17-20 WEEKS POST OP

Hopefully after a few weeks or up to a month of running you will start to be feeling more confident in your knee. If not and you haven’t being able to run, then the positive is that you hopefully have got a good block of strength in your leg which will set you up to run when your ready. Throughout this stage of my rehabs, we have utilised a YMCA to do gymnastics which is evident in video below.

This has been a great tool for us as it allows me to twist, turn and implement changes of direction on tramps and springy floors, which won’t stress the knee as much as a grass surface would. This is something that will build confidence before you take it out onto the grass.

Once again, if you don’t have access to this you can start to move into small changes of direction, things like S runs which are with slight deviations off line in the shape of the letter S. These basic change of direction drills are important to start with, as the knee, your proprioception and the muscles in your leg will not be used to this and so it’s normal for the knee or your muscles to pull up a little bit sore. Just progress slowly each session and again the less is more approach can be applied as you don’t want to pull up too sore or the knee to blow up and then set you back to just running again.

Now that you are cutting and changing direction, you can also look to introduce deceleration into your runs but again keep it at the beginner’s level, as it is another stress on the knee. During this stage you should also be able to start building fitness through going for longer runs, which will build your endurance. This ensures that you do not get fatigued as quickly which is, especially in the first 6 months, when you don’t want to put extra stress on your graft by loading it when you are fatigued. This is also a good chance to start integrating heavier lifting in the gym to start getting some absolute strength back in your legs. These exercises will put stress on the knee and therefore rehabs may vary depending on whether you have had a hamstring or patellar graft as those areas might be affected doing specific exercises. If that is the case then my advice is to not push through the pain but rather change the exercise – there are a number of different important lifts that you can do to get a very similar and positive impact. We have used exercises illustrated in the video below such as Deadlifts, RDL’s and Step Ups.

Squats are a great exercise to do but as mentioned before can cause soreness in the knee depending on a number of factors, so once again it comes back to the individual and how your knee responds, thus changing the exercise to a deadlift is a good substitute.