ACL Rehabilitation

The first two months of rehab are crucial to the healing process after ACL surgery.

You'll learn exercises that will help you:

• Regain strength in your knee.
• Control the quadriceps and motion of the knee.
• Start to improve flexibility in the knee.

Based on how severe your ACL injury was, you should attend PT at your local rehab center one to three times a week. You should also practice your exercises at home.

When you regain control of the quads and range of motion in the knee, the focus of rehab changes to:

• Gaining more strength in the quads.
• Improving control of the hamstrings and hips.
• Conditioning on the stationary bike or elliptical trainer.

At this time, your physical therapist might let you do more rehab on your own at the gym. You'll only need to come to the rehab center for routine check-ins.

Based on your progress, you'll start running as early as four months after ACL surgery.

Your physical therapist will work with you in a controlled setting on a treadmill to assess leg movement and function.

As fitness and performance improve, he or she might ask you to start low-level agility training. These basic footwork drills and simple direction changes will help you move on to sport-specific exercises.

Five to eight months after ACL surgery, your doctor and physical therapist will see if you're ready for jumping.

Phase 3 adds jumping and landing on two feet versus the low-level agility drills from phase 2. This may include simple exercises like jumping on flat ground to complex drills like jumping on and off boxes.

In this phase, it's vital to work on movement patterns to prevent future knee injuries.

Six to nine months post ACL surgery, you'll start drills that focus on single-leg jumps and landings, and sport-specific cutting.

Cutting drills involve speed and sudden changes in movement.

Your physical therapist will add cutting drills toward the last two months of rehab. By now, your injured leg should have the same strength and flexibility as your healthy leg.

The last phase of rehab takes place nine to 12 months after surgery. The focus of this phase is to steadily add sports movements at slow speeds and then faster speeds.

You'll start doing sport-specific drills with teammates.

If you play contact sports (like football, soccer, or basketball), your physical therapist can help design a plan to introduce contact slowly.

These are the common guidelines we suggest after ACL surgery. They may vary based on each person and their desired activities. Athletes should follow them closely to help return to play on schedule.