Runner’s Knee: The Best 5 Exercises to Get You Back Running

You’re a few weeks out from your goal race. Training has been going well — until you notice a dull ache creeping in around the front of your knee. At first it’s only there on the stairs. Then it’s there on your longer runs. Then it’s there every time you stand up from your desk. Sound familiar? Runner’s knee, or patellofemoral pain syndrome, if you want the clinical name is one of the most common complaints we see here at Parkside. And the frustrating part is that the instinct most people have (rest it, wait it out, hope for the best) is often exactly what makes it drag on longer than it needs to.

The temptation when your knee hurts is to stop running entirely and wait for it to disappear. We get it. The last thing you want to do is make it worse. But runner’s knee rarely resolves on its own without addressing what’s actually driving it — and that’s almost never just the knee itself.

The knee is usually the victim, not the culprit. Weakness higher up the chain — through the hips and glutes — or reduced quad strength means the kneecap doesn’t track the way it should under load. The result is irritation at the joint surface every time you bend, squat, or run. The pain is real, but the solution usually isn’t about resting the knee — it’s about strengthening what’s around it.

The research on this is pretty consistent. A 2018 systematic review published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that exercise therapy — particularly targeting hip and knee strengthening — produced meaningful reductions in pain and improvements in function for people with patellofemoral pain.

Hip-focused strengthening, in particular, has been shown to reduce load on the patellofemoral joint, which explains why targeting your glutes can have such a direct impact on runner’s knee pain.

The evidence also suggests that getting started sooner rather than later leads to better outcomes. Letting it linger doesn’t give it a chance to heal — it just gives the underlying weaknesses more time to compound.

Runner’s Knee Exercises that work

Here are the exercises that the evidence consistently supports for runner’s knee. Start with lower loads and build gradually — this isn’t a “push through the pain” situation.

• Crab walks: A simple glute med exercise that targets the hip abductors. Stand with a short resistance band around your ankles. Walk sideways taking short steps, keeping tension on the band at all times.
• Single-leg squats (or step-downs): Stand on one leg and slowly lower yourself as if sitting back into a chair. This builds quad strength and trains hip control at the same time. Control is everything here: shallow squat, slow and steady beats fast and sloppy.
• Glute bridges: Lie on your back, feet flat, and drive your hips up. Progress to single-leg bridges when you’re ready. Deceptively hard when done properly.
• Terminal knee extensions (TKEs):  Using a resistance band, this isolates the final degrees of knee extension and targets the VMO; the teardrop-shaped quad muscle that plays a big role in kneecap tracking.
• Reverse Nordic curls: A more advanced option that builds significant quad strength with strong evidence behind it for patellofemoral pain management.

At Parkside, we don’t just hand you a sheet of exercises and send you on your way. We assess where your movement is breaking down, whether that’s hip control, quad strength, foot mechanics, or training load, and build a plan around what’s actually driving your pain. Check out this Blog for more detail

In our experience, the runners who recover fastest are the ones who understand why they’re doing each exercise, not just what to do. That understanding changes how you train, not just how you rehab.

If your runner’s knee has been nagging you through training, or stopping you from training altogether, let’s get to the bottom of it.

Click the button below to book an assessment with the team at Parkside and we’ll build a plan to get you back on the road, ready for whatever’s next on your race calendar.