#91: Back to Heavy Lifting with a Cranky Knee – My Story

Getting back to weight training with a knee that was swollen, stiff, and too painful to bend isn’t easy, but it is possible!

In this episode of 40+ Fitness for Women, I share my experience working around significant knee limitations and slowly building back strength and range of motion - without risking further damage.

Tune in as I discuss:

• The step-by-step approach I used to train safely with an aging, worn-down knee
• Exercises and modifications that kept my muscles strong while protecting my knee
• How listening to your body and making careful adjustments can help you progress, even with setbacks

If you’ve been wondering how to balance building strength with a sensitive joint or old injury, I hope my story can inspire you to keep moving forward safely and effectively!

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to 40+ Fitness for Women
• 1:23 The Cranky Knee Story Begins
• 3:21 Initial Doctor Visit and Diagnosis
• 4:50 Training Adjustments and Patience
• 6:09 Detailed Exercise Modifications
• 10:05 Progress and New Challenges
• 20:37 Final Thoughts and Client Example
• 22:07 Conclusion and Contact Information

Transcript

#91: Back to Heavy Lifting with a Cranky Knee – My Story

Welcome to 40+ Fitness for Women. I'm Lynn Sederlöf-Airisto, your host, and I'm a certified menopause fitness coach, helping women to build the bodies that they want to spend the rest of their lives in. And today I'm doing a little bit of a different podcast. It is a personal story actually about how I have tackled having a very cranky knee.

I just posted about this actually yesterday as I, for the first time in a year, was able to do a Bulgarian split squat. And people have asked, like, okay, so what was your, you know, your journey? What were you doing along the way to get to that point? So I thought I would explain this to all of you. So this may or may not interest you, but many of you are probably facing some challenges with the fact that your body is not 20 anymore.

And so you do have age related wear and tear. And maybe you want to start training and you're a little worried about how do you deal with those things. So I wanted to share like my concrete own experience, because that may give you some ideas of like what this really looks like in practice when you start working with a 50 plus body.

 So on to my story of my cranky knee.

 About a year ago, it was, uh, actually November 12th, 2023, I was just here at home working normally and walking on my walk pad as I do to get in my 8, 000 plus steps a day. And then at the end of the workday, just like I normally do, I went downstairs to change clothes, to go to the gym, and it was lower body day for me.

And I noticed when I was warming up for lower body day, when I did a reverse lunge, just body weight, reverse lunge, just to warm up, right. Just to get my body moving. I noticed that my knee felt weird. It didn't hurt. It just felt weird. And I am somebody who listens very closely to my body and I decided that, okay, I will be leaving out the movements where I need to bend my knee 90 degrees, you know, or more from today's workout.

And so I, I went and did my workout using only exercises where my knees were extended, and there are quite a few lower body exercises that you can do. And not have to bend your knees very much. So I did those. And then that evening I noticed, pain in my knee. And I don't generally get knee pain and it was pretty bad, but I thought, okay, this is weird.

I don't think I did anything in my session because I didn't bend my knee. Nothing happened during my session. But the next day, the pain just increased and increased and increased. And I remember sitting here at my desk and thinking. Oh my God, this hurts so much. And I didn't want to take painkiller because I wanted to see what it actually felt like.

I didn't want to numb the pain because I wanted to understand in real time how this was going. But by the end of the day, I was like, okay, I need to go to a doctor. I might have actually done something to my knee without even knowing it. 

I couldn't walk up and down the stairs. I had to like hop on My good leg, because it was my right knee that was hurting and I couldn't drive my car.

So I had to have my parents take me to the doctor and the doctor examined it it was an orthopedic surgeon who examined it and did like, you know, they wiggle your knee and all that stuff and didn't notice any. Major anything, but yes, swelling, some fluid in the joint. And so sent me home with some painkillers and said, well, you know, if this doesn't get better in a couple of weeks, then we will film it, get an MRI.

So went home. It did feel a little bit better, but. Not normal still. So I did go back and have the MRI scan taken. And at that point, the doctor said, Hey, no signs of anything, but normal age related wear and tear. I mean, I've been a runner, a varsity and division one lacrosse player and yeah. I've pretty much run, danced, done stuff all my life.

So age related wear and tear, and he said, get back into the weight room. Don't like take any breaks from the weight room. Get back in there. It's really important for you to maintain your muscle. Do everything that you can do that your knee allows you to do. 

Okay, so I think this is kind of the first main point where I'm going to stop and say my first suggestion is that if you have any kind of pain, first, make sure that it isn't actually a tear or something really that has gone wrong that needs to be fixed through medical intervention. So make sure that it is actually okay. to work on it. So that's the first thing that I would absolutely say. Okay. 

So once you are cleared to train on it by your doctor, then, you know, you may have an ability to go see a physical therapist who might suggest certain things. But for me, it was clear. I would go in and start training the things that I could train.

And like I said, I could not really bend my knee. So for me, any kind of squat pattern movements were not possible. I, I couldn't do like a reverse lunge. I couldn't do a squat. I couldn't do, you know, anything like that. A Bulgarian split squat, uh, leg press anything, but I could do, for example, Romanian deadlifts.

So that keeps your knees pretty much straight. I could do 45 degree hyperextensions. So I worked on those, and then at the same time, I did do some exercises that had a bended knee, but I did them only at the level that my right leg could do. So the two that I was working on actually were leg extensions and the leg press.

And I would work one side at a time in these exercises. So in the leg extension, of course, I had to lower the weight way, way, way down, right? I mean, I was working with one little plate and there was no way I couldn't, you know, bend my leg 90 degrees and then extend it all the way straight. So it was like this very, very small range of motion.

My leg was already. Almost straight when, you know, when I started the motion and probably anybody looking at me in the weight room would be like, man, she doesn't really know what she's doing. But that was all that my knee could tolerate at that point. And I knew that I needed to be strengthening my quads or keeping my quads strong because those are very important for, supporting your knee.

And then with my left leg, I would train normally on my left leg. So then I would move the adjustments so that my leg would bend the normal amount and work with normal amount of weight. And the reason that I did that is that they have studied people who might have a broken limb, and when they train the limb that can be trained, they do notice that the untrained limb does get some benefit from it.

So there is some mechanism in our body, which If you are working the good limb, your bad limb will get some benefit from it. So I decided, Hey, we are going to get all the benefits. We can train the left leg, which is my, my fine leg. And hopefully the right leg will get some benefits from it. So that's how I did the leg extension machine.

And then I did the leg press. I was doing a seated leg press. So there you adjust how close the seat is to the pad that you put your feet up on. And, uh, I would not have my leg very bent at all. So my range of motion in my leg press was very, very small at that point. And I was doing it with a low weight. And then with my left leg, I would do my normal range of motion with my normal weight. So that's how I proceeded for months. I'm not kidding. Months. I was just very, very patient. and I would listen to my right knee every single time.

So let's say in one session, it was happy to leg press 20 kilos. If in the next session, you know, on let's say rep number three, it started feeling funny. That was it. For that day for that leg, and that happened often. And it was really frustrating, especially as things were getting better, you know, as I was starting to get stronger, then I'd have these like little mini setbacks, which were coming out of nowhere because I felt like I'm not doing anything my right leg, but it's still kind of complaining.

So this I continued literally for months and months and months, and I have finally, Oh, what do I want to say? Like after about eight months got to the point where I am training the right leg as heavy as my left leg. But I still train differently than I did before this whole incident started. And the way that I train differently is my warmups are so much longer.

And now I'm talking about the exercise specific warmups. Let me give you a concrete example of this. So on the leg extension machine, what I have noticed is, so I ex I do leg extensions with 55 kilos, all right. With both legs, uh, working together. And even if my legs are warm from doing other exercises, if I were to sit down in that machine and try on my first set to do the 55 kilos, my right knee would.

You know, call it quits would not allow for that. So what I do is that when I'm going to go do my leg extensions, I will start with half of the weight. So instead of the 55 working weight, I start with 25 kilos and I will do about eight reps of that where I'm really working on getting my quad muscles activated, on having good form, on feeling what does my knee feel like today, making sure that it is okay.

Then after those eight, I will move the peg only one plate at a time and I'll do one or two reps at that weight each time. What I'm doing is I'm saying, or I'm testing, okay, so how does my knee feel if I add a little bit more? Okay, that feels okay. So I dare to add a little bit more. How does it feel today if I add a little bit more?

It feels fine. So I'll add a little bit more until I get to my working weight, the 55 kilos. So in my gym. It goes up by five kilos at a time. So if you think like at the 25 kilos, I've done the eight reps, then at 30, I'll probably do two reps at 35. I'll do two reps 40. I'll do one rep 45. I'll do one rep and then 50. I'll do one rep. Then I will take a break about a minute and a half, because that's actually a lot of reps, you know, with that eight plus all the ones going up. So I let my, my quads take a little break, even three minutes break kind of depends on how I'm feeling that day. And then I sit down and I do my first set at my working weight.

So it is a much more careful warmup for that particular exercise.

And the other thing I have noticed is that the order of exercises has mattered for me. And this may be completely individual. I'm not a physical therapist that I'm not saying that this is how you should do it for you. I just wanted to give you an example of the kind of thinking that's going on around like managing my aging body that, um, What I have noticed is that it is best for me to do the leg extensions early on in my training session.

So, okay, I'll start always with RDLs if I have RDLs, but that's not really working my quads. So I will do the RDLs first, then I'll come to the leg extensions, and then I can try something else, which requires my quads, like for example, the leg press. And even if I've done the leg extensions, I will do the same kind of super slow warm up. slash testing for my knee that day on the leg press, because if you think about, leg extension is not compressing the knee joint in the same way that, a leg press is. And so I want to make sure that my knee is tolerating that kind of smooshing that knee joint together.

So I'll do the same thing in that I will start with half of my working weight, and then I will move the peg up little by little to, and always do one max two reps to test. How does my knee like this today? Is my knee going to tolerate this today? Is it happy today? And if it's not happy, then I don't do the leg press that day.

I mean, that's how I deal with that because. I would rather err on the side of caution. And I guess one other thing to point out with the leg press is that I have also just accepted the fact that my range of motion is just going to need to be a little bit smaller.

Indefinitely. So, my seat is one peg further away from the platform than it was back in the day, like before this all happened. But, You know, that's fine. I mean, it's not a competition to see who can get closer to the platform. I am just trying to keep my body strong for the future.

Now. So these two exercises were ones that were working just fine for me. So I, I slowly started testing that, Hmm, can I do any squatting pattern exercises? Because it's kind of boring. It's just, just working the same exercises all the time. And I was really hoping that maybe I can get back to doing reverse lunges or step ups or Bulgarians or something like that.

So I started testing, tested body weight only on reverse lunges, and it's actually funny because they bothered my right leg, not when it was the front leg that was working, but when it was the back leg, whose toes were on the floor 

the one exercise that I did find that my knee tolerated very nicely was actually walking lunges. So you're doing a forward lunge and then another forward lunge and another forward lunge and another forward lunge. So I've been doing body weight, forward walking lunges, and that felt really great.

And then I decided that, Hey, I'm just going to test and see whether it will tolerate the Bulgarian split squats. And so I tested that yesterday and I'm so excited that it is a yes.

It is. My knee is tolerating it. 

So how am I going to do these Bulgarian split squats? I have strengthened my muscles a lot over the past year, right? My glutes are much stronger than they were a year ago. And so are my quads.

So for me to do a body weight, walking lunge, It's, it's pretty easy, right? It becomes an endurance exercise and the same thing with the Bulgarians, if I'm doing it just body weight or small weights, it's not really feeling heavy.

It's not really challenging my muscles the same way as what I'm able to challenge them right now in the leg press and in the leg extension. But I just need to have patience there, I am not going to start raising my weights at any fast speed. I started with the Bulgarians yesterday. Okay. And I went all the way up to, um, I did one set with body weight, one set with four kilos and one set with six kilos, and those all felt fine.

And now I'm going to start progressing very slowly. Even if I get to the top of my rep range, I will make sure that I do that exercise at least on two training occasions before I start increasing it. And if my knee feels at all funny, then I'm not going to go up, it's going to be the most conservative, careful, you know, building of strength in that particular exercise that I can, you know, ever do.

And actually that brings up a good point . anybody starting any new exercise or actually, even if you're changing exercises, because if your body hasn't done that exercise for a while, even if you are strong, where you feel like, Oh, I could just like, go, go for it with this exercise.

I would still err on the side of caution at this age. And Slowly build up. Okay. Not a year. I mean, obviously, because I've got the knee issue that is going to be way slower than it would be if I didn't have the knee issue, but I would take some weeks or at least several sessions. to start building up to really challenging myself on a new exercise.

I wouldn't go, you know, hell bent for leather the first time that I'm going back to an exercise. You want to let your body kind of acclimate again to them.

So that was the story of how I have gone from barely being able to put weight on my foot because of my knee being so bad to being able to start Bulgarian split squats again in less than a year. So today is October 21st and the pain first started on November 12th. So. What's that? Just shy of a year. 

And I hope that step by step details of how I've been doing it might help some of you to think about how you can really slowly, listening to your body, start to build up your strength. Even if you have a part of your body that is very weak and that needs extra attention, 

I have one client who I'm working with right now and she really is a special case because she was ill and bedridden for a long, long time. And so her muscles have become really very, very weak. And for her working with her, it is a matter of her really thinking and listening to her body, us discussing together what she should do in the coming seven days and making tweaks and adjustments along the way.

I mean, her. Programming her plan for each week is different from the week before based on how her body is behaving and responding and feeling and work stress and other things going on in her life. So sometimes we just need to be. Very adaptable and listen to our bodies. If we want to get to the result that we want to get to, which is to have a strong body so that we can manage in life and do the things that we want to do.

We don't want. This body, you know, which is our one and only precious body that's going to carry us around our whole lives. We want it to stay in good shape. Like as if we had one car that we had to deal with for our whole lives, we would take really good care of it. And that's what we need to do with our bodies as well.

All right. So those are my thoughts for today. Let me know if this was at all useful to you and, uh, reach out. And by the way, you can leave me a comment. I think it's called a note through the platform. I can't unfortunately answer you. So if you want to have a chat, you know, so that I can answer you back and please hop into my Instagram DMS, that's probably the best place to reach me for a little chat.

And until next week, I wish you all happy training.