I wish I had more to report, but I feel like week 9 was the same as week 7 & 8. My ROM has pretty much stayed the same, and no change in how my scars look. Recap is below!

Week 9 Summary

• Better strength & Flexibility
• Different exercises in PT
• Still a little IT band pain on left side of pain, comes and goes
• Doing more in Yoga – still careful, but am surprised by how much more I can do! I only wish I had more time to go to class
• Have been doing headstands AND handstands, no problems 🙂
• Knee is feeling more stable
• Still a little swelling in front of knee, which prohibits me from getting past 147 degrees flexion – any tips on how to get past this?? I am icing 1-2 times per day.

• Workout classes at work! A mix of pilates, boxing, yoga, standing core work, etc. Next week is total body conditioning. I feel so out of shape during the classes! 2x a week
• Stretching after every workout
• Yoga – Slow Power Flow & Bikram (1x a week, if I can find time)

I chatted with my PT the other day, and I asked him about running. I was curious as to why 16 weeks was when they had people start running, versus 12 weeks. I really just wanted to know the structure of the knee and healing process that the decision was based on. Apparently, 16 weeks is good for the “average” person. There are people who recover quicker, and they can start sooner. Then there are other people who have a tough recovery, so they don’t run till later on. Since my surgeon/PT center bases everything on studies, they opted to go for the “average” recovery timeline. The reasoning being: A while back, a soccer player recovered from his ACL surgery in 90 days. 90 days! (study info can be found here and here) So, naturally, more studies were done, and the recovery process was pushed to see if other people could really recover in 90 days. What the studies found was this: not everyone is a professional athlete, so 90 days might be a little much to shoot for. LOL. Apparently not everyone is an athlete (prior to surgery), have personal trainers and physical therapy most likely every day or the money/resources to recover as quickly as a professional athlete (no shit). Also, the survey found that people’s grafts were stretching out/more issues arose when the recovery timeline of 6 months they were shooting for was being pushed shorter.

So, even though my PT said my leg is most likely strong enough to run/jump now, he said “better safe than sorry.” Since I am at the 9 week mark when my graft has probably stabilized, there is still a chance of it stretching out (6-10 weeks is the time when your ACL is technically still healing/stabilizing). And I would rather be safe than sorry and have to go through that painful surgery again! However, if I accidentally jog to my car like i did last week or jump up and down when I am excited – I won’t sweat it 🙂

Until next time!

Improve your range of motion, increase your strength, and feel more confident post-surgery with a 2 month yoga progression plan.