A client comes in with a knee that aches on stairs, complains on hills, and grumbles after a walk. The knee has been rubbed, iced, strapped and scanned. Nothing much shows up. Then we assess the ankle below it, and there it is: an ankle that barely bends.
The knee is a middle child
Think of the leg as a team of three joints. The ankle and the hip are the mobile, adaptable ones. They absorb ground, adjust to slopes, rotate and hinge. The knee in the middle is simpler: it mostly wants to bend and straighten while tracking in line.
When the ankle stops doing its share, the workload does not disappear. It moves up the chain to the next joint available: the knee. The knee is now doing its own job plus part of the ankle's, in directions it was never designed to enjoy.
How a stiff ankle loads the knee
The key movement is dorsiflexion: the shin travelling forward over the foot, the way it does with every step, every stair, every squat. When that range is missing, the body finds workarounds:
- The foot turns out or the arch collapses to sneak extra range, which twists the shin and pulls the kneecap off its track.
- The knee dives inward on stairs and squats, loading its inside structures.
- Weight shifts back onto the heels, so the quads and kneecap take load the calf and ankle should have shared.
Repeat that a few thousand steps a day for a few years and the knee starts speaking up. Ankles rarely complain; they just quietly stiffen, especially after old sprains that were "walked off" and never rehabilitated.
Check your own ankles
Kneel in front of a wall with your big toe about a hand-width from it. Keeping your heel down, drive your knee forward over your toes toward the wall. If the knee cannot reach the wall without the heel lifting, or one side is clearly stiffer than the other, your ankles are worth attention. Do not force it; this is a test, not an exercise.
The fix is rarely at the knee
This is why every program at my studio starts with a whole-body movement assessment rather than a conversation about where it hurts. Restore the ankle's range, strengthen the calf and foot, teach the hip to do its share, and the knee often settles down on its own, because it finally gets to go back to its actual job.
If a stubborn knee has been running your life, my injury rehabilitation and mobility coaching pages explain the approach, or book a movement assessment at the Ballajura studio and let us find where the problem actually lives.