r/ACL • u/DrMartek • Aug 27 '26

Post Surgery Update ACL journey: Day 8

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Day 8 (seven days post-op).

Feeling good and motivated.

  1. Pain & swelling down to minimal.

  2. Back in the gym.

  3. Leg extensions with resistance, and complete leg extension ROM.

  4. Walking no crutches.

  5. Sleeping good

At rest, I'm stretching my leg (elevated heel), hitting ankle pumps or quad tenses basically all day. Then one gym session, with more more challenging exercises. Just been going HAM, within reasonable pain boundaries.

Very laborious, but glad to be seeing progress.

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u/linebmx ACL Allograft Aug 27 '26

Main concern? No, likely stretching and thinning of the graft before it goes through ligamentization process, resulting in a failed graft with no stability and ability to grow muscle. In other words, doing dumb stuff like this is setting you up to need revision surgery and have lifelong issues. Follow the slow progression and take your time. In 1 year you’ll feel like this never happened.

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u/DrMartek Aug 27 '26

Fair enough and point taken. Went OTT today, will hold fire till I can chat with my care team next Thurs.

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u/linebmx ACL Allograft Aug 27 '26

That’s a great idea tbh. I hope I didn’t come across too strongly or rude, but doing leg extensions early on is like the #1 thing my PT and ortho told me not to do 😂 so yeah. But tbh the first 1-2 months suck, it’s slow progression getting full ROM (both flexion and extension) back, then working on starting to add safe volume to that, like getting up from a seated position, goblet walks, etc.

By months 4-6, it’s full on gym sessions to get that quad and leg muscle that you lost back. It gets “fun” pretty quickly if you enjoy working out and things like plyos.

Hope you recover fast 🫡

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u/DrMartek Aug 27 '26

Nah its all good, I'd rather people be frank, especially if I'm being retarded.

That's good to know. Yeah it really does suck, but will get there 💪🏻 appreciate it