Knee injury, gym or no gym?

[BodyBuildingBrat]

I did something to my knee about a month ago. My doctor sent me to an ortho, and he said it was an overuse injury. Which I didn't really believe, because I've felt overuse before, and this was different. But I thought, oh well...I'll just wait for awhile and see how it goes. It had been 3 weeks, I decided I'd try doing something on it, so I did some boxing. Now it is hurting me more than it was in the first place. I've got another appt. but I just don't want to wait, I want to get back into the gym. Do you all think it's safe to do any lifting or cardio on an injured knee? Or should I continue to stay off of it. I'm just getting tired of missing the gym. I'm hoping for an earlier appt. so I can get in there ASAP.

This pain is weird, it's okay until I sit for long periods of time (like here at work). Then I try to stand up, and it kills me. The pain radiates all the way to my ankle. It also hurts when I put any sort of pressure on it, i.e. running, climbing or going down stairs, squatting, or even holding my leg out straight. Anyone else had something like this?

[Freddy]

Train around it. Train your upper body, and train your good leg with unilateral movements to prevent atrophy in the bad leg (yes, this works).

Some questions:

How do you train normally, what brought this on?

How do you squat? I'm guessing you must have bad squat form, let us help you with that.

Any other information you might want to share with us.

[BodyBuildingBrat]

Hey Freddy,

I don't know exactly what brought it on, but it was a leg workout and cardio session. I was trying out new machines, because we had to trade gyms. The gym I went to before offered a lot more. Anyway... so I was trying different machines to get a good feel of what I wanted to use. I lifted a bit too much on a leg press, but I was fine. Didn't hurt when I did the exercises. I went through the whole routine.....which was squats, leg press, deadlifts, leg extensions and hamstring curls. Then I did 20 minutes HIIT cardio on an eliptical trainer. Next morning, serious pain! I couldn't put pressure on it, and now it gets really stiff quite often.

With squat form, I really try to get my toes to not go over my feet, but I have hard time with it. I can't do a deep squat without assistance. I don't know why, it's like my muscles just stop. I've tried different stretches everything I can think of. Is that how it should be? Or is okay for the knees to go over the toes? I don't do the deep squats, I usually just go as far down as my muscles allow and then go back up again.