No More Step Aerobics?

I went to the orthopedic surgeon today to ask him about my freaky crackling knees. The bad news is he said I had to stop doing step aerobics. It turns out my kneecaps are funky--move around a lot and look very off-center in the X-rays. He said I'm just built that way, so it's not a result of injury or whatever. Also, my quads have been weakened since the ankle injury (when I stopped doing much cardio and lower body work for a long while) and that made my already weak, wobbly knees even worse.

I asked him about exercise and what kind I do and he immediately said I should quit stepping. Like for good. I suggested a 4" step. Nope. And to quote him "step aerobics are the worst thing you could do with those knees." So I'm pretty bummed because stepping is absolutely my favorite form of exercise.

Anyway, the doc gave me a prescription for physical therapy. I was just seeing a PT recently for my ankle, so I can go back to the same one. It's a pain to schedule it in during the brief time my youngest is at nursery school (just 3 mornings a week) but I guess I'll have to do it again. He did say I could do other things like biking. And I told him I did kickboxing and at least he didn't nix that. I have gone ahead and ordered a MatStep which is a mat the same size as a step, so you can do step aerobics on a flat service (which would be basically like floor aerobics, but around the mat).

In other health news, I got my blood work results back today and it all came out normal, which is pretty much what I expected. However, I was again pretty tired yesterday and today--maybe just because I really cranked up the workouts this week and wore myself out.

Tomorrow I still plan to do my 4-Day Split Higher Intensity Step workout, maybe as a last hoorah for stepping. At least the cardio is fairly short and I can modify a little lower impact. I also just realized that I have it planned again for Monday, which seems awfully quick to do heavy weights for chest and back again, so I'm going to shuffle the rotation around in anticipation of being sore after tomorrow. I'll then put that on my Rotation Ideas document and repost it to the Fitness Tools Available for Download page.