Sore Knee? Here's How to Keep Training

• A sore knee rules out some movements, not all training — keep going.

• Upper body and core work keeps you progressing while the knee recovers.

• Swelling, locking, or buckling means stop and see your GP first.

A sore knee does not mean bed rest. It means you swap out the movements that load it badly and keep doing everything else. The exercises most likely to aggravate a painful knee are deep squats, running on hard surfaces, lunges that let the knee drift inward, leg extensions on a machine, and anything that involves jumping or sudden changes of direction. Cut those. Everything else is still on the table until proven otherwise. Upper body pressing and pulling, seated or lying core work, swimming if you have access, and cycling on a stationary bike at low resistance are all worth trying. If a movement causes sharp pain during or swelling afterwards, stop it. Dull aching during exercise that fades within an hour of finishing is a different signal — annoying, but often not a reason to stop entirely. You know your body. If something feels wrong, trust that.

Upper body training carries on completely unaffected. Bench press, rows, overhead press, pull-ups, dips, curls, tricep work — none of that touches your knee. If you have been skipping upper body because your legs were your priority, this is the forced reset that fixes the imbalance. For the lower body, the movements that tend to stay tolerable are straight-leg raises, lying hamstring curls, hip thrusts with a neutral knee position, calf raises where the knee stays straight, and seated hip abduction if you have the kit. Step-ups on a low box sometimes work, sometimes do not — test carefully and stop if it bites. Deadlifts are individual: a conventional deadlift with a slight hinge can be fine; if your knee aches through the setup, skip it for now. The point is not to find the perfect programme. The point is to stay in the habit of training, keep as much muscle as possible, and not lose three months of progress because one joint is unhappy.

If your gym has a stationary bike, use it at low resistance and a high seat position so your knee doesn't bend too deeply. Twenty minutes of easy pedalling keeps your cardiovascular fitness from falling off a cliff without grinding the joint. Swimming — if you can get to a council pool — is almost entirely non-weight-bearing and most strokes are fine unless breaststroke kick is the thing that sets yours off. Walking is usually tolerable, especially on flat ground. Parkrun does a 2k junior route sometimes used by adults on recovery weeks — nobody checks. Even a thirty-minute walk around the block three times a week keeps the engine ticking over. What you are trying to avoid is the spiral: knee hurts, stop everything, lose fitness, feel rubbish, motivation goes, three months disappear. Movement is the interruption to that spiral, not the cause of it.

There are signals that override all of this. Swelling that appears during or after exercise and does not go down overnight. A knee that locks — meaning it physically won't straighten or bend past a certain point. A sensation of the joint giving way or buckling when you put weight through it. Pain that is getting noticeably worse over days rather than settling. Any of those means stop training the lower body entirely and get seen by your GP. That is not being overly cautious; it is the sensible line. A physio referral through the NHS is worth pursuing if the pain has been present for more than a few weeks — a single appointment can often tell you exactly which movements to avoid and which to keep. This guide is about training around a sore knee, not about diagnosing what's wrong with it. If you are unsure which category yours falls into, err on the side of getting it checked.

Usually yes, with adjustments. Stationary cycling at a high seat position, swimming, and brisk walking on flat ground are all lower-impact options that most people with knee pain can manage without making things worse. Running on hard pavement, the rowing machine (which loads a deep knee bend), and the cross-trainer can all aggravate things depending on what's going on — try them carefully and judge by how the knee feels during and in the hour afterwards. If it swells up, that movement is off the list for now.

It depends on the type of pain. A dull ache that stays manageable during exercise and clears within an hour of finishing is often something you can work around by modifying movements. Sharp pain during a specific exercise, pain that gets worse as you go rather than warming up, or swelling afterwards are all reasons to stop that movement. Complete rest is rarely the right answer for a sore knee — staying sedentary tends to make recovery slower, not faster. The goal is to find what you can do, not to decide between full training and nothing at all.

Deep squats — going well below parallel — tend to be the version that causes the most grief, especially if your knee is already sore. Box squats to a high box, goblet squats to a quarter-depth, or wall sits held at a shallow angle are sometimes tolerable alternatives. Some people find that strengthening the muscles around the knee through partial range movements actually helps the knee feel more stable over time. Others find any squat variation is off the table for now. Test carefully, use a modest load, and let how the knee responds guide you rather than following a programme that assumes two working legs.