I am currently on the road to recovery with a knee injury--literally the WORST--and to avoid the FOMO of watching other runners run past my window, I have been doing a lot of different forms or cross-training to not only stay in shape and keep my body working hard, but also to strengthen the muscles around my knees.

When I first began to feel serious pain in my knee, I turned to yoga. Yoga is such a great form of exercise for recovering from injury and preventing injury. I am lucky enough to have yoga classes offered most days of the week at my university's gym that range from more mellow forms of yoga to power yoga. I usually go 3 times a week--twice for power yoga in the evening and once in the morning for regular yoga, but somedays, when I either can't make it to the class time or there isn't one being offered, I'll do a Yoga With Adriene video. Yoga With Adriene has been amazing for allowing me to practice yoga without even having to leave my dorm room! Her videos range from yoga flows that are aimed more towards stretching to flows that involve a lot more power and strength. They are super great at helping me make sure I get a lot more stretching in than I used to and strengthening and using different muscles that I normally wouldn't.

Alongside yoga, I incorporated some HIIT. At first, to increase strength in my legs, I stuck to low-impact HIIT and then as the muscles in my legs grew stronger and my injury subsided more, I began to include more higher impact HIIT moves. My personal favorite way to HIIT train is through Lucy Wyndham-Read's YouTube channel. I have been doing Lucy's HIIT workouts for about a year now and she offers everything from toning, to low-impact, to high-impact--anything for anyone at any level. Her workouts can range from 4 minute HIIT routines to longer 15 minute ones and what's great about all of her workouts is that she has both high and low impact options for all of the moves--so I could still do all of my favorite workout videos of hers and just substitute the low impact for any moves that caused pain in my knee. Incorporating HIIT training into my recovery plant allowed me to keep up my cardio, without having to turn to the elliptical--personally, not a fan.

I also did physical therapy on my knee with exercises that I was given by a doctor that targeted where I really needed to build the most strength. All of these things combined have really helped me speed up the recovery process and have kept me busy and active while being unable to run.

Although I am not 100% yet, I am getting closer to pounding the pavement again full-time!

Claire
xx

Yoga With Adriene

Lucy Wyndham-Read