Keeping fit on an injury: need new workout ideas!

ccmccoy09

Hi friends!

I'm on month 3 recovering from a sprained hip and knee, and I am getting seriously bored with my workouts.

On my GP, ortho and physical therapist's orders, I can't do any running, hard walking, jumping, squats, lunges, or anything that puts too much pressure on my lower joins. I've been doing the stationary bike 2 or 3 times a week and lifting (hard and fast, like circuit training) 2 or 3 times a week. I try to get in some yoga or pilates once a week as well. I'm also stretching every day, in addition to physical therapy appointments. I'm thinking about throwing around a medicine ball maybe. I already do a lot of pushups and dips, and I can actually do one non-jumping chin up (!) and am working to get to 2.

I don't want to swim. I swam for 25 years. It's not fun for me any more. I've tried to go back to the pool and get bored after 15 minutes.

Any other ideas for workouts to incorporate? I've come so far, I don't want to pack the weight back on just because of this injury. I realize though that I will probably have to cut back my calories since I'm no longer able to burn 1000 cal in a 1.5 hour run.

Spanaval

Are deadlifts allowed? Maybe do whatever you can for your upper body for now - planks, side planks, spiderman planks, etc., chaturanga, rows, presses, flys, etc.

spigenerb

I wouldn't do dead lifts, its a lot of strain on the hips even though you may not feel it. Have you tried running in the pool. Its very low impact and I had it suggested to me once when I was injured (this was back when I was a runner- I feel about running like you do about swimming).

Congrats on the pullup. Your already doing planks but now would be a great time to really hammer your core. Try doing pushups with 2.5 lb dumbells. When you go up reach for the sky with one of your arms while holding the dumbell, go down and then reach for the sky with the other dumbell.

If you want to increase your back strength to get more pullups then do some lat pull downs 5 sets of 10. Do as much weight as you can 10 times, when you reach a set that you can't complete drop the weight and keep going till you reach 10. Although drop sets are an advanced type of workout you sound pretty fit so I think youll be fine pulling them off. If you are going to work your back like this though you will need to only do it once per week.

I have my wife doing a maximum hypertrophy workout like this (optimized volume training) and she hardly does any cardio anymore and has gotten way leaner. Yes, i know its a guys workout but its just not possible for a woman to bulk up like a guy do to the lower amounts of free testosterone.

Just stay away from squats, lunges, deads, leg press,. You might be able to try bent over row and good mornings but be careful.