If you have knee pain, but your knees feel better:

when you press down on the arm rests as you’re standing up from a chair,
when you use hiking poles as you walk on challenging trails, or
when you’re walking in a pool,

then, you probably have a Load Tolerance problem.

Load Tolerance is the amount of pain-free force your knee can produce or absorb for a specific movement, over a certain period of time, while still controlling that movement.

Rather than determining muscle strength – which most trainers and physical therapists measure – Load Tolerance reveals the strength inside your knees.

When the inside of your knees are strong, your Load Tolerance will be high.

And when your Load Tolerance is greater than what your activities require, your knees feel good.

Or in some cases, you may not even think about your knees.

On the other hand, when the inside of your knees are weak, your Load Tolerance will be low.

When your Load Tolerance is lower than what your activities require, you’ll get knee symptoms – such as pain, soreness, stiffness, or swelling.

I help my clients improve their knee strength (which I’ve written about here) by increasing the health of their synovial fluid and the strength of the cartilage, both located inside their knees.

But building strength inside your knees doesn’t happen instantaneously.

So I also provide recommendations that decrease the difficulty of your activities.

If you have pain with challenging hikes, I may suggest that you temporarily stick to flatter trails.

I may also recommend that you use hiking poles.

Both of these recommendations often decrease knee pain.

Because your activity now requires less Load Tolerance from your knees.

If it makes your activities easy enough – if the demand from your activities is lower than your current Load Tolerance – you may be able to do more and hurt less.

Note: I haven’t tried the Dnsys Z1 myself,

nor do I have any financial benefit

from sharing it with you.

I’m not sure the Dnsys Z1 will live up to the hype of empowering you to do “anything, anytime, anywhere” like their video promotes. (source)

But it certainly sounds like it may offer support as you take the action necessary to increase your Load Tolerance – as you build Better Knees and achieve Inside Out Knee Health.

Soft knee braces can reduce knee pain and boost confidence during activities, but they don’t prevent symptoms that appear later because they don’t address the underlying issue.
The real issue is Load Tolerance — your knee’s ability to handle and control force during activity.
Load Tolerance reveals the strength inside your knees (synovial fluid and cartilage health).
Avoid knee pain by increasing internal knee strength and/or reducing the difficulty of your activities.
The Dnsys Z1, a powered exoskeleton knee brace, is designed to provide assistive force to make activities easier, potentially reducing knee pain while you build true knee strength from the inside.