Dr Shari, DPT

Dr Shari, DPT I post good knee and ankle exercises. I simplify body science to understand your muscles and joints so you can change your habits and change your life.

Tape CAN help a touch. Kinesiology tape hit the market as the new toy back in 2012. We all saw Olympic volleyball player...
06/11/2026

Tape CAN help a touch.

Kinesiology tape hit the market as the new toy back in 2012. We all saw Olympic volleyball players with tape and wondered "how can this help me?"

In the clinic we had been using it for a year or so. It is a good tactile reminder for posture but more comfortable than a brace. It can give the feeling of support and reassurance. I liken it to a nice little hug.

Yes that's not the physiological explanation...but you're not looking for a cellular explanation either.

Do I still use tape?
Yeah on occasion. It has it's purpose but it doesn't fix the cause of why knees hurt.

If you've taped your knee like this more than once in the last week...let's chat.

Let's talk about what's going on and what may help you even more.

I have been busy writing and not as good sharing each article. If you have knee or ankle issues hop over to my articles ...
06/07/2026

I have been busy writing and not as good sharing each article.

If you have knee or ankle issues hop over to my articles to catch up.

Articles . ShariLMiller . Com (without the spaces)

Oh my...the shoes they come up with.The MORE cushion on the shoe like this silliness, the more leg pain or balance issue...
06/07/2026

Oh my...the shoes they come up with.

The MORE cushion on the shoe like this silliness, the more leg pain or balance issues you will have.

You're smart to not buy shoes that say you're walking on clouds!

You sit through a meeting. You stand up. Your knee takes a full minute to remember it is supposed to work.Those first fe...
05/21/2026

You sit through a meeting. You stand up. Your knee takes a full minute to remember it is supposed to work.

Those first few steps are stiff. Maybe a little sharp.

You are moving like you aged 20 years in 45 minutes.

And then right when someone asks if you are okay, it loosens up and you are mostly fine.

This is one of the most common patterns I see and one of the most dismissed. People chalk it up to just getting older or their knee just being bad now. They accept it as the new normal.

It is not just aging and it is not just your knee being bad. There are specific things happening in the joint and the surrounding tissue when you sit for extended periods that explain exactly why this occurs.

And there are specific things you can do about it that take less than a minute.

My new article covers all of it.

(articles . ShariLMiller . com)

05/20/2026

17 years.

That is how long I have been doing this work. And if I had to put the most important thing I have learned into one sentence it would be this:

The body is not fragile. It is adaptable.

The people who struggle most with knee pain are often not the people with the most severe issues on imaging. They are the people who have been told the most limiting things about themselves and started to believe them.

"You just have to live with it."
"Come back when it is bad enough for surgery."
"This is just what happens at your age."
"You should stop running."

That kind of language does real damage. Not always because it is factually wrong, but because it suggests there is nothing to do.

That the path is fixed.

In my experience, it rarely is.

I have watched people in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s rebuild quad strength they had not had in years.

I have watched people return to hiking trips they had quietly mentally cancelled.

I have watched people stop planning their day around stairs.

I have watched runners train for a half marathon after thinking their running days were behind them.

Not because of anything extraordinary.

Because they found the right approach, did the work, and gave their body what it was actually asking for.

That is what I show up to do every day.

What would you do differently if you genuinely believed things could still improve?

05/19/2026

When something hurts, we limp.

That is just what the body does. It shifts load away from the thing that hurts and redistributes it somewhere else. You do not decide to limp. It happens automatically.

The problem is that the somewhere else it redistributes to was not built to take that extra load indefinitely. Your other knee. Your hip. Your lower back. They pick up the slack.

And if the limp, or even just a subtle shift in how you are moving, continues long enough, your nervous system starts to treat it as normal. It becomes the default pattern. Even after the original pain settles down.

This is why so many people tell me their knee feels better but something still feels off. The pain improved but the movement pattern did not reset. So the knee is still being loaded differently than it should be.

Walking the way you used to is sometimes a skill you have to intentionally retrain, not something that just comes back on its own when the pain goes away.

Has your knee changed how you walk, even slightly?

Your knee hurts. But the problem might not be your knee.The muscles on the outside of your hip are responsible for keepi...
05/18/2026

Your knee hurts. But the problem might not be your knee.

The muscles on the outside of your hip are responsible for keeping your leg in alignment every time you take a step, go up or down stairs, or do anything on one leg. When they are doing their job, your thighbone stays where it belongs and your knee moves the way it is supposed to.

When they are not strong enough, your thighbone starts to rotate inward. Your knee follows. And the load that should be distributed across the joint starts concentrating in places that were not designed for it.

This pattern is extremely common and frequently missed, because the pain is in the knee and so the knee gets all the attention. The hip that is driving the problem stays weak.

If your knee tends to drift inward when you squat or step down, if one side of your pelvis drops when you walk, or if standing on one leg feels wobbly and unpredictable, hip strength is likely part of your picture.

My new article explains the connection and gives you a real starting point.

Read it today at articles. ShariLMiller . com

Did you know your hip could be driving your knee pain? This one surprises a lot of people.

05/16/2026

Your body is not broken.

I want to say that clearly because I think a lot of people who have been living with knee pain for a while have started to believe otherwise.

Your body adapted. That is different.

When something hurts, your body does not shut down. It finds a way. It builds compensations. It adjusts your movement and shifts load to other structures and keeps you going. That is genuinely impressive.

The problem is that those compensations, built to protect you in the short term, sometimes become the thing causing the problem in the long term. An old injury, a new limitation. A workaround that worked for years and then stopped working.

That is not brokenness. That is a pattern. And patterns can change.

I have watched people who were completely convinced their knee was just done rebuild capacity they had written off entirely. Not because I did anything remarkable, but because their body responded to the right input.

Your body is not working against you. It is working with what it has been given.

Give it something better.

She came to me because going down stairs had become something she planned her whole day around.Not exercise. Not heavy a...
05/15/2026

She came to me because going down stairs had become something she planned her whole day around.

Not exercise. Not heavy activity. Just stairs. Specifically going down.
She was hating the stairs at the parking garage downtown for work. She had started parking farther away to avoid curb drops. She stopped going to one of her favorite restaurants because the entrance had steps and she did not want anyone to watch her grip the railing.

She is 46.

When we looked at her movement we found her quad was not doing its job, her hip was not stabilizing the way it needed to, and she had movement patterns from an old ankle injury that were putting extra load on her knee with every single step.

Nothing was broken. Nothing needed surgery. Her body had built a workaround that worked for a while and then stopped working.

Eight weeks later she sent me a photo from her fav restaurant. The text said: "Walked right down those steps. Did not even think about it."

That is the goal. Not just less pain. Getting to where you are not thinking about it anymore.

If stairs are your thing right now, you are not alone and you are not stuck.

You come home, your knee is aching, you sit down and put your feet up. Immediate relief.That feels like exactly the righ...
05/14/2026

You come home, your knee is aching, you sit down and put your feet up.

Immediate relief.

That feels like exactly the right call. (R.I.C.E. right?)

Here is what is actually happening though.

That position, legs extended, knee in a slightly bent and fully unloaded position for an hour or two, trains your knee to stiffen in that range.

And then you stand up, take those first few steps, and your knee makes it very clear what it thinks of that arrangement.

The recliner is not the villain here. The problem is treating extended rest as a treatment strategy, because it feels good in the moment and makes things worse overall.

My new article explains exactly what happens in the joint when you sit for extended periods, and what small habit changes make a real difference without giving up your evening.

Read it at articles. ShariLMiller . com

Does your knee feel worse after sitting for a while? How long does it take to loosen back up?

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Columbus, OH

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