I wanna jog but it KILLS my knees!

I'm in the same boat.

What I do is take a couple Advil about 30 minutes before I go & wear open-knee, knee braces. It seems to help.

Also, go to a store that specializes in running & make sure that you have proper shoes.

Good luck! :flowerforyou:

Depends completely on the nature of your problem. It could be just strain on your tendons and ligaments that will get better as you walk/run and improve overall muscle fitness, or you could have a more serious degenerative condition. Have you had an orthopedist weigh in on this? Either way the conventional wisdom is, "if it hurts, don't do that."

I've had arthroscopic surgery on both knees due to premature cartilage wear and arthritis and one of the symptoms was pain when I tried to run. It caused me to give up soccer (broke my heart), hiking and even long distance walks. BUT, the good news is even with bad knees, there are things you can do, like cycling, and swimming, which are actually great exercise and GOOD for your knees.

I just started "spin" to change up my cardio. I also have bad knees and was afraid of spinning. You say, cycling is good for your knees? I'm intrigued, can you elaborate? thanks!:glasses:

I'll qualify that a bit...it depends on how bad your knees are to begin with and the nature of the problem, but for folks like me with a lot of wear and tear and little or no cartilage left, cycling strengthens the leg muscles, the core muscles, basically the support structure for your knee joints, not to mention increasing blood flow and improving flexibilty. It also helps keep weight off, thus the excess strain on the knee joints from carting around too much "you". Cycling at a moderate pace burns app. 700-800 cals/hr. which is equivalent to running at a 12 min/mile pace for the same length of time but without the impact. And I could be wrong, but the runners I pass never look like they're having as much fun as I am.

I have a hard time walking a mile without some knee pain but I ride between 100-200 miles/week, rode to LA from San Francisco last summer as part of AIDS Lifecycle 2007, and can literally roll out of bed and ride 100 miles.

It's taken some training of course, but I mention this only to illustrate the benefits of cycling to anyone who thinks bad knees equals no cardio. In fact all my riding partners have had knee problems and/or surgery and they all swear by the sport. (Our AIDS Lifecyle team was called Team Glucosomine, if that's any indication). :laugh:

The trick when you first take up cycling or spinning is to limit the amount of torque on your knees. So using higher (harder) gears, doing a lot of climbing, standing up out of the saddle for long periods may be something you need to work up to. Any knee pain while riding/spinning is an indication that something is amiss.

Hope that helps. Ride on!