ACL tear 18 months post op, still issues, physical therapy questions

[notoriousben3]

i had my left acl replaced after tearing it playing basketball about a year and a half ago. i had my operation done in Sacramento with a doc who was supposidly super good, but he gave me no direction at all as far as physical therapy goes! he told me to do whatever leg exercises i would normally do as long as they dont hurt. He also told me to bike. i did that, felt good, then my knee started feelin weak after i was playin ball again about 6 months ago. stopped playin to recover another injury, and ive been biking a couple miles a day to school, but my knee still feels weak, like it could tear very easily if i were to try and be active. does anyone have good exercises for this injury? any recovery tips for me?

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[iliastolos]

Dear notoriousben3,
With such little info and no clinical evaluation, no exercises given online are guaranteed. I suggest you visit your MD but if you're not satisfied by him, go see another one or a physio. They will help you more than we can do from here for such a problem.
Take care!
ilias

[notoriousben3]

what?! i am very confused. what do you mean by little to no clinical evaluation? Also i am mainly trying to get some exercises on this forum, not a clinical evaluation. This is not my first surgery by any means, but my physical therapy has all been done outside of the hospital by private therapists. My doctors have had little to do with my actual rehab process, they only monitor how it looks later. I am not in a position to seek another doctor at the moment, and i would really just love to know what exercises anyone did that made their knee feel normal.

[pudding_bowl]

I think what Ilias is saying is that it's unethical for us to prescribe you exercises without examining your knee. What you have said about your knee 'feeling weak' and that you feel 'like it could tear' means that giving you exercises is a bad idea because you could injure yourself doing them.

There are some standard protocols for exercise following ACL reconstruct and if you like I could type them out for you, but they need to be adapted for you. The problem being that these protocols usually start shortly after your surgery which won't be true in your case.

You should consult a physio - post ACL rehab is a relatively common injury to appear at a practice and any musculoskeletal physio should be able to point you in the right direction. Also at 18 months I'd be expecting you to be feeling pretty awesome by now even with no physio. You need proper examination to identify the key issues that are preventing your rehab from progressing.

I'd like to give you exercises but need more information regarding your symptoms and what your doing when you get them. As said before you feel weak and like it could tear... It souds like your ability to stabilise your knee isn't brilliant and you need to dig into proprioreceptive exercises, which is best prescribed by a physio so they can show you how to do them properly as form during the exercises is quite important, even though the exercises can be simple (e.g. 1 leg sqat with a swiss ball).

Anyway, good luck with the rehab,
pudding