Upper Body Exercise During Injury

Needing some sort of exercise program for while I am recovering from the flare up of my meniscus that won't aggravate my knee further I decided to put together an upper body only exercise program.

In designing this I took several things into consideration.

First, what upper body exercises do not require stabilisation from my legs. Things like standing exercises are out for sure, and kneeling exercises like stability ball roll-outs or one arm dumbell rows may be a problem. After some experimentation I found that stuff from knees like one arm rows and stability ball roll outs work fine.

Second, I want to make sure to work more than just one muscle group. This can't be all pressing exercises. It needs to work chest, back, shoulders, and ideally core muscles as well. Of all these the core might be the hardest to work well since core exercises often require at least a partial use of legs.

Third, I want to get my heart rate up. Interval training is out for now so I need to design the workout in a metabolically challenging manner. Thus some sort of cardio strength training would be good.

With this in mind I decided on three supersets with no rest between exercises, but rest between the supersets would do the trick. Exercise wise I settled on the following:

With each superset go through all exercises without resting between them. When the superset is completed rest for one minute, and repeat.

Warm-up going through Superset 1 twice at 50% of weight you plan to use. Rest one minute after each time through.

SUPERSET 1

DB bench press x10

Pull-ups x8

SB rollout x12

(Go through Superset 3 times with 1 minute rest after each time)

SUPERSET 2

Seated DB shoulder press x10

Supermans x10, (3 second hold)

One-arm rows x8/side

(Go through Superset 3 times with 1 minute rest after each time)

SUPERSET 3

Incline DB press x10

Hanging leg raise x10

Reverse DB raise x10

(Go through Superset 3 times with 1 minute rest after each time)

Finish with stretching.