r/ACL

Would love to know the above! Especially at varied stages of ur rehab. I’m 15 days post op and i feel like im not doing enough as i feel pretty good physically but just very lazy. I’m supposed to do exercises 3 times per day but im doing them for 5 min at a time. It feels .. easy? Maybe that’s why I’m not motivated. But i also don’t want to push myself as I’m not allowed to at this stage.

I’m currently 50 days post injury and 15 days post-op from ACL + meniscus surgery, and honestly I feel like I’m starting to get bitter and I really don’t want that to happen.

Normally I’m a very active person and sports have always been one of the biggest mental outlets in my life. I usually train 5–7 times a week, so losing my normal routine, movement, my sport and entire sport season has affected me mentally way more than I expected.

I know people usually don’t mean harm, but I feel like nobody around me has any situational awareness anymore. Since my injury and surgery, I’ve noticed how many friends immediately turn every conversation back to themselves.

For example:

I opened up about gaining weight after losing my mobility and someone immediately started talking about their own diet and weight loss.

I have talked about sleeping horribly after surgery and someone complained about getting “only” 7 hours of sleep.

A friend keeps sending me messages about how they “can barely walk” because of muscle soreness while I’m literally relearning how to walk after knee surgery.

And the worst part is that I KNOW they probably don’t mean it maliciously. But right now it just makes me irrationally angry. I feel like I would never behave like that toward someone recovering from surgery or losing an entire sports season.

I’m also struggling mentally with:

-sudden loss of independence
-weight gain
-poor sleep
-isolation
-fear of returning to my sport
-feeling like nobody truly understands how mentally exhausting ACL rehab is

Did anyone else become extremely sensitive to other people’s complaining during early ACL recovery? How did you stop yourself from becoming resentful or emotionally exhausted by everyone around you?

I think I’m mostly just looking for peer support from people who actually understand this process. I’ve honestly started wondering whether I just have bad friends or if this is normal and I’m expecting too much from people. Even my own sport team has gone mostly silent.

I’m on day 10 after my second ACL surgery (with LET). I’m dealing with one really specific issue that hasn’t improved and I’m trying to understand if this is normal or if something is off.
Most of my recovery is slowly progressing, but this has stayed completely constant:

Severe pain on the outside of my knee / lower IT band area (right near the knee, not the hip)

Feels like a tight pulling / “tug of war” sensation

it Has been constant and not improving for about 6 days

Everything else is getting better, but this spot is not
I’m doing cryotherapy almost all day and it’s the only thing that helps a bit

Ice helps slightly, but meds (ibuprofen, gabapentin, cyclobenzaprine) barely touch it

Oxycodone only helps a little and doesn’t last long
Stretching doesn’t help and sometimes makes it worse

Pain is significantly worse at night and I’m only getting ~2 hours of sleep per night

My hip on the same side has also flared up badly (this happened after my first ACL surgery too, likely from how I’m forced to lay down for long periods).

This is also my second ACL surgery, and I don’t remember this specific persistent lateral knee pain last time.

I wake up repeatedly from the pain and it’s been emotionally and physically draining

I know post-op pain is expected, but this feels very localized and unrelenting compared to everything else improving. Has anyone experienced this after ACL + LET around this stage? Did it eventually settle or was there something that actually helped?

So glad I found this group, but I’m maybe a little slow to think about supplements to support healing and recovery. My doc didn’t recommend anything special other than making sure to get adequate protein in my diet. I’m 51F and I’m 8 weeks post ACL + meniscus surgery. I had 6 weeks NWB, and have just started walking without crutches. I’d love to hear what you all are taking!

Hi yall!! I’ve been following this group since ‘23 when I tore my left ACL and it was sooo helpful to have a support group to run to haha. I’m back with a right ACL tear this time around. Gutted. But had a very successful recovery using my quad so did the same thing this time around. Sending good healing vibes to everyone.. just had my surgery today ❤️‍🩹

Hi everyone,

For about two years now, I’ve been dealing with intermittent pain, sensations of instability, and chronic clicking in my left knee. While it has never completely stopped me from walking, it’s still quite a nuisance in my daily life because I’m very active and workout a lot.

This issue didn't start after a recent trauma or ACL surgery, but I did have some impact injuries on this knee in the past (skateboarding, falls with swelling/edema). My knee occasionally becomes painful during flexion, specifically on the inner side, just above the VMO insertion.

The feeling of instability is there almost every day. As soon as I put a bit of flexion on it, the knee clicks—sometimes loudly, sometimes not—and I can actually feel it shifting. After a period of immobility, I feel a tightness when I start walking again, which disappears after a few steps once my knee clicks and seems to "reset" properly. This unstable feeling subsides during my leg days, likely because they help fire up my quadriceps, and the improvement usually lasts for a day or two after the workout.

Activities that trigger the instability:

• The rowing machine: really worsens that uncomfortable feeling of instability.
• Going up/down stairs and step-ups (Poliquin, Peterson...): very difficult without a thorough warm-up.
• Leg extensions with zero weight (bodyweight only): I get instability and a loud click/clunk at terminal extension. It's a very unpleasant movement, and my knee just feels weak. Curiously, if I use the leg extension machine at the gym, I can load it heavy and get great quad/VMO activation and contraction with no clicking at all.
• Running: causes absolutely no issues (I assume because there's very little knee flexion involved).

While doing some research, I came across Quad AMI (Arthrogenic Muscle Inhibition). I’ve noticed a real struggle to voluntarily contract my left quad, especially the VMO. My right quad is more muscular, which could just be because I'm right-handed, but what really concerns me is the difference in muscle recruitment. When I voluntarily flex my right quad, my VMO gets rock hard, whereas the left one stays relatively soft/mushy.

I brought this up with a physical therapist and a sports medicine doctor, but they didn’t seem too concerned, probably because I’m still fully functional. However, I’m worried that if this is indeed AMI and I keep working out through it, I might cause irreversible damage due to the lack of proper patellar tracking from the VMO.

What do you guys think? Does this sound like AMI to you, or could it be something else (patellofemoral pain syndrome, meniscus tear...)?

I'm pretty stressed about this, so thanks a lot in advance for your insights!

Hey guys. I’m 4 weeks post acl and meniscus repair surgery. I’ve been struggling for weeks now trying to bend my knee. It’s stuck at 40 degrees flexion. It feels like something is stuck there and my knee first needs to pop up before it can bend.

My physio is concerned with the lack of bending and I have another appointment with her tomorrow.

Might be good to mention that due to the severity of my injury when it happened all the way to surgery, I couldn’t put any weight on it and was on crutches for 6-7 weeks before I had surgery. So my thighs and I’m guessing everything else surrounding my knee is really tight.

Just looking for some other people that have done through similar!! I really don’t want to have an MUA (my surgeon mentioned it in my 2 weeks post op appointment) so I’m hoping with efforts from my physio we can get it bending.

My physio and surgeon have told me not to elevate my leg at home, and I’m trying to understand why. Everywhere I’ve looked, elevation is generally recommended to help manage swelling. When I asked my physio, her reasoning was, ‘You don’t want your knee to be bent all the time later, do you?’ I’d really appreciate any suggestions — I was actually considering elevating without their consent.

Hey guys, I’m about 1.5 weeks post injury. I have a fully torn acl with a sprain to my mcl. I was feeling really good the last couple of days and was walking around with no crutches and just my brace. Well I think I got too ahead of myself and when I tried going down the stairs, I put my bad leg down first on the step and bending my bad knee to lower my other foot down to the next step. OWWWW. I immediately fell onto the steps and had the craziest shooting pain in my quad. This happened this morning and I’m still so sore. I had no idea my muscles would weaken this fast. Or maybe my quad is still shut down from the injury? Not sure but oh my did it hurt. Almost felt like I pulled it right there on the stairs.

Lesson learned, I will only be using my good foot to lower down to the next step and I am not back in crutches. RIP to me. Currently in bed icing my quad, my knee doesn’t even hurt smh.

Has anyone else experienced shooting pain like I’m describing? It’s right in the rear drop part of my quad. I have PT next week for prehab and I’m worried my muscles will be too weak to work with if this is how weak they are after 1.5 weeks.

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for some advice on whether I should go ahead with my ACL reconstruction this summer or postpone it until next year.

I completely tore my ACL and had a Grade 2 MCL tear in early March. I’m a competitive soccer player and was hoping to play at university, but unfortunately I’ve had to let that dream go for now.

My ACL surgery is currently scheduled for July 24. The issue is that I’ll be leaving for university in mid to late August, only about 4–5 weeks after surgery. I don’t know exactly where I’m going yet, but there’s a good chance I’ll be living more than 6 hours away from home and will need to be fully independent.

I really want to get the surgery done as soon as possible so I can start recovering and eventually return to soccer. However, my family thinks I should wait until I come back home next May so that I can recover with more support.

To make things more complicated, about three weeks ago my knee gave out badly while i stepped weird. I ended up going to the hospital by ambulance. They said I likely aggravated the injury and may have worsened my MCL injury.

I’m stuck because,

• If I have surgery in July, I can start recovery sooner, but I’ll be managing the early stages of rehab while adjusting to university on my own.
• If I wait until next May, I’ll have more support at home, but that delays recovery by almost a full year.

Has anyone here had ACL surgery right before starting university or living away from home? Do you think it’s realistic to manage the first few months of recovery independently, or would postponing be the smarter decision?

Any advice or personal experiences would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Hi everyone. I’m currently 5 weeks post-op from ACL reconstruction (BTB autograft), medial and lateral meniscus repairs, and IT band lateral tenodesis in my right knee.

I’ve been seeing a lot of posts online saying the first 2-3 months of ACL rehab are supposed to be very painful, especially during PT, but that honestly hasn’t been my experience so far. The only exercises that cause MINOR knee pain are goblet squats (while holding onto a bar for support) and step ups. Other than that, I’m mainly doing straight leg raises, stretches for hamstrings/calves/quads, glute bridges, clamshells, and unweighted stationary bike work. My swelling hasn’t subsided at all.

My PT sessions also feel pretty minimal compared to what I see online. My PT mostly has me go through exercises independently while she tends to other patients. There’s no massage/manual therapy, knee manipulation, scraping, etc., which I see a lot of ACL patients mention on social media. At this point, I honestly feel like I could do almost everything at home besides the stationary bike.

Functionally, I can walk without much of a limp now. Going downstairs is still pretty painful and difficult, while going upstairs is somewhat easier but still not comfortable.

For people who went through this stage around weeks 5-6, does this sound normal? Did your rehab become much harder later on, or should I be concerned that my PT is too conservative/passive? I want to get back to basketball shape as soon as medically possible, and my PT knows this, which is why I’m concerned.

I'm 18F, I used to be very active and played rugby. Now I have a torn ACL, physiotherapy is very boring and I don't like cycling at all. Any tips/personal experience to do appropriate and useful exercise without risk? Or any mental tip to get past the boredom of physio thankss

Heyo! Hit 5 weeks post op and tomorrow if my first day of work back. Acl, meniscus tears, graft, let band. Still on crutches, wbat. Id say maybe another week and I’ll try one crutch. I’m a tattoo artist so I will be sitting the majority of the time.
I just did a lil pre-run of work, drove there, got everything organized and figured out how I was going to be sitting while working on my clients.

I am extremely tired. The past few days I have been extremely slow and sleepy and weak. I do all my exercises blah blah, and Id say the only thing different with this recovery is I have been sitting and not getting up and down as much as I did when it was injured, just been babying it. And i think thats why I am feeling extremely tired, because now I’m in work mode again, my brain was like “come on lets go” and jumped back into trying to get stuff done around the house and for myself. But since the past few weeks have been super lowkey and I havent done alot other than sit on my couch, its just kinda exhausting doing anything.

I have the ambition, I am so excited to get back to work, but man I am so extremely tired and I dont want to hit a wall once I am back full time next week.

Does anyone have any recommendations or advice on staying awake, not feeling tired while doing work and stuff? Like yeah theres coffee, but I can only drink so much before I’m done and stick to water. Im not a big sparkling water person so I hate those bublrs and celcius drinks, I dont drink energy drinks but a monster or something might help. And no I dont do coke lmao
Like should I dip my face in water in the AM? Or any weird ways that help you wake up and feel ready for the day? Anything to make me feel like I’m not just gunna give up and curl back into bed.

Tldr: extremely tired and need ways to jump start my day i guess

I couldn’t find too much so I thought I’d add my own stuff incase it helps someone.

Initial surgery quad graft ACL and ALL recon Feb/2025 - cleared RTS in Feb 2026 and returned to sport played for about 10 weeks and retore ACL and both meniscus.

Had stage 1 revision yesterday which consisted of hardware removal, artificial bone graft to fill previous tunnels as surgeon said they were slightly off he also repaired, removed torn ACL and repaired my medial meniscus.

He said he is going to do the lateral meniscus in the next stage surgery as there isn’t any point doing the lateral meniscus while I don’t have an ACL which was interesting to me but he works on elite athletes so I trust his judgement with this.

This surgery is definitely more painful than ACL only for me so far just around the joint lines and the knee as a whole, I am WBAT which I found interested but locked 0-90 I was convinced I’d be NWB for 6 weeks but surgeon is happy for me to WBAT which I will follow his advice.

He advised artificial bone grafts are really good and it saves harvesting and having extra pain especially since it will mostly get drilled out again.

Have an appointment in 2 weeks to follow up.

This was done in Australia

Happy to answer any questions as I could have missed stuff, I’ve had a lot of pain relief!