Natural Health & Fitness Forums

Dr. Gangemi — first, I'm really glad to have found you and your site.  You seem to espouse a lot of the same principles as I do AND you're a trained physician.

I'm a barefoot runner, obsessed with proper form and injury free for the bulk of my first year.  Then, a few weeks ago I made some bad decisions to run during a very stressful work-week and suffered a cramped-up right side resulting in stabbing, run-ending pain in my  lateral right knee.  I took two straight weeks off of running, but did lots of body-weight cross training stuff during the layoff to stay fit and rehab my muscle imbalances.

Tonight I had a failed 1-mile run, reminding me that my knee is nowhere near healed, and that I'm realistically looking at a couple months (not just a couple weeks) off.  I want to REST my ITB frictional issue, but don't want to be idle, either.  If it doesn't hurt, am I safe to gradually add strength training (air squats, lunges, burpees, functional fitness) over time while my knee heals?

Thanks in advance,

Chris