The last two mornings I have made an attempt at the 7-minute strength-training workout. I have not tried this routine since before my knee surgery, which was in January of 2025. I can no longer kneel on one knee, which is a big setback. The first day, I had to COMMIT to not letting it drop me into despair. The modifications I need now!!
Already I used an interval timer that gives me 15 seconds between exercises instead of 10, but now even that is not always enough time to get, say, from standing to lying down. Try it: get from standing up to lying on the floor in the correct position to do sit-ups, but one of your knees has to play The Floor Is Lava. Now get from the floor to standing—again without using that one knee. I can do it, but it takes a little time and thought.
Also, even before the knee surgery, I could not do a knee-based push-up; I would WORK ON that for the 30 seconds (e.g., lowering slowly with control, and pushing AS IF I could push myself back up). Now I can’t use the knee. I used to be able to do a knee-based plank; now I can’t, because I can’t kneel on that knee. All push-ups and planks have to be wall/bureau-based standing versions, or maybe I will try using the seat of a chair or something. I don’t know. I guess I’ll have to look into what my options are. This suffuses me with ennui.
At my one-year surgery follow-up, the P.A. wanted and expected me to tell her how much my life has improved since the knee surgery, and it was not an uncomplicated thing to do. Before the surgery, I’d limp while grocery-shopping, and had to actually lean on the cart for support; I would go for a short walk and wonder if I might get stranded because of the knee pain/instability and have to be picked up. So obviously there is significant improvement there: I can now walk like billy-o, for miles! But my knee clicks a little with each step (normal, expected, permanent), and the clicking varies from being almost unnoticeable to feeling gross and disturbing. And moving around in general (like, turning over in bed, or getting in and out of bed, or getting down to or up from the floor) is significantly affected. If I have to do something such as getting under my desk to unplug my computer, I have to really think about it and plan for it, and sometimes I can’t really figure it out and have to have someone else do it. Last summer I went to the lake with friends, and at one point I had to climb into a boat, and I almost couldn’t do it: I got one knee up onto the platform at the back of the boat, and then…what? There are entire swaths of movement where I have to find a new way to do it, using one knee and two hands, and a fair amount of scooting around. It’s like being a toddler again.
And it isn’t just a matter of figuring out ways to do the movements WITHOUT the knee: I also have to SPARE the knee. That is, it’s not just that the knee is Not Helpful; it’s that I have to AVOID it and not accidentally kneel on it. The P.A. and the physical therapist both assured me that I will not DAMAGE the knee by kneeling on it (both of them said breezily that I never really NEED to kneel, and I would like them to try that out in their lives and see how it works for them), but it is very uncomfortable. I feel like I need to say more about how uncomfortable it is, because it is not pain per se (though it can hurt); the feeling is WRONGNESS. Intense wrongness. As if I AM doing harm. Body and mind both revolt at the sensation.
It does help to kneel on something soft, like a crumpled bath towel, which is what I do briefly each week in order to clean around the base of the toilet. But even that feels Pretty Bad, and I can do it only briefly.
For Day One of the 7-minute workout yesterday, I tried doing a knee-plank using one knee, with the other sort of hovering in almost the right position, and that did something to a stomach muscle that does not feel right on Day Two; I skipped the abdominal exercises because those muscles felt not sore but Wronged.
But I do feel good about working on these exercises again—in part BECAUSE I am so unable to do some of them. It feels like I am working on something Useful and perhaps Crucial. It also feels like it’s helping me work on figuring out how to move around differently, now that I need to, so that maybe I can move around more easily and naturally overall. Because pre-surgery I always defaulted to kneeling on my left knee in cases where I would drop to one knee, it took some real mental and physical work to get used to using the other knee; but I DID learn to do that—and I can learn to override the default for other movements, too.
That is tricky, for sure. I can say that after years of teaching yoga to all different kinds of bodies, I had a lot of people who could not at all tolerate being on their knees. But we worked around it! Most of the time, I would give those people a pose that would use the wall as support, and so the thought of doing a plank or push-up with a wall seems like a very good thing to me. I also had a lot of people who could not tolerate even being on the floor, and for those people I developed quite a few postures with the chair. Same stretches exactly, but without the strain of getting up and down from the floor. i don’t know what the 7-minute workout is, but I do feel like you are on the right track as to doing things with those modifications. No shame in that game. As I said to my students, we are all doing the same stretches (in your case, strength exercises), but we are experiencing them in different ways. Example: bird-dog pose in yoga is very good for core strength. One lady would do this at the wall or using the back of a chair. It’s the same thing, but standing. It might even be BETTER because then balance is being worked as well. I would not do a plank with only one knee because I think that would lead to an issue with a body imbalance.
As I said in my own post today, starting small is the best way to tackle these things (i.e., hanging for ten seconds to work towards a pull up. That’s how I started and then the next week I would try twelve seconds. And so on.)
Oh! I just remembered something. We used to do a core conditioning that everyone could do, including the people who had knee issues. We would sit, with our knees bent in front of us and toes on the floor, and then cross our arms across our chests. Then we would LEAN BACK until we’d feel the core muscles kick in, and then stay there for a few breaths. Repeat. As we got stronger we would have just tippy toes on the ground, and then toes off the ground. You get the picture, it’s almost like a reverse sit up, but without the momentum.
This is the longest comment ever! I guess I have a lot to say.
I have recently ventured into youtube workouts, very anxiously. I found looking for 10 minute standing workouts was the key – that’s my sweet spot. I’m doing some work, but I’m not feeling overwhelmed by the up and down. Starting small, I guess.
I do not have anything specifically difficult about my knees, and I have always avoided knee push ups because putting my weight on knees like that felt very wrong.
I use the bench at the foot of my bed to do my modified inclined pushup, but I just realized that I can also stand at the bottom of the stairs and use the steps. Not sure if that would work for everyone, depending on height and starting ability, but it might be an option to work up (down?) to, after the wall/bureau. I like it better than a chair, because the steps can’t tip/scoot away.
I went for a short run yesterday, for the first time in… uh, well, I went for a run, and discovered I still had pretty much the same speed (slow) and stamina (short) as in the years when I was actually consistently exercising. Then after I got home my heart rate stayed elevated for so long that I googled heart attack symptoms. Which I guess means I definitely need to keep doing it, but maybe a little more carefully.
Grateful to you for sharing that you are also struggling but perservering. Going to try to use that as motivation to perservere too.
The stairs are a WONDERFUL idea. TWO physical therapists (the at-home one who visited after the surgery, and the one I saw when I was ready to leave the house) BOTH suggested stairs-related exercises, and yet I had not thought of the stairs!!
Stairs are a great idea that I never would have thought of, so thank you for mentioning that! I have been doing push ups by putting my hands on the edge of the kitchen counter and pushing from there, but I noticed that hurt/poked my hands a bit (and I suspect our wooden stairs would do the same), so today I tried putting my thickest oven mitts on the edge of the counter and pressing my hands against those, and it worked! I will do that with the stairs once I am ready to increase the level of difficulty.
I know that you have made excellent modifications for yourself, but I wanted to also put this article in the comments so that you could have it here that lays out some common modifications for exercises in the 7 minute workout and some suggestions on how to personalize it so that it does what it needs to you for your body: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/05/well/move/05EASIER-7MINUTE.html
It is so hard to keep going when something that was moderately hard is now harder. It always used to be (until a few years ago) that things got easier as I aged into knowing how my body moved, how my particular brain and motivations worked, etc. Now, as I get older things aren’t getting easier anymore, and things that I could always do are harder, this feels like a suckerpunch and completely unfair. Like I remember a self that could do that hike or that exercise and it feels bad that I can’t anymore. BUT I am trying to tell myself that I can still do things, just new or different or modified things…
I’ve had both my knees done and I also have that feeling of wrongness. It’s such a powerful sensation that it makes me instantly flinch away from it but it is absolutely not pain, which makes it very difficult to describe to other people.
I was told that if I kept kneeling eventually it would not bother me so I spent probably a year working on kneeling (on a yoga mat) and it never felt any less revolting, so I stopped. I can’t even kneel on my mattress to dust my headboard shelf without wanting to climb out of my skin.
So I have no advice but am simply letting you know I totally understand what you are experiencing.
This is so good to hear. Both the surgeon’s P.A. and the physical therapist acted as if they had never heard of this happening before. YES to not even really being able to kneel on a mattress. This is really so good to hear.
A close friend of mine had bilateral knee replacement almost five years ago and still can’t rest weight on them. She says it’s a weird combination of discomfort and numbness – I can’t believe the PA and PT seem unaware of this sensation…
Huh. I’m glad you shared. I hadn’t heard this from anyone else. Glad to know its a “thing that can/may happen” with knee replacements.
I know it’s not the same, but maybe to offer some hope: I had an acl repair in 2018 and since they took a tendon (I think?) from the front of my knee to replace the acl, I could not kneel for awhile without discomfort. But it did eventually get better, maybe after 2-3 years? Which seems like a long time and also improbable that it would get better that long after, but bodies are weird and maybe yours will too?
I follow Coach John Noel on Facebook and YouTube. His focus is on showing modifications for a lot of different exercises. You might find some helpful modifications in his reels/posts. Also, in his opinion, it’s better to start with push ups against a wall then work your way down to the regular push up on the floor. Your body gets used to holding itself in that plank-ish position as you work your way down. Rather than building up arm strength and then expecting the rest of your body to figure it out when you want to move to a regular push up.
I really like Coach John. His attitude is something is better than nothing — moving from I Can’t to I Can.
Yes!! I also adore Coach John, his videos have such a soothing, almost ASMR quality to them. And he makes everything feel so accessible and doable. High recommend!
Not sore but wronged. WRONGED. What a perfect description about this example and SO MANY OTHERS.
I came to the comments to make sure that Coach John Noel was mentioned, because he does a fantastic job of suggesting modifications that might work for you, and I think you will love his attitude that It Is Not Exercise, It Is Just Moving Around. And spotting the kid stuff used as a mic stand as he films his clips.
Hi, I have been thinking about this post since you wrote it and dithering about leaving you a comment. I would hate to sound bossy, or as if I’m oversimplifying a complex issue. But may I ask– what’s the appeal of this particular workout? It seems like anything that’s going to fit in 7 minutes with no equipment is destined to require a bunch of zipping from one bodyweight maneuver to another.
It seems like removing the emphases on zipping and on bodyweight maneuvers might be a better fit for your current levels of mobility and frustration. If you like the idea of being done speedily, then maybe consider a Stacy Sims SIT workout with kettlebell swings (or something in that vein). If you like the idea of getting stronger, maybe Casey Johnston’s LIFTOFF program would be an accessible way to tackle that goal without no kneeling required. If you wanted to work on mobility, that might be worth addressing independently.
I feel like the NYT packaged the 7-minute workout as The Solution. But maybe it’s actually The Problem here? Best wishes to you as you figure out something with a better joy:misery ratio.
The extremely short transitions in that workout are how they fit in so many exercises and make it seem like a more thorough workout. It’s kind of a cheat, in my opinion.
I like a standing workout and a wall push-up with lots of longer transitions. Have you ever been to a trainer who can help create a workout for your specific goals? Kind of daunting to meet with a pro, but in my experience, they end up being kindly guides.
Thanks for sharing how a knee replacement can feel after some time. That was good information to have. Also, the medical people saying you probably don’t need to kneel? Like, what?! Do they live on Earth, haha!