Why is a torn Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) such a big deal?

Check out ‘ACL Injuries? Not Getting Better” Here

Because of the roles of the ligament in the stability of the knee:

• Stopping anterior (forward) movement on the tibia (shin)
• Providing proprioception to the brain (a sense of the position of the knee in space)

These two roles can be influenced by many factors and these form the needs analysis for rehab.

The key areas to address are:

• Mobility
  • The knee can’t function correctly if it can’t move through the whole motion it was designed to do
• Output (Strength)
  • Hip/Pelvis: Glutes, adductors, core
  • Knee: Quads, hamstrings
  • Ankle: Calf

It’s the difference between good and great care

• Movement

  • All the strength in the world is meaningless if you can’t express what you do in the gym, on the field.
  • This “conversion” phase is critical to establish why the injury happened and therefore how can we reduce the risk of it happening again.
  • For example, an athlete like RTS needs to change direction violently at extreme speeds in order to be the player he is, if I hadn’t incorporated this into his rehab after gaining strength in the gym, he likely would have got hurt again.

• Capacity

  • The ability to do something once doesn’t make you elite, you need to be able to repeat that movement skill repeatedly as per the demands of the sport.

• Planning

  • Any trainer can just keep adding more weight, more reps until you’re fatigued. The ability to plan for and train the multiple qualities listed above to ensure they all improve and peak at the correct time requires detailed understanding of the principles of strength and conditioning-which my education and experience have both taught me.

You don’t want to go through this again do you?

Having a criteria based, planned and periodised program, rather than just relying on time will reduce your risk of re-injury by 4x (Kyritsis, Bahr, Landreau, Miladi & Witvrouw 2016).

Preparation is the key

Everything that helps your recovery after surgery will also help before surgery. In fact, just 10 sessions of directed exercise with a focus on strength and neuromuscular control improves the function of the knee, your pre-operative quality of life and the likelihood of getting back to previous levels of activity (Grindem et. al, 2015).

If you are looking for top quality assessment and treatment of your ACL injury then click the ‘book now’ button for Luke. Luke will be able to help you decide what path to take and provide you the high quality assessment and treatment that you need.