If you are someone who has to get in and out of a vehicle regularly, how you do so matters to your body. This also applies to all of us as we walk up and down stairs. When stepping up, become aware of what your body habitually does to achieve this action. Do you lean your upper body over the upward stepping leg and let your knee shift forward? A general rule of thumb is when your weight and your knee shift forward, the body will utilize more of the quadriceps (front of the thigh) and the knee joint itself. This is a fine and effective way to step up, but the issue is we tend to overuse the knees and quads but underuse the hips and glutes. So, if we move that way all the time, we’ll develop some unbalanced movement habits that can result in knee and lower back pain.

I suggest practicing a way of stepping up that uses more of the backside of your legs and will take some of the responsibility and pressure off the knees and back.

When stepping up:

• Try to keep your body upright

• Keep your knee over your ankle and aim for your shin to remain vertical

• Instead of letting your knee shift forward, think of your thigh as pulling back in order to pull your body over the stepping leg.

When stepping down:

• Try not to fall onto the stepping foot.

• Practice keeping control of your descent to land softly onto the downward stepping foot.

Watch for the “medial moment”

If the hip muscles have trouble holding our thigh stable, when we both step up and down, our knee might wobble side to side. This might indicate some hip weakness and the motion of the knee falling inward, “medially”, can put unnecessary strain on the knee joint. Knees coming toward the midline is most common, but falling outward is a possibility.

• Try keeping the knee moving straight forward and back, as if it were on a track in the same direction as the foot.

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