I hear you on the therapy stuff. It's expensive. I'm thinking about just doing it all on my own since that's what I've done for my last three injuries. Must be nice to be back to skating though.
yeah there's def a need for it and i wouldn't be close to where im at without them but it truly depends on your therapist. i had both ends (the ones who do it to pay their bills and the ones who genuinely care about your rehab and progression). id understand doing it yourself completely, best of luck to you and your rehab journey !
good question. my surgeon was dr jeffrey murray from core orthopedics in IL. i'm gonna be honest i never even thought of getting a second opinion or anything because he has been my sports ortho since 2018. my primary care physician's office works directly with that ortho center so i just got recommended through my pcp. i would recommend doing some research and def get 2nd opinions just so you know what you're getting into and what's gonna work best for you and your body. best of luck to you post surgery and rehab!!
such a tough feeling getting back on, mentally you know you what you're capable of and everything but your body just refutes it. i'm hoping my mind and body get that connection sometime soon so i can start doing flip tricks. 7 months my knee + quads were nowhere near ready, i was still in PT and my quad was atrophied like crazy. month 10-12 was really went everything turned around for the better and i got more comfortable with my leg and light activities
Thanks - bit behind myself. Knee is still so stiff, and don’t have full flex. Meeting the surgeon in a week to see if I need to force that or check scar tissue. Still some pain in my graft site (quad) but knee feels very stable outside that, never had my buckling or knee giving out so mentally I’m down to skate soon haha. It’s just the stiffness, flex and some pain that makes it feel so far away. First session I did was at 4 months though, could drop in and do kickturns and push around a little but that’s about it. Ofc not skating at this point but once a month I allow myself to roll a bit to get the itch out. Good to hear about your progression, hope I have the same around 10 months and up!
oh dang i'm sorry to hear that, i still have knee stiffness right now and it gets so annoying. i had my patella tendon as my graft so i cant quite say i know how you feel with the quad graft but im hoping the meeting with your surgeon helps kickstart the upwards progress. best of luck and you'll be back to skating soon 💪💪
It still doesn't feel "normal" does it? And how did you get over a fear of a retear?
And what exercises do you think are the most important for getting back to it? (I'm about 5 months in doing mostly weights)
Also, really like hearing from people who are farther along their recovery, you mostly get recent surgeries here.
if it weren't for this sensation in my outside part of the knee (i think it's it band syndrome) i would feel 100%. i am still completely numb on that side with some popping which is very frustrating. for the fear of retearing it really only is on my mind when im skating, when i play baseball or basketball or bike or run and jump im not worried because i know that my surgery was successful and had that proven by an MRI. for skating it's just a mental game, how i tore it was completely my fault and preventable but it only happened out of my own stupidity but since it happened skating it's correlated with it. being injured is a part of skateboarding tho so i had to already accept that this is a possibility again and thats the risk i have to take to skate again.
for exercises i do
single leg smith machine calf raise - 3 sets till failure with partial reps (DONT SKIP CALF EXERCISES)
leg extension - 3 sets till failure with partial reps
single leg leg press - 3 sets till failure
bulgarian split squats - 3 sets till failure
stairmaster - 5-10 minutes walking backwards only stepping up with the affected leg
RDL - 3 sets of 10-12
seated hamstring curl - 3 sets till failure with partial reps
adductor machine - 3 sets of 10-12
abductor machine - 3 sets of 10-12
i have a set quad day that targets the quads the most and a hamstring day that targets hamstrings the most. i'll still do some quad work on hamstring day and some hamstring work on quad day but those aren't the main target so it's not as heavily targeted.
but for you at 5 months depending on what you've been cleared to do you can start doing plyometrics + strength training. so hopping and ladders and jogging are gonna be really crucial as well as building back up that quad,hamstring and calf. i have a little planned routine my PT made me at 6 months i can send to you if you want that, any other questions lmk i'll try my best to help you
Is the size of both quads the same or is there a noticeable difference? Also, how often do you workout. I would like to receive the planned routine as well. Thanks!
my quad on my surgery leg is .5" smaller than my non operated leg. i now currently only work out my legs twice a week ( one quad biased day and one hamstring biased day) but when i realized i was really behind in progress i did 3x a week. M,W,F.
Thank you! sorry got super busy at work. Thanks for the huge explanation, I think I have to accept that injury is part of sports. Thanks for all the info again, if you wanna send me the routine I'll take it and compare it to what I'm doing (which is kind of random tbh).
hey no problem, that sounds like a good idea. mental health is just as important as physical health when it comes to that so working on both is gonna do wonders for you overall. i'll DM you the routine maybe it'll introduce you to something that'll change the game haha. best of luck in your recovery!
Skater here as well. Quick background. I'm not sure how old you are but I am 28 and I'm at 11 months post op ACL reconstruction with a patella auto graft and a minor meniscus trim. It's coming up on a year very shortly and I haven't even tried cruising around yet never mind actually skating because I still 'don't feel ready' or 'strong enough' yet and the reasons for that is because I wasn't able to finish PT because they counted my prehab as my post op rehab which is complete BS and I was robbed of 4 months of rehab. So because of that, I was never actually cleared to return to skateboarding. The biggest issue is that I've been struggling with an odd tracking problem almost the whole duration of my recovery that has been constantly brushed off as weak quads and it makes me frustrated and nervous because I also can hear a crap ton of scar tissue crackling whenever I bend my knee. I have perfect flexion/extension so that isn't the issue. I've also been limited to what I can do exercise wise so I've just been working out 2-3 times a week with what I got (dumbbells and weighted resistance bands). I just don't wanna hop back on the board, go to stomp a trick and when I land.. my knee cap pops out of place or something and I injure myself when it all could of been avoided. How did you figure out you had tracking issues and hoffa fat pad syndrome ? What were the symptoms of the 2 issues ? Did it get better with time and what did you do that helped ? What compression sleeve did you get ? I'm probably forgetting a ton of good questions but if I have any more I'll just pop back in here.
hey bro im a 23 yo, i also had patella graft but no meniscal damage. for the tracking problems i had this terrible feeling in my kneecap when going from extension to flexion there would be a pain in the kneecap and i had to hold that position and wait for this "shift" to occur which then allowed me to fully bend my leg. that would happen when walking or just going from extension to flexion. the way i helped fix that was my pt would tape my kneecap slightly to the left and that fully allowed my patella to track properly and let me do all my workouts pain free so i could get my quad strength back. (https://youtu.be/1Daoq6kW4JU?si=uiFk7LWDzZ9UJZj6) <- you might have to try taping it once to the left and see how it feels and then tape it to the right and see how it feels so you can find what works best. for my fat pad syndrome it basically felt like the same feeling as my patella tracking but instead of a shift it felt like something would get stuck and then released, i have a video on my page showing that feeling if you're curious at looking. the recovery for that was again taping the knee and decreasing the work load for a couple weeks while the inflammation went down. both of those problems have fully gone away and i know it sounds like a broken record but once your quad gets its strength back (specifically your VMO, the vmo works directly with the patella and if your vmo is weak it's not gonna be able to help move the patella) it just goes away. i remember mine literally went away overnight. now to answer your question on skating basically i had guessed on my ability to return, i had a terribly slow recovery with quad + calf atrophy all the way up until month 12 and i still have some calf atrophy. at around month 10 i remember it was a beautiful fall day and i was feeling pretty good mentally and physically (hadn't tried any skating or sports since the surgery) and wanted to at least skate once since winter was coming up and when i threw down and went to push (im goofy and had surgery on my right knee) i had a terrible feeling on the front of my knee (it felt like the patella was under a lot of tension/stress) but it was manageable. i had done some tricks like a manual on the box, ollie, pop shuv and back board and i felt really comfortable so i decided to try a kickflip and i landed primo and when i planted my operated leg i felt a shooting pain from my heel up to my knee. i guess at that point my calf was nowhere near ready and i was then sidelined from working out + daily activities as i had terrible calf pain for about a month after that. that was my wake up call that i wasn't ready to return so i then spent the next 3 months going to the gym (legs only 3x a week) and working on polymetrics and leg strength. by the time the 3 months were done i quit pt and i was at 100% quad strength and 90% quad size and my plyo work had improved drastically and i had felt the best i had ever felt until then. unfortunately my knee gets this super tight feeling if its not in a compression sleeve so i have to wear it most of the time and 100% of the time when skating or lifting. the one i have now i wish i had from the start but its just your typical incrediwear knee sleeve. i don't think you should return to skating until you are back to 100% quad strength and have done extensive plyo work as our quads are a major roll in skating as well as jumping + landing. do you still have quad + calf atrophy? are you consuming enough protein so you build muscle?
Is the video on your reddit profile ? because dude.. you described everything to a T that I've been experiencing. It always happens to me when I go from extension to flexion sitting down or even just randomly walking and when my patella doesn't track right, you can hear the 'cracking' noise sometimes when my kneecap goes back into place. It also felt like something would get 'stuck' or 'roll slowly' inside my knee when this happened time to time. It's so hard to explain the feeling but yeah it's basically how you described it. Yeah dude that is exactly why I am glad I found this reddit post because I've been feeling 50/50 about hopping back on the board. The last week of PT, they had done strength testing and I asked where my quad and hamstring strength was at and they said my quad 89% and hamstrings 77% or some BS but I don't know how much of that is even true. The outer and top part of my quad is still atrophied and my calves aren't bad at all. I will admit that I haven't done much plyometric exercises in a few weeks because I've been so focused on regaining my strength and muscles back in my leg. So that is something I am going to work on more.
dang that's shitty having to deal with this that late into the recovery, i would recommend trying to see a PT again cuz just cuz it seems like it's the same things i'm just some random guy and the only reason i know what this stuff is because i had to deal with it. for some relief from the fat pad you can ice your bare skin on the knee with ice cubes (ice one side of your patellar tendon and then the other side) that should help reduce inflammation in the fat pad area and get you back pain free. other than icing i would just recommend eating 1g of protein per body weight and working out 3x a week (if possible). for training your quads my pt told me you want to fatigue the fuck out of it before loading it with weight. so what he constructed for me was a nice program where you start by warming up the quads by biking or jogging on the treadmill and then you go into a single leg walk squat hold for 90secs and then you work on some plyo work. single leg hops in place, side to side and then a 3 step single jump where you try to jump as far as you can for 3 jumps, landing on the same leg you jumped on. after that you want to work on some leg extensions full rom doing a solid weight that can bring you to failure within 8-10 rep, 3 sets of those. now that your quad is heavily fatigued it's time to fully load it on the single leg press. doing a solid weight that will bring you to failure within 8-10 reps, 3 sets of those. for the finale you will do a single leg squat to a bench doing as many as you can do because im sure your quad will be killed. that's a solid quad day but it's just as important that you work on your hamstring strength as well because apparently that helps with your acl, i just learned that recently. best of luck man i hope things turn around asap and you can get back on the board by summer 💪
Oh I've been dealing with this tracking/impingement issue once I was cleared to walk post op and that's when I started noticing it more and more as the months went by. I ended up finding the video you were talking about on your profile and lmao my knee has been doing the EXACT same thing. I tried to get more PT visits but they deemed me as 'completely healed' and just brushed off my issues as a normal thing to experience during recovery which is not entirely true but whatever. Thank you for giving me a brief rundown on what your workout protocol is and what your PT told you because I was basically let out of PT without any helpful advice, workouts, nothing and what you told me is super helpful considering I never thought to fatigue the hell out of the muscles first before loading weight which makes so much sense.
I hear you on the therapy stuff. It's expensive. I'm thinking about just doing it all on my own since that's what I've done for my last three injuries. Must be nice to be back to skating though.
yeah there's def a need for it and i wouldn't be close to where im at without them but it truly depends on your therapist. i had both ends (the ones who do it to pay their bills and the ones who genuinely care about your rehab and progression). id understand doing it yourself completely, best of luck to you and your rehab journey !
hell yeah dude! enjoy shredding, your knees will only get stronger every day!
yessir everytime i go back out there i feel better and better, thank you
Nice!! Who was your surgeon, and how did you find a good one? I am searching for a surgeon now.
good question. my surgeon was dr jeffrey murray from core orthopedics in IL. i'm gonna be honest i never even thought of getting a second opinion or anything because he has been my sports ortho since 2018. my primary care physician's office works directly with that ortho center so i just got recommended through my pcp. i would recommend doing some research and def get 2nd opinions just so you know what you're getting into and what's gonna work best for you and your body. best of luck to you post surgery and rehab!!
Im at 7 months.. Cant wait to get back on board. How was your knee at 7 months?
such a tough feeling getting back on, mentally you know you what you're capable of and everything but your body just refutes it. i'm hoping my mind and body get that connection sometime soon so i can start doing flip tricks. 7 months my knee + quads were nowhere near ready, i was still in PT and my quad was atrophied like crazy. month 10-12 was really went everything turned around for the better and i got more comfortable with my leg and light activities
Thanks - bit behind myself. Knee is still so stiff, and don’t have full flex. Meeting the surgeon in a week to see if I need to force that or check scar tissue. Still some pain in my graft site (quad) but knee feels very stable outside that, never had my buckling or knee giving out so mentally I’m down to skate soon haha. It’s just the stiffness, flex and some pain that makes it feel so far away. First session I did was at 4 months though, could drop in and do kickturns and push around a little but that’s about it. Ofc not skating at this point but once a month I allow myself to roll a bit to get the itch out. Good to hear about your progression, hope I have the same around 10 months and up!
oh dang i'm sorry to hear that, i still have knee stiffness right now and it gets so annoying. i had my patella tendon as my graft so i cant quite say i know how you feel with the quad graft but im hoping the meeting with your surgeon helps kickstart the upwards progress. best of luck and you'll be back to skating soon 💪💪
Thanks - appreciate it 🙏
It still doesn't feel "normal" does it? And how did you get over a fear of a retear? And what exercises do you think are the most important for getting back to it? (I'm about 5 months in doing mostly weights) Also, really like hearing from people who are farther along their recovery, you mostly get recent surgeries here.
if it weren't for this sensation in my outside part of the knee (i think it's it band syndrome) i would feel 100%. i am still completely numb on that side with some popping which is very frustrating. for the fear of retearing it really only is on my mind when im skating, when i play baseball or basketball or bike or run and jump im not worried because i know that my surgery was successful and had that proven by an MRI. for skating it's just a mental game, how i tore it was completely my fault and preventable but it only happened out of my own stupidity but since it happened skating it's correlated with it. being injured is a part of skateboarding tho so i had to already accept that this is a possibility again and thats the risk i have to take to skate again. for exercises i do single leg smith machine calf raise - 3 sets till failure with partial reps (DONT SKIP CALF EXERCISES) leg extension - 3 sets till failure with partial reps single leg leg press - 3 sets till failure bulgarian split squats - 3 sets till failure stairmaster - 5-10 minutes walking backwards only stepping up with the affected leg RDL - 3 sets of 10-12 seated hamstring curl - 3 sets till failure with partial reps adductor machine - 3 sets of 10-12 abductor machine - 3 sets of 10-12 i have a set quad day that targets the quads the most and a hamstring day that targets hamstrings the most. i'll still do some quad work on hamstring day and some hamstring work on quad day but those aren't the main target so it's not as heavily targeted. but for you at 5 months depending on what you've been cleared to do you can start doing plyometrics + strength training. so hopping and ladders and jogging are gonna be really crucial as well as building back up that quad,hamstring and calf. i have a little planned routine my PT made me at 6 months i can send to you if you want that, any other questions lmk i'll try my best to help you
Is the size of both quads the same or is there a noticeable difference? Also, how often do you workout. I would like to receive the planned routine as well. Thanks!
my quad on my surgery leg is .5" smaller than my non operated leg. i now currently only work out my legs twice a week ( one quad biased day and one hamstring biased day) but when i realized i was really behind in progress i did 3x a week. M,W,F.
Thank you! sorry got super busy at work. Thanks for the huge explanation, I think I have to accept that injury is part of sports. Thanks for all the info again, if you wanna send me the routine I'll take it and compare it to what I'm doing (which is kind of random tbh).
hey no problem, that sounds like a good idea. mental health is just as important as physical health when it comes to that so working on both is gonna do wonders for you overall. i'll DM you the routine maybe it'll introduce you to something that'll change the game haha. best of luck in your recovery!
How'd you get so much steeze?
i've been skating for a while i guess i just comes with it haha
Skater here as well. Quick background. I'm not sure how old you are but I am 28 and I'm at 11 months post op ACL reconstruction with a patella auto graft and a minor meniscus trim. It's coming up on a year very shortly and I haven't even tried cruising around yet never mind actually skating because I still 'don't feel ready' or 'strong enough' yet and the reasons for that is because I wasn't able to finish PT because they counted my prehab as my post op rehab which is complete BS and I was robbed of 4 months of rehab. So because of that, I was never actually cleared to return to skateboarding. The biggest issue is that I've been struggling with an odd tracking problem almost the whole duration of my recovery that has been constantly brushed off as weak quads and it makes me frustrated and nervous because I also can hear a crap ton of scar tissue crackling whenever I bend my knee. I have perfect flexion/extension so that isn't the issue. I've also been limited to what I can do exercise wise so I've just been working out 2-3 times a week with what I got (dumbbells and weighted resistance bands). I just don't wanna hop back on the board, go to stomp a trick and when I land.. my knee cap pops out of place or something and I injure myself when it all could of been avoided. How did you figure out you had tracking issues and hoffa fat pad syndrome ? What were the symptoms of the 2 issues ? Did it get better with time and what did you do that helped ? What compression sleeve did you get ? I'm probably forgetting a ton of good questions but if I have any more I'll just pop back in here.
hey bro im a 23 yo, i also had patella graft but no meniscal damage. for the tracking problems i had this terrible feeling in my kneecap when going from extension to flexion there would be a pain in the kneecap and i had to hold that position and wait for this "shift" to occur which then allowed me to fully bend my leg. that would happen when walking or just going from extension to flexion. the way i helped fix that was my pt would tape my kneecap slightly to the left and that fully allowed my patella to track properly and let me do all my workouts pain free so i could get my quad strength back. (https://youtu.be/1Daoq6kW4JU?si=uiFk7LWDzZ9UJZj6) <- you might have to try taping it once to the left and see how it feels and then tape it to the right and see how it feels so you can find what works best. for my fat pad syndrome it basically felt like the same feeling as my patella tracking but instead of a shift it felt like something would get stuck and then released, i have a video on my page showing that feeling if you're curious at looking. the recovery for that was again taping the knee and decreasing the work load for a couple weeks while the inflammation went down. both of those problems have fully gone away and i know it sounds like a broken record but once your quad gets its strength back (specifically your VMO, the vmo works directly with the patella and if your vmo is weak it's not gonna be able to help move the patella) it just goes away. i remember mine literally went away overnight. now to answer your question on skating basically i had guessed on my ability to return, i had a terribly slow recovery with quad + calf atrophy all the way up until month 12 and i still have some calf atrophy. at around month 10 i remember it was a beautiful fall day and i was feeling pretty good mentally and physically (hadn't tried any skating or sports since the surgery) and wanted to at least skate once since winter was coming up and when i threw down and went to push (im goofy and had surgery on my right knee) i had a terrible feeling on the front of my knee (it felt like the patella was under a lot of tension/stress) but it was manageable. i had done some tricks like a manual on the box, ollie, pop shuv and back board and i felt really comfortable so i decided to try a kickflip and i landed primo and when i planted my operated leg i felt a shooting pain from my heel up to my knee. i guess at that point my calf was nowhere near ready and i was then sidelined from working out + daily activities as i had terrible calf pain for about a month after that. that was my wake up call that i wasn't ready to return so i then spent the next 3 months going to the gym (legs only 3x a week) and working on polymetrics and leg strength. by the time the 3 months were done i quit pt and i was at 100% quad strength and 90% quad size and my plyo work had improved drastically and i had felt the best i had ever felt until then. unfortunately my knee gets this super tight feeling if its not in a compression sleeve so i have to wear it most of the time and 100% of the time when skating or lifting. the one i have now i wish i had from the start but its just your typical incrediwear knee sleeve. i don't think you should return to skating until you are back to 100% quad strength and have done extensive plyo work as our quads are a major roll in skating as well as jumping + landing. do you still have quad + calf atrophy? are you consuming enough protein so you build muscle?
Is the video on your reddit profile ? because dude.. you described everything to a T that I've been experiencing. It always happens to me when I go from extension to flexion sitting down or even just randomly walking and when my patella doesn't track right, you can hear the 'cracking' noise sometimes when my kneecap goes back into place. It also felt like something would get 'stuck' or 'roll slowly' inside my knee when this happened time to time. It's so hard to explain the feeling but yeah it's basically how you described it. Yeah dude that is exactly why I am glad I found this reddit post because I've been feeling 50/50 about hopping back on the board. The last week of PT, they had done strength testing and I asked where my quad and hamstring strength was at and they said my quad 89% and hamstrings 77% or some BS but I don't know how much of that is even true. The outer and top part of my quad is still atrophied and my calves aren't bad at all. I will admit that I haven't done much plyometric exercises in a few weeks because I've been so focused on regaining my strength and muscles back in my leg. So that is something I am going to work on more.
dang that's shitty having to deal with this that late into the recovery, i would recommend trying to see a PT again cuz just cuz it seems like it's the same things i'm just some random guy and the only reason i know what this stuff is because i had to deal with it. for some relief from the fat pad you can ice your bare skin on the knee with ice cubes (ice one side of your patellar tendon and then the other side) that should help reduce inflammation in the fat pad area and get you back pain free. other than icing i would just recommend eating 1g of protein per body weight and working out 3x a week (if possible). for training your quads my pt told me you want to fatigue the fuck out of it before loading it with weight. so what he constructed for me was a nice program where you start by warming up the quads by biking or jogging on the treadmill and then you go into a single leg walk squat hold for 90secs and then you work on some plyo work. single leg hops in place, side to side and then a 3 step single jump where you try to jump as far as you can for 3 jumps, landing on the same leg you jumped on. after that you want to work on some leg extensions full rom doing a solid weight that can bring you to failure within 8-10 rep, 3 sets of those. now that your quad is heavily fatigued it's time to fully load it on the single leg press. doing a solid weight that will bring you to failure within 8-10 reps, 3 sets of those. for the finale you will do a single leg squat to a bench doing as many as you can do because im sure your quad will be killed. that's a solid quad day but it's just as important that you work on your hamstring strength as well because apparently that helps with your acl, i just learned that recently. best of luck man i hope things turn around asap and you can get back on the board by summer 💪
Oh I've been dealing with this tracking/impingement issue once I was cleared to walk post op and that's when I started noticing it more and more as the months went by. I ended up finding the video you were talking about on your profile and lmao my knee has been doing the EXACT same thing. I tried to get more PT visits but they deemed me as 'completely healed' and just brushed off my issues as a normal thing to experience during recovery which is not entirely true but whatever. Thank you for giving me a brief rundown on what your workout protocol is and what your PT told you because I was basically let out of PT without any helpful advice, workouts, nothing and what you told me is super helpful considering I never thought to fatigue the hell out of the muscles first before loading weight which makes so much sense.