direct effect on how the knee moves and how you are loading the knee.
When the system isn’t working as well as it could , I find people tend to drive energy through the knee joint rather than around it. Instead of the knee rotating as it should, it drops into more of an angular movement — and you may have noticed this yourself, with the knee collapsing inward when you squat, walk downstairs, or lunge. The body is always looking for a way to keep you moving, but the compensation it creates can start to load other areas and pain begins to appear in places that seem completely unrelated. Pain is just a flag — your body telling you that something needs attention, not necessarily at the place where it hurts, but somewhere in the system.
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How I Approach It..
I work with Gary Ward’s AIM method — Anatomy in Motion — restoring what’s missing in the movement system. For knee pain that means looking below the knee at the foot and ankle, at the knee itself from front and back, and above the knee at the hip. The goal is always to find what the system is missing and put it back, so the knee stops being asked to do more than it was designed for.
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What a Session Looks Like..
Sessions are hands-on and practical, and you’ll leave with a clear understanding of what’s been driving your knee pain alongside a specific exercise programme, fully videoed, that takes around 20 minutes a day at home. No gym required.
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Who Is This For?
If you’ve tried everything and it keeps coming back, you’re in the right place. This approach works for everyone — whether you want to get back to the gym, back to sport, or simply walk up and down stairs without thinking about it.
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Based in Brighton
I work with clients in Brighton and the surrounding area. A Missing Piece Assessment is the place to start.
Book your Missing Piece Assessment today and find out what your body has been trying to tell you.
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Frequently Asked Questions:
I’ve been told I just need to strengthen my knee — is that right?
Strengthening has its place, but it’s rarely the whole answer and it’s almost never where I start. The knee is often where the pain shows up, not where the problem starts, and building strength on top of a movement pattern that hasn’t been addressed often means the pain can settle temporarily but keeps coming back. Getting the movement right first is what makes the strength work stick.
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Why does my knee hurt going up and down stairs but feel fine the rest of the time?
Stairs are one of the most revealing movements for knee pain because they require the knee to load under full body weight through a significant range. When the movement pattern isn’t quite right — when the knee is dropping inward, when the hip isn’t controlling rotation properly, or perhaps something below the knee isn’t moving as freely as it should — stairs become challenging, and that gives us really useful information about where we need to start the work.
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Could my ankle be causing my knee pain?
Yes — and this is something most people haven’t considered. The foot and ankle are the foundation of how load travels up into the knee, and a history of ankle sprains is often directly connected to knee pain that develops later, even if the ankle feels perfectly fine now. I trained with Gait Happens and work with Gary Ward’s AIM method, both of which look at the whole chain rather than just the area that’s painful.
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I’ve had physio and it helped for a while but the pain keeps returning — why?
This usually means the underlying pattern hasn’t been fully addressed. If the work doesn’t extend to the whole chain — what the foot is doing, how the hip is loading, what the body has been compensating around — the pain will return when you go back to your normal activities, and a whole-body movement assessment that looks at everything together is often what’s needed when knee pain keeps coming back.
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Is this suitable for me if I want to get back to sport or the gym?
Absolutely. Whether that’s running, the gym, sport, or simply being able to walk up and down stairs without thinking about it, the goal is always to restore the movement patterns that allow you to do those things without the knee being overloaded. Pain is just a flag telling you something needs attention, and once that something is addressed there’s no reason you can’t get back to full activity.