Bad Knee-Only Upper Body Exercises

candace7070

I had knee surgery and can only do upper body exercises for a while. I'm afraid I'll have setbacks in my fitness goals. No cardio for now- no bicycle or Elliptical. I'm in too much pain and discomfort to work on lower body ( I'mgoing for knee ablasion soon).
I can do upper body and abs, though.
Any suggestions how to make this work?
Thanks-

Retroguy2000

Good for you keeping up with what you can do.

I'd suggest upper body exercises where you can stay seated. For example seated chest press and shoulder press, lat pulldown, seated db curls and one arm french press for arms. You might be able to get chest supported row working for you too, for a horizontal row. You can do a seated lateral raise machine for shoulders, or do db lateral raises while seated. Abs, maybe captain's chair, since getting up and down off the floor is probably inconvenient for other options. Make sure to swing the hips up if doing that, otherwise you're mostly doing the hip flexors.

I'd also suggest leg press with single leg. It has been shown that unilateral training can help with muscle retention in the untrained side. It's called contralateral training. With a single leg, you can position closer for more quads, higher for more hams and glutes. You might need a helper to put the weight on and off the leg press though.

nossmf

Have you ever tried using battle ropes? Those are the super-long thick ropes, connected on one end, which a person swings up and down or side-to-side. Short bouts with these babies sure get the heart racing, which counts as cardio to me!

AnnPT77

Some gyms (particularly rehab-oriented ones) or physical therapy practices have arm bikes. It's surprisingly vigorous.

You might also want to take a look at chair workouts. They're not all gentle movement for infirm seniors. Wheelchair athletes need vigorous workouts, too, for example, and some are aimed at people like you who want to train while recovering from lower-body injuries. Try search terms like "high intensity chair workout" or "advanced chair workout", see if something might be workable for you.

candace7070

I can try chair Pilates and chair Yoga at my gym. Battle ropes are too strenuous for me. I want to take it easy on upper body because I don't want to strain my legs or knee.
Chair exercises are probably the best for me right now.

cmriverside

Go to YouTube and search, there's a lot of videos to give you ideas.

I'm sending healing thoughts. :flowerforyou: