The study is designed to investigate the effect of physical surroundings on the effect of exercise therapy for knee and hip pain.

Context effect have been shown to be influential in health-care settings, such as hospitals. This study investigates if context effects can be caused by the physical surroundings of exercise.

The study is designed as a double-blind randomized controlled clinical trial. Patients with knee and/or hip pain with a duration of a least 3 months are included in the trial and randomly assigned to 3 groups.

1. Exercise in pre-existing, standard room
2. Exercise in contextually enhanced room.
3. Waiting list.

The intervention consists markedly different between the two exercise rooms. The physical surroundings are described by factors such as acoustics, light source and intensity, decorations and air quality.

The exercise program applied is based on a previously investigated neuromuscular exercise program, NEMEX. The same program is performed in both exercise rooms. Consequently, only the physical surroundings differ between intervention groups.

Patients' "global perceived effect" is used as the primary outcome assessed at 8 weeks follow-up.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Age: 35 years or older
• Self-report of knee and/or hip pain within the last 3 months.
• Willing and able to attend exercise therapy at the University of Southern Denmark, Odense M twice weekly.

Exclusion Criteria:

• Co-morbidities or contraindication prohibiting to participation in exercise therapy.
• Unable to fill-out questionnaires, or to speak, read or understand Danish.
• Already participating in exercise therapy*, having had surgery to the hip/knee within the last 3 months or on waiting list for joint surgery within the coming 6 months. (*defined as supervised exercise program by physiotherapist, systematic strength training etc. with duration of 6 weeks or more)