I had knee surgery and I'm really taking it easy on my knee (no running, jogging, jumping, y'know, anything that really involves impact) and I was looking for some type of cardio taht I could do that doesn't involve a lot of high-impact leg work.

Ghost,

Bicycling is non-impact. My knees used to ache all the time from being abused by too much running. The more I cycled, the better the knees felt. I now have no knee pain at all.

Excellent, Thanks

I had a knee injury and my physical therapist said to do water aerobics or bicycling. I tried both and liked water aerobics better. I thought I would be the youngest one in the class and I was suprised to find out that there were people who were young, old, heavy, thin, male and female. I got alot of muscle development on my arms especially and the knee/leg exercises were easy on my knee and "doable".

Cycling is good but can be hard on the knees, especially when climbing steep hills.

If you have access to a pool, then get an 'Aquajogger'. It lets you float vertically and run in the water. I developed a knee problem a few weeks before a race. I quit running and used the aquajogger for an hour a day and had one of my best finish times.

How about rowing?

Swimming comes to mind if you like it and have access to a swimming pool. Works your heart and lungs as well as running and jogging without negative impact on your knees and other joints. Water resistance helps to tone and stretch muscles, as well as burn fat/calories. Try crawl stroke using pull-buyo, it will keep your lower body and legs afloat, so you can work upper body as hard as you like. If swimming is not your thing, water aerobics are good too.

An elliptical or cross training machine is always a good choice. I have a bad knee and have no trouble with these machines at all.

I've had my left hip replaced. I think that the suggestions you got are excellent. The elliptical has no impact. I do spinning and I bought a racing bike. I also took some swim lessons to enable me to get my heart rate up in the pool. Good luck to you.

Barb

Upper-body circuit (weight) training -- move from exercise to exercise without a minimum amount of rest in between exercises. I'd avoid any cardio that involves your knees until you're sure you're completely healed from your surgery -- you can injure joints just as easily with "low-impact" exercises if your form isn't right.

I have had arthrocopic knee surgery and can do well with the elliptical trainer or spinning class. I am a Spinning instructor and I would look for a class though that does interval training. Some instructors keep their resistance high for long periods of time and if I do that it bothers my knee.

I agree. I also want to say: don't think of water aerobics, unless it is all done in deep water, to be low or no impact. I recently injured myself at a lite aerobic class with old ladies to the tune of an ER visit and a week-long migraine. The concrete pool bottom can really do damage (in my case, my neck). I sprained my toe running after my daughter and have been aquajogging, also called pool running, for over five weeks. It's working really well and is no-impact. You can still hurt yourself but it is easier to guage what is happening and prevent injury. To make it more challenging you can add arm weights, etc. I have become much stronger and dropped my resting heart rate by a lot.

Janine

Okay, I'm seriously becoming less and less willing to do the elliptical after my 40 minute weight routine, so this suggestion intrigues me. But I have to ask -- what exercises are you doing for your upper body, that you could keep going for 30 minutes (i.e., the suggested amount of time we should spend doing cardio)? I mean, don't you run into the problem of hitting the same muscle groups with diminishing returns? For example: I can't do the pullover, pectoral fly, shoulder press and chest press during the same workout and expect to see good results during the latter half of the workout, because I'd be hitting some of the same muscles again and again. I'm not sure that would even be a wise use of my time in the weight room, actually.

If you've got an upper-body routine worked out that avoids this problem, please share it! I would love to sub out the elliptical in exchange for more weights work, and I'm in love with the idea of really shaping my arms.