This is another awesome client success story of mine, just like ‘Bob’ with the back injury from a few months ago. This time, it’s ‘Naomi’ with the knee pain.
Eight weeks ago, I received a message from a lady that I’ll call ‘Naomi’ in this article. She said that she first experienced knee pain in April 2025, and saw a physio who gave her some decent exercises and some kinesiology tape. The pain appeared on its own, gradually worsening as the weeks went on. She was able to bear weight on it, bike, and carry out most movements in the gym, but certain things like standing for too long at her job or erging were too painful. The pain came on after about ten minutes of exercise, eased up after another 15 minutes, but ultimately got worse and worse throughout the day.
It was the type of pain whereby the more you exercised, the worse it became. She was frustrated, confused and, more than anything, she just wanted to have a fully thought-out recovery plan.
Unfortunately, upon explaining the situation to her coach, he said, “sounds like its all in your head. I don’t really see the problem because you can still bike and row, you just can’t erg.”
I have two issues here:
- To say that someone’s pain in all in their head is unhelpful. Instead of this, the coach ought to have been more sympathetic to her pain tolerance.
- Pain is complex, and injuries can be too. Lots of factors will go into explaining why, and something like knee pain cannot be generalised into one root cause.
With all this information and more (objective assessments, movement screening, capacity testing and imaging results) we made a plan that suited her and set her on the road to an awesome recovery.
After all, the best results come from the most consistent habits and routines.
Here are the three key factors to which we could attribute her successful recovery, that you could take away from this if you’re experiencing any of the symptoms mentioned above:
- The detailed assessment upfront gave us a really clear picture of where she is at currently and what she can physically do. The capacity testing was really insightful and showed a difference in strength between her left and right leg.
- Naomi’s return-to-erg plan was slow and steady and we always made sure she finished the workout wanting more. This is key to make sure she didn’t do too much too sore and cause a flare up. Finishing the workout thinking you can do more or go harder is such a good feeling and confidence builder.
- We changed her S&C plan in the short term to make sure we were maximising progress. We discussed what she could realistically fit in and how flexible she can be with changing her workouts in the short term. We decided that 15 minutes of daily rehab that can be done all at once or throughout the day worked well. Then, on S&C days she had a different workout that integrated rehab and specific movements to help her get stronger, improve her control and coordination and most importantly, build her confidence and trust in her knee.
Injuries are complicated, rehab does not need to be. Naomi’s story proves that the best rehab is the one you do consistently that fits in with your life.
