Post ACL Reconstruction Plan

[momentofclarity]

Hey folks,

Great to come across this board in my online wandering. I was hoping for some advice from other riders who have gone through a full ACL reconstruction (with medial and lateral meniscus repair). I am 6 weeks post-op and able to ride my road bike on the turbo trainer comfortably for 30mins. Over the next 4-6 weeks I will be getting back to full weight bearing and looking to start doing some concerted quad/VMO strengthening both on and off the bike. Does anyone here have a specific plan they used during their recovery? I am currently living in Beijing, China and the quality of rehabilitation treatment is okay, but considerably behind western standards in terms of return to sport. It would be great to see a plan someone used in their recovery that I could bring to my surgeon and physio to tailor to my own recovery, but at this stage they are both lacking the experience I need to speed up my recovery.

Any advice is HUGELY appreciated, thanks in advance.

MoC

[raylugo]

So its been a few years since my last ACL recovery but I think I can help.

My therapist recommended only "spinning" during my recovery, no real effort on the stationary bike while the knee is healing. Also, lots of strength work on the hamstrings since they "stabilize" the knee and are the key to your knee staying good. I was advised to do two excercises daily, basically as much as tolerated, first lay on your stomach and do leg lifts with 3 to 5lb ankle weights. Similarly do leg lifts sitting on the end of the bed. always make sure you limit your range of motion not to "hyper-extend" the knee.

After I got my strength back, I was told to climb stairs, I did this first without weight and then slowly added weight. Again, basically as much as you can tolerate without pain and swelling.

This is all pretty mild stuff, but I did all of this, increased my time on the bike (spinning), did the leg lifts, climbed stairs for a couple of months.

Once I had my "strength" and stability back I added more to my schedule, added resistance, but always high cadence.

About 4 to 5 months after the surgery I did squats, but again I used a stability ball and made sure that my butt barely touched the ball so I did not go too deep.

Once you start building up time and strength, I say get on the bike and again be careful. Start out slow and deliberate, increase time, frequency.

Its worked for me, I hope it helps you

Ray

[spdntrxi]

Adding to the above .. I personally did a lot of spinning. Used those tension rubber bands and funny crab like walking all over the place. Lots of balance on 1 leg work on those rounded bottom standing type boards . No squats for me.. I'm minus 80% on my meniscus ..and I can hear things in my knee to this day


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