ACL Recovery Log – 6 Month Post Op Update

I can’t believe 6 months have passed since my surgery. Like usual, not much has changed since my last update. Overall, my knee feels the same: strong but weird. I’ve resigned to the fact that my knee won’t ever feel normal like my other knee. It’s just different now. It feels tighter because it is. I still have a slight clicking when I extend my leg and not sure if that will ever go away either. 

Biking 

I’ve been biking a lot! I feel like my mountain biking fitness is equal to my pre-injury fitness at this point. A few weeks ago, I did a big ride at Elm Ridge in the Catskills. It was about 13 miles (? because of some GPS discrepancies) with 1500 ft of climbing. It was epic. We rode one of my favorite routes there which includes some technical downhill (my favorite) and super flowy trails (also my favorite). The next day my left leg was sore, probably due to some overcompensation issues. But my knee held up fine.

Strength workouts

I’ve been continuing with my strength workouts, but I cut them back to 2x a week instead of the 4x a week I was doing previously. Since I’ve been increasing my mountain biking mileage, I want to give my legs a break. I still do about 3-4 total strength workouts per week (including upper body) in addition to all the biking, so I’m feeling pretty strong! 

Gyms opened this past Monday for the first time in 5 months.  I scheduled a personal training session this week with my trainer after discussing what I wanted to work on. We did some hamstring curls, split stance RDLs, single leg squats, step ups, box jumps (up and down), sliding lateral lunges and some single leg hops. It felt great! I’m so glad I have someone watching my form during my workouts again!

Running

Running has been non-existent since my last day of PT. A month ago I did a run/walk for about 20 minutes which felt OK…not the greatest. Since then I had been putting it off until my knee felt a little better (also just not motivated to run to be honest). Today I finally had access to a treadmill at the gym so I did a run/walk for 15 minutes and made it a mile. My knee felt a little weird as expected. I would like to get back into it eventually, but why force it?