Why Your Knees Hurt Going Down the Stairs and Not Up

When you squat your focus is pushing the weight back up, but what about on the way down? Squatting doesn't start when its time to stand up, on the way down is just as important. Your legs learned how to push, but never how to lower. So don't be so surprised when you walk down a staircase and your knee has something to say about it.

A knee that only speaks up on the way down is usually one you can build a training plan around rather than wait out.

Every leg exercise you program for yourself is built around standing up out of different positions. You lower into a squat and the rep is standing back up. You drop into a lunge and the rep is stepping out of it. You treat the way down like its the rest period before the real work starts. Your quads got strong at pushing you up. They got no practice activating having you go down slowly and in control. Going down a staircase is not a smaller version of going up it. On the way up your leg pushes and your bodyweight moves away from the step. On the way down your leg has to catch your bodyweight and lower it, one leg at a time, over and over, at a speed the staircase picks rather than you. Your quad is not pushing there. It is braking. Braking is a different request than pushing, even though it is the same muscle and the same joint doing it. So your knee controls a descent it has never been asked to control anywhere else. 12 stairs is 12 single leg lowering reps. You just never counted them as training.

Slowing down is harder than it sounds

The most obvious fix is the exact right thing to do which is slowing your reps down. Instead of going down to squat as fast as you can, take 3-5 seconds. By making that slight changed you've started training the half you were skipping. This part is where people start getting frustrated. Now your heel starts lifting off the floor, or your knee starts caving in, or you hinge to far forward to try to keep your balance. It now feels like your first month ever doing squats. Nothing gets more people to quit than when you think something should be way easier than it actually is. Because you can't do the same amount of weights or reps as you could before it feels like a step back so you just go back to the old way. Don't ignore your weak spots, train them so they're no longer a liability.

What to do when its harder

Check your own ankle. Stand facing a wall with your toes about hand's width back. Keep your heel flat and drive your knee toward the wall. If your knee touches without your heel lifting, your ankle has enough room. If your heel pops up first, or your knee stops short, it does not. Do it on both sides, because they are almost never the same. When your ankle will not bend far enough, your shin cannot travel forward over your foot, and the load still has to go somewhere. Your knee is what picks up the slack. Range you cannot control is not quite the same as range you can use, which is part of why stretching on its own does not stick.

Here's something that will help and only add about 10 minutes to your workouts. After your leg session, or on a day in between. Start with a calf stretch with hands against wall, 30 seconds each side, then repeat. Then bodyweight squats, 2 sets of 8, taking a full 5 seconds to lower and standing back up at normal speed. Then bodyweight rear lunges, 2 sets of 6 each leg, 3 seconds down. Keep the load light while the lowering is new to you. The focus is you are trying to give your legs practice at something it hasn't done enough of. Most people want to add weight as soon as the 5 seconds feels manageable, but the slow count is the load here, so leave the weight alone for the first couple of weeks. If your knee is sore in a way that changes how you walk, this is not the week to start. Don't do this if you plan on lifting heavy legs the next day or 2. Your legs will feel a different type of soreness than you're used to because of the way your muscles are being activated. If impact is the part your knee objects to most, there are low impact options that still build strength while the lowering work settles in.

If you want somewhere to log the tempo without adding weight too early, the Progressive Overload Tracker will hold that for you.

The most important part of a training plan is the things you aren't doing for your goals and needs. You can be working out as hard as you can but that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to reach them because of it. Being setup for success by having the right program with that effort is what leads to the results you deserve. If you would rather not piece that together yourself, a program that lays the progression out for you covers the same ground in order.