Getting Active Again After an ACL Tear

Every joint in your body is important for basic movement and function, but your knees are essential for everything you do while standing upright, including walking, jumping, and running. As your largest joints, they connect your upper and lower leg through the femur (thighbone), tibia (shinbone), patella (kneecap), and a network of ligaments, muscles, and tendons that keep you on your feet and moving.

One knee ligament — the anterior cruciate ligament, or ACL — is particularly prone to injury and damage. If you’ve torn this ligament, triple board-certified orthopedist Dr. Mark Powell and our team at Powell Orthopedics can help you heal quickly and recover fully. 

Here, we explore the ins and outs of ACL injuries, including common causes, the amount of time it typically takes to recover, and exercises that can help facilitate joint rehabilitation.

Common causes of an ACL tear

This connective ligament binds the bones in your knee in an x-pattern with the ligament located behind the joint (posterior cruciate ligament, or PCL), helping to stabilize the knee. Designed to keep your knee from bending or rotating too far, it can be damaged by excessive force on the sports field, in a car accident, or during a slip-and-fall incident. 

While it can happen to anyone, being active in sports — especially activities like lacrosse, basketball, soccer, football, and gymnastics— puts you at higher risk of sustaining an ACL tear. When it happens, you may hear a popping noise followed by swelling and pain in your knee.

If the injury is severe enough, it can also compromise the other ligaments, such as your PCL, medial collateral ligament (MCL), and lateral collateral ligament (LCL). ACL tears can also happen simultaneously with bone fractures, muscle strains, and meniscus tears.

ACL tear recovery timeline

ACL injury treatment depends on the extent of the damage; minor tears or strains can often heal on their own, while moderate to severe tears may warrant surgical reconstruction or repair. Here’s a brief look at the average healing timeline for a moderate to severe ACL tear:

The first six weeks

The first couple of weeks are spent letting the swelling go down and reducing the pain, after which physical therapy starts. This covers gentle walking, aerobics, and slowly transitioning into strength exercises. By week six, you should be walking normally, but certain movements may still be limited, so the focus shifts to balance exercises and proprioception training, or how your body senses its location.

Three to nine months

With better range of motion and limited swelling, you’ll be doing more work with forward motion and further strength training. You’ll gradually do more running and jogging by the third month, and slowly move into jumping and lateral movement. Near the end you’ll get more time on sports-specific tasks and assess how close you are to full recovery.

ACL exercises to do at home

While hands-on physical therapy is vital to ACL injury recovery, there are also many exercises you can do at home to help the process along. 

Exercises to do at the beginning of recovery

For the first month of healing, we may recommend performing heel slides, isometric quad contractions, prone knee flexions, prone hip extensions, sitting towel calf stretches, and ankle pumps to keep your ACL in shape as you heal. 

Exercises when the swelling is reduced

One month into ACL injury recovery, you may progress to passive knee extensions, heel raises, half squats, knee flexions, standing on one leg, and partial lunges. Some discomfort is normal, but it’s important not to push yourself too hard — anytime you start feeling pain, it’s a sign that you need to slow down to prevent reinjury.

Your partner in ACL injury recovery 

Getting back to full strength after an ACL tear takes time, but with expert support and the right treatment approach, you can get back to your active life. Call or click online to schedule a visit at Powell Orthopedics in Fayetteville, Arkansas, today.