Working out without the use of your knee

[HearWa]

Due to an inflamed knee I'll have to stay off my knee for awhile. It only really bothers me when I squat or do any stances so this is what I'm avoiding. I've cut down my workout drastically from two hours a day, five days a week to about a half hour a day, every other day.

This is what I've been doing:
- 3x5 pull ups (I've been doing these by holding onto the floor from the basement stairs. I'm getting a book bag to add more weight soon since I only weigh 160lbs)
- 3x5 bench press (not very challenging though, I need more weight but don't have any)
- 3x50 sit ups
- stretching
- dynamic stretches (once in the morning, once in the evening)

Between this and playing around with my nunchaka I've run out of ideas. I'll be honest though, I've got some love handles, lower stomach fat and leg fat I'd like to take care of. Is there any way I could work this off (I'm maintaining three healthy meals a day without snacking) without the use of my knee? Will the sit ups help this?

[FooFighter]

Due to an inflamed knee I'll have to stay off my knee for awhile. It only really bothers me when I squat or do any stances so this is what I'm avoiding. I've cut down my workout drastically from two hours a day, five days a week to about a half hour a day, every other day.

This is what I've been doing:
- 3x5 pull ups (I've been doing these by holding onto the floor from the basement stairs. I'm getting a book bag to add more weight soon since I only weigh 160lbs)
- 3x5 bench press (not very challenging though, I need more weight but don't have any)
- 3x50 sit ups
- stretching
- dynamic stretches (once in the morning, once in the evening)

Between this and playing around with my nunchaka I've run out of ideas. I'll be honest though, I've got some love handles, lower stomach fat and leg fat I'd like to take care of. Is there any way I could work this off (I'm maintaining three healthy meals a day without snacking) without the use of my knee? Will the sit ups help this?

I would recommend you get the same book I recommended to Stubb by Tom Bisio (www.tombisio.com) which will give you ideas on rehabing your knees through traditional chinese sport medicine treatments. If you are serious about learning preventive medicine and have the time to get the herbs, prepare your own medicine, and have the curiousity to learn healing art than this book could be an enlightening subject for you. Since you are young,strong, and smart then I believe getting this book would be a great investment for your education in health and fitness thats if you apply it?

Be well,
Bao

[HearWa]

I believe my knee became inflamed during one of the following exercises (or perhaps occured due to the result of all of them): shadow boxing, dragons, skipping, squats (with weight) bag work or burpees. Actually, I never felt it until I was almost finished the cool down phase of my workout. I was doing some light shadow boxing and all the pain seemed to hit me at once.

The burpees and squats were new, so perhaps I was working my knees too hard. Now that I think of it, the majority of my work out was probably hell on the knees. I just figured that since I was ninteen my body could take it.

Thanks for the book reference, I'll be looking into it when I get some free time from school work.

In the mean time do you have any ideas for exercises I could do?

Thank you.

[spiraler]

static handstands against a wall, stay for as long as you can , then do five pushups. you sound capable. try it, it works.

[HearWa]

That would kind of defeat the purpose of pull ups and the bench press, but I might try it later when I want to mix it up.