Dear Cathe, I have just gotten back into the exercise bandwagon after being out of it for about 2 years. Before this break, I had been doing high impact aerobics 5-6 days a week for about 12 years. After having my second child, it seemed to get harder and harder to fit in exercise - or so I kept telling myself - as I slowly got out of the habit until I stopped working out completely. Fortunately, I now seemed to have been bitten again by the exercise bug - I have been working out again 5-6 days a week for about 5 weeks and am hoping that this will last. However my question is this, I have found that now that I am older (37) my joints can't take high-impact 5-6 days a week, so I'm trying to be smarter about exercising by doing more cross-training rather than doing all aerobics like I was doing when I was younger. So, now I do the Step, high-impact aerobics and one day of running (if the weather cooperates), so I might do the step 2 days, and then run one day and then 2 days of aerobics and I also try to get in 3 day of strength training. So here is my problem, for the last 2 weeks or so, I have been feeling a slight ache in my left knee - it definitely is not pain. I can walk and run just fine, I can also do the step without feeling anything at all (I step at the 10 inch level), but I notice that if I walk up the stairs or do a deeper bend as in for example a lunge, I definitely feel a slight ache. I'm concerned because I don't want to do anything that will do harm to my knee and then bring my workouts to a halt again. I would really appreciate any information, help, tips or insights that anyone might be able to offer as to why this might be happening and what I can do about it. I do my work outs at hope to video tapes and don't really have anyone who would be familiar with this type of question - so I truly would appreciate any help.
Thank you. Sincerely, Patti
Thank you. Sincerely, Patti