Episode 182 | 15 Timeless Reminders I Wish I Had During My ACL Rehab Process

What is up team and welcome back to another episode on the ACL Athlete Podcast. Today is episode 182: 15 Timeless Reminders I Wish I Had During My ACL Rehab Process. But before we dive into it, one thing that I do want to mention to you listening, if you are a clinician or coach, anyone who works with an ACL athletes, we are launching our cohort three for the ACL Athlete Mentorship in September 2nd, to be exact. Enrollment details will be released here in August to the mentorship waitlist. If you are someone who is curious about the rehab process, working with ACL athletes, I’m not feeling very confident with the rehab side of things, or maybe it’s in the mid and late stages with the performance side of things. We focus on a principles-based approach to this process. I’m sharing with you the things that I’ve learned, our team has learned through this mentorship; it’s basically creating the mentorship. I wish I had when I first started working as a rehab professional and coach working with ACLers. 

We’ll cover foundational principles to needs analysis, to planning and periodization. We’ll go through my 4-hour roadmap and framework that we use with all of our athletes; going through program design and exercise prescription; being able to scale different exercises; how we get athletes back to return to running; different dynamic activities like jumping, deceleration, acceleration, agility, speed; doing movement analysis; and a lot of testing related work that we’re going to evaluate and make sure you have a doubt and process for your athletes. This is something that we are providing for you. There’s going to be prerecorded lectures to work at your own pace, live mentor calls, Q&A’s. But we’re going to be breaking down case studies with complex cases to simple cases that you can put into play immediately. You’ll get a bonus community where you will be able to feel supported by your mentors and your peers. We’re offering a limited number of spots. We have over 200 people on this waitlist. 

We are absolutely pumped because we have worked so hard to put so much into the updates of this mentorship. This is a first-come-first-serve basis, so get on the wait list if you are someone who is a clinician or coach who works with ACLers. Because I promise you we’re going to do everything we can to deliver our best and our experiences so you can also deliver as much value as possible to your ACLers. Get on the waitlist if you are interested.

Now to our regular scheduled programming, which I know a lot of you ACLers,  Ravi, why did you just take so long to do that? It’s because, “Hey, we want to improve what it is that we’re doing with you guys.”  We’re wanting to make sure that we can equip as many people in the system to be able to deliver high-value care for rehab, for performance so that way we can elevate the standard of care, the mission that we’re after to make sure that ACLers don’t fall through the cracks. It’s really important to me, it’s really important to us as a team and we got to move the needle. This is one of those things that is going to help do that. We’re hoping that we can equip other clinicians and coaches to work with ACLers and do the thing and provide the best absolute care that is deserved. Because I was someone who fell through the cracks and I don’t want you to be that same person to do that. That’s why we’re doing this, that’s why it’s so important to me and to our team.

Now, on to the actual episode today: 15 Timeless Reminders I Wish I Had During my ACL Rehab Process. This is something that I did some thinking on and with something that was important to me to share. I think it’s easy to get wrapped up in the minutia of everything.  It’s such a long process. There is so many layers to it. It’s kind of a phase by phase thing, if you will. And you’re like, man, this is a 9- to 12-month process and it just feels like it drags, to be honest. Every one of my ACLers knows this, even though you are in it, you’re doing the thing, you might be even making progress. It’s amazing but I know it hits everybody where you’re in the throws of it. I wanted to take a step back and just share some things that I wish I had reminders of in my ACL rehab process. 

If you are prehab, if you are a postoperative, maybe you’re non-operative route, maybe you’re in the middle phases, the late phases, you could be anywhere along on the continuum. These are going to be really valuable reminders that I wish I had to be able to just zoom out for a second and just remember these particular things that I think can be really helpful to anchor us. To maybe shift our perspective a little bit, especially for those of you who might feel like you’re in a rot, or maybe you feel like you’re in a plateau or things are dragging out; especially in the not so positive light. This is something that I do want to take that step back because I feel like it’s very encouraging. It’s something that I wish I had during those moments whenever I might’ve been struggling myself. Let’s get into it. 

Number one: Expectations are everything. If you are working a job and you were expected to get paid $100 and you only get paid $30, you’re going to be pretty mad. So that’s a very simplified way of saying, if we think we’re going to get back to a certain point at a certain time point, that’s going to be tough. I’m hoping that the clinician and coach you’re working with your guide with, if you will, is helping to shape these expectations. Not only from the very start of this, but even as you go through this process because things can change. You could run into road bombs. We have athletes who just develop a Cyclops lesion and it sucks. But the thing is, is that they’re going to have to probably get that removed. And when they do, they feel amazing. But it could delay things a little bit; it could pivot the plan. We want to make sure as we’re going, we are educating our athletes. But making sure that we’re anchoring our expectations and not thinking, oh, well, we’re going to be back running in eight weeks, or we’re going to be back on the field in six months, playing. These are things that I think are these false illusions. Making sure that our expectations are matching up to reality. When they do mismatch, asking ourselves, why? Why is that mismatching? Is it because someone led me astray? Is it because I set these expectations for myself that were maybe too high or farfetched and it’s okay to set high goals and to push towards things. But there’s a certain point where you want to make sure that that’s a healthy expectation and reality versus mismatch. If you do feel like you’re missing the mark on things, maybe revisit this and make sure that these expectations are anchored to what is looking like in your timeline and in your process and especially leaning on your guidance for that. You shouldn’t be the only one lining this up, it should also be a part of whoever is your expert in your corner. 

Number two: It’s long—manage burnout early. This process as I had mentioned, it can range. It could be 9 months or even 12 months. We’ve had athletes, it takes 16 months, two years. There’s a lot of complexities that are involved with that. Whether there were complications, or maybe they fell off the mark for a little bit, or maybe they have bad rehab at the beginning, or they ran into the road bump in the mid stages, there’s a lot of things that can happen in this process. Especially early on, you’ll get that honeymoon phase, if you will, where you’re making the gains day after day after day with range of motion or walking, getting rid of crutches. You want to be careful not to hit the gas too hard. UYou’re going 24/7 every single day because that can lead to burnout.  Guess what? This is a long process. You want to make sure you manage that as early as possible and balance those things. 

Number three: It’s okay to take a short break, building off of that previous statement of burnout. There are times where we might give our athletes—let’s say the three-month mark, we might give them a little bit of a break, if you will. Sometimes they’ve been in the gym for a while. And I will say, Hey, for part of this week or this whole week, I’m actually going to say, don’t go to the gym. I know this is against all roles. But the thing is that sometimes we need that break. My athletes who are in it for six months, maybe it’s nine months in and they’re still tracking along—gym work, field work, whatever that might be. Maybe they’re participating some partial practices and things of that nature. It’s a lot. There’s a lot on our bodies but it’s also a lot mentally and on our brains. Sometimes we just need a break. And that might mean literally not stepping foot into the gym or doing anything where we are having to focus on our knee or ACL. It’s a constant thought. Sometimes if we can do this earlier in the process, we try to embed it in. If an athlete has a vacation coming up or maybe they’ve had some testing and they did really well or we’re leading up to the testing. Maybe we’ll have a little bit of a taper where we reduce down what they’re doing in the week volume-wise or maybe have a day or two instead of a full on week and we’ll allow them to take a break. It’s something that I think is super beneficial and underutilized in our rehab process, because this is something that can really be a less is more, which we will also talk about. It might be something where you might actually reduce some stuff and actually gain in that process. I think sometimes having a break can be helpful. If you are considering this that’s okay. But I would also reflect and be like, are you taking a break? Because you’re wanting a break in terms of you haven’t been really doing stuff and you just kind of want to give up and take a break. That’s questionable. But if you’re trying to take a break because you’ve been working at it really hard, then I think that there are times where that is very much warranted, which is what I am getting at with this point. 

Number four: Master the basics very well. The basics stand the test of time. There’s a reason why squatting and deadlifting and lunging, things of that nature just different movements, they continue to stick within programs. Now there’s lots of variations, lots of ways to coach this, there’s lots of ways to go from isolated strength to integrate a strength of this compound movements. We still obviously want to focus on the basics of all this, so we don’t need to get fancy. There’s a lot of exercises on Instagram. We’ve got an athlete who we had a consultation with. And the guy was taking two hours every single day to complete his list of exercises, literally, two hours for some basic post-op stuff. We were like, whoa, what is this? And he was like, well, I’ve got like 30 or 40 exercises that my PT gave me. And I’m like, this is insane. How is that even possible to be doing that much in a day. You’re going to burn out. If you’re doing that many exercises, one, your PT is just throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks and two is that you’re being less effective with all of those movements. Why don’t we condense this down into something that’s 5 to 10 movements. There are certain categories or buckets that you can work on, but that’s going to be really important in terms of doing that to make sure that we can focus on the right exercises and put as much intent behind those versus spreading them out across 30 to 40 movements. To me that is just wildly all and that seems overwhelming. I think what this ends up coming back to is how can we master the basics, instead of all the flashy stuff, instead of creating this laundry list of stuff. How can we prioritize focusing on these particular goals and outcomes and how can we allocate certain movements that we know are consistently going to reap benefits? I think that’s one of the keys with program design and with physical therapy and performance that we’re hoping we can get from the professional that you’re working with. Is that they can kind of help you to master these basics. But this is something that we do see is that it’s easy to just get caught up in the fancy stuff. The flashy lights, the new equipment, the technology, but the basics are the thing that stand the test of time. It’s something that we anchor to as a team and it just reaps the benefits over anything else.

Number five: Strength is the foundation for athletic development. When we look at this pyramid or this hierarchy, if you will, we want to make sure that strength is such a foundational component of this, especially with ACL rehab. It’s the thing that we lose the most; it’s the thing that is the base of building up our athleticism and the qualities that we want to develop. While we need the range of motion, that’s really important for sure. Alongside that, we need to make sure we have strength. And what we mean by that is can our muscles exert force through that range of motion? We’re talking about the quadriceps and hamstrings to be very specific. With that said, we want to make sure can that thing be strong? Can it test out to where it needs to be, but can we build up that strength over time and build that foundation? Therefore, we can be powerful from that. But guess what, if we don’t have strength, we can’t be powerful. But if we want to be able to be elastic or being able to be reactive in a sense, we can’t do that unless we’re powerful and we need to have strength to have power. These things build on top of each other. They can’t just skip just because time is progressing. And that’s why we stress so much about strength being the foundation. When there’s a clinic that only has weights that go up to 30 pounds, or they’re not loading you up very heavy over the period of time through your ACL rehab. That’s a problem because it doesn’t really develop strength just cause you’re doing exercises or it’s “challenging” doesn’t necessarily mean that it is building the quality of strength. Over time, this goes from maybe those higher repetitions endurance-based into more strength-based work. And so what this means is that we’re looking to get the muscle group stronger from compound lifts, being maybe leg, press two, squats, lunges. dead lifts. Any type of multi-joint movements. We’re also going to be focusing also on single joint movements, isolated strength for the quadriceps, the hamstrings, the glutes, the calves. Those are muscle groups that we’re going to want to make sure we’re developing. This is going to be really key, especially as we get further into the process that we are potentially decreasing the amount of volume, or maybe it’s not three sets of 10. And it’s now becoming three sets of five, but then the intensity is increasing where we only have two reps left in the tank or maybe one rep left in the tank. We’re talking about RPE 8 to 10. If you don’t know what these are, then this is something to look up. And then this is also something that I hope we can be able to implement. This is what we do with all of our athletes. They understand what reps in reserve are and they understand what RPE or rate of perceived exertion is, because these are going to correlate to intensity. So that way on any given day and training block that we are working with them, they’re able to know, all right, well, is my strength increasing. This is how I anchored this process and my strength to where it is. This gives us such a good proxy of where they are and where we need to be headed. All this to say, strength is the foundation for athletic development. It literally is going to open the door to so much. But if you don’t have it there, you’re not going to be able to run; you’re not going to be able to jump; you’re not going to be able to cut; you’re not going to be able to do the things athletically you want to do, because strength is such a big prerequisite to doing those things because those require power, elasticity and reactivity. All of these things that we want to have, but strength is going to be such a big component of that. 

Number six: Less is more. Going back to that example of the laundry list of exercises. or maybe going to the gym every single day for two hours. Less is more. We find that if we can create intention behind every single exercise and reduce down the actual number of things you’re doing and even being in the gym less, then that could be super valuable. What I mean by being in the gym less, this means that maybe you aren’t going six, seven days a week. Maybe you’re only going three to four days a week and you’re being so intentional about that 45 minute to hour long window you have, even if it’s 30 minutes. We’ve had athletes make progress, literally two days a week with only dedicating 30 minutes. Now that is very minimum viable as possible, but it’s doable as long as the intent is there. We’re talking about the busy CEO-type people who don’t really have a lot of time. The moms with their schedules are chaotic. There’s not a lot of flexibility within their windows because they’re trying to find gaps to work out with managing multiple kids. So there are a lot of things in place. Being able to assign this less is more, is such a key principle and heuristic to use because you can just put so much more into every single thing. It’s this kind of concept of addition by subtraction. You’re actually getting rid of stuff but you’re adding to, because you’re putting so much value and emphasis into each movement. This is something that a lot of times people have to learn the hard way. I think this always comes back to good guidance and program design and your coach deciding. This is kind of what you need right now, based on the volume and what our goals are. Being able to cut that stuff down as needed, to make sure that you are putting as much intent behind every single movement you’re doing. 

Number Seven: Your quad is the most important muscle. You guys know this. If you’ve been listening to this podcast, if you are on your first episode, you’re probably like, man, this guy’s really hitting it hard. The quad is the most important muscle that exists for ACL rehab. Mine will not change for quite a long time because of the number of ACLers I’ve seen, the ACL process myself 

and then just seeing it all the research and what it alludes to. If a quad is weak, you’re going to have problems. The thing is that the quad is the main thing that shuts down. We know this through arthrogenic muscle inhibition and just what exists in this space. If you have to target and literally pick one muscle, even for those quad-dominant athletes, you are still needing to target your quads, even though you might be a quad dominant athlete, whoever decides on that. But with that said, even our most quad-dominant athletes, that people would say that they still prioritize the quad more than anything. Because guess what, that’s the thing that got shot in their ACL rehab in the injury itself, in the surgery. We are prioritizing that thing for the top number one muscle group. Also, I need to hang one particular muscle group on your mirror that’s my number one priority for these next 9 to 12 months; it is your quad. I promise you that if you get your quad really strong, you will have a very successful outcome for the most part with your ACL rehab. Hamstrings fall right behind that. But with that said, quad is king as Eric Mira likes to say.

Number eight: Eat lots of protein and fuel yourself. Instead of feeling like you need to be in this caloric deficit, maybe you’re moving less. This is something that we want to make sure you fuel yourself. Look at food as fuel, not as calories, good and bad stuff. Of course, that stuff’s important. But look at it as fuel. You want to fuel yourself to recover. Protein is so key, especially with surgery and recovery, and you’re rebuilding muscle back. If you don’t have enough protein in your body, that is going to be something that is going to be pulling from muscle and is going to be pulling from other areas, to make sure that calorie that is needed is going to be pulled from their appropriate places. So that’s going to also play into that recovery process and also your energy and also what you can bring to your workouts. These are all the things that are going to be really important, especially to make sure you dial in your protein, along with your other macronutrients. 

Number nine: The timeline is different for every ACLer. It is, every single ACLer. No one has the exact same timeline. And while I tell you, it’s going to be at least a 9-month process. We try to give our athletes a good, healthy perspective of 9 to 12 months. There are some people who might be able to get to things earlier and there might be people who get beyond that. It takes them, like I said, 16 months, two years. It depends on your own journey. Let’s even back this up, they had the same injury, they had the same exact procedure. Let’s even just go out on a limb. They had a quad autograft, they had a medium meniscus repair and they had an ALT. Let’s just say they had all those. Every single one of you who have had this, you’re all going to have a different process and journey. I don’t care if the same surgeon even did it. This is something that I do want you to take this internally, so then that way you don’t compare yourself to other people. Because that is so tough, especially whenever we have these certain athletes and they see other athletes in the same process. It’s cool to talk to them and see where they’re at. But the thing is you just got to know you are in your own lane doing your own thing. Your timeline is going to be different compared to other people. 

Number 10: Have a clear structured and adaptable plan. I cannot stress this enough. I’d probably say the number one thing that people reach out to us to work with us remotely is that they feel lost. There is no clarity in next steps. They have no structure. They’re doing 30 or 40 exercises, or maybe they’re just doing exercises at rehab and then they’re coming home and not doing anything. There’s just opportunity costs all around it. The other thing is the adaptable plan. It’s whenever there is a setback, it doesn’t seem it’s adapted or maybe live throw some curve balls at you. You get busy with work, school, some sort of emergency comes up, maybe you have to travel for vacation. It can be very disruptive. You need an adaptable plan that’s still focused on the goals and that’s where it’s really important to do all that stuff in. I can’t stress you how much structure and having intention behind every single session you do at the clinic or whether you’re not at the clinic, outside of the clinic, there needs to be intention behind that. There needs to be structure, there needs to be a rhyme and a reason. Our team does not give an exercise out unless there’s intention behind it and it’s towards a very particular goal. We have to have a why behind everything and the way that we structure and build things out for our athletes; whether you’re the 14 year old, all the way up to the 68 year old, you’re getting back to soccer or you’re getting back to jujitsu or skiing. These are all going to have different structures. A lot of is based on your goals, but then also what does your schedule look like? What is your time available look like? What do things look like for the foreseeable future? We need to make sure that all that stuff is dialed in so we can individualize it to you. That is really important in my personal opinion, with working with so many athletes through ACL. We can just give you this blanket, templated program or protocol, because it has to be built to you to make it as successful as possible. 

Number 11: Get really strong before you start running. A lot of times people are given the timeline of, you’ll start running at 12 weeks. While I would love to think that everyone’s being tested and they’re using these certain criteria they start running. More likely than not, people are still given the timeline from their surgeon or PT who might not be using a criteria or using a time-based protocol. It hits 12 weeks and you’re starting to run. I think that this is a red flag in my opinion because that’s going to set you up for failure for a number of reasons. But more importantly, what is being determined to help you run? If it’s strength and it’s time included and there’s pre-running plyometrics, there’s some capacity testing, basically different assessments to know you’re ready to run; not just because time has passed. This is something that’s really important because you want to really get strong because I truly think that alot of times what we do is rush the running process because athletes are itching to do this. I know that this is something that is a big, important milestone. But what if you take the opportunity to delay that a little bit, especially if you don’t like running, or don’t care to, then maybe just focus on continuing to get as strong as possible. I would rather have an athlete delay running for five months and get really freaking strong and get their numbers to 80% to 90% of symmetry versus an athlete who starts running at month three or three and a half and it’s taking them so much longer to get their strength back up. Maybe they don’t hit 90% symmetry until six, seven months because they’ve been integrating running, and it’s taking away from being able to get strong. 

One thing that I thought was really funny is that I had a console with an athlete a few weeks ago, and their PT actually told them that they’re going to get stronger by running. I was like, I don’t know where they learned that physiology, but running and strength are two very different qualities. If you look at any type of exercise physiology, the way that our bodies develop, it’s not even remotely in the same buckets. I thought that was very fascinating to hear because the need for strength, expressing a high force against an object, if you will, versus running, which is more of a repetitive endurance- based sports or activity, different energy systems, different demands of force, different movements. It’s very interesting that was something mentioned. Anyways, with that said, running will not make you stronger, running will make you better at running. Getting strong, I know that’s a little bit broad, but getting those muscle groups, as I had mentioned, your quads, hamstrings, calves, compound movements, but especially isolated movements, your leg extension, leg curl, those types of things—game-changers. You can always anchor this to your unoperated or unaffected side because that’s something that’s going to help give you a better proxy of how you’re actually doing. If you’re doing 60 pounds on the leg essential machine on your unoperated side, and you’re doing 10 pounds on the operated side; that’s not great. It could be for someone who’s just starting out. But if you’re in this process and you’ve been in it, that’s not a good deficit to have. Instead of building towards running or aggressively getting at running, we want to make sure we close in on that gap and maybe you start working towards running. 

To give you a reference point with our athletes, we’re probably looking at anywhere from three and a half, probably four months, four months is usually at least my minimum. And then I like to even kick that a little bit further if possible, because then, man, we’re able to work on strength a little bit more, work on positions a little bit better, and they start to notice the running comes back easier. The knee is not as grumpy. This is just something that is my own personal opinion. Our team utilizes a little bit more versus rushing that running process. 

Number 12: Your KPI testing should inform your programming. What that basically means is you have certain criteria and certain metrics you’re aiming towards—I hope you are. Quad strength, hamstring strength, maybe certain jumping abilities, range of motion, capacity, testing side to side with different muscle groups. Maybe it’s just different positional work, but there’s KPIs that we’re attaching to those things. Key performance indicators. So basically this is getting guys numbers around this. And we’re able to see, all right, well, this is where you are with testing, and this is where we want to be. Knowing what that gap is, that’s going to inform our programming and what we call this as serial testing. Instead of this, being this like big testing week, or this big testing performance at the very end to rehab, what people will typically hear is return to sport testing. It should be a serial testing. It should be basically once you clear that eight to 12 week mark, roughly, there is serial testing. What I mean is there’s regular testing involved at least every four to six weeks, of measuring different components of range of motion and strength, power, different dynamic abilities, things of that nature. What that’s going to do is help inform, okay, well, what’s our gap or what are our rate limiting factors that are going to be the things that will allow us to kind of step into the next phase of our rehab. So a lot of times this is quad strength. This is something that we’re going to keep working on. Maybe it’s a certain contraction type or a speed of a contraction type, maybe it is certain positions based on just some pain that you’ve been dealing with or maybe things that you’ve been avoiding. There are a bunch of different areas that you can assess. But with that said, the only way you’re going to know your programming is individualized and dialed in is only through testing. So that should happen. Test to allow that, to inform your structure and programming. And then you’re going to repeat that process Matt Jordan, great sports scientist, coach, a researcher. He has this feedback loop, whereas determine what matters, measure what matters, change what matters. We use that so internally within our system, as a team and teach our mentees because it’s the truth. We need to know what matters and we need to measure it somehow, and then we need to change it. There’s a feedback loop to come back around. Is this thing still important? Usually, if it’s a rate limiting factor or a bottleneck, we’re going to keep working at it and then we’re going to keep measuring it to see objectively, is it getting better? And so that’s, what’s so key. Through this process is having these feedback loops and adult and framework to make sure we continue to inform our programming. At the end of the day, this is all stuff to get you back to the thing that’s what’s most important and that’s, what’s going to help us dial in our processes. 

Number 13: It’s normal to have a setback. I can’t tell you the number of setbacks I had through my own two ACL rehabs. It sucked. I remember one time, my hamstring popped while I was doing some sort of knee flexion hamstring work. I thought I was back to square one. It did set me back for a little bit. I had a hamstring strength, but I also had a hamstring graft. So my hamstrings were working overtime. They weren’t able to pull a max capacity. And guess what, I had to take a step back, if you will, in order to allow that thing to do its thing and heal. But there are a number of things that can come up and I want to normalize this. I think a lot of people feel like they’re failures if they haven’t hit a certain time target or especially if some sort of setback happens. We are dealing with the human body people. You had an injury that just honestly really threw some confusion into the knee and the brain and the spinal cord and all these things that can change from locally to globally in your body. Give yourself a little bit of grace here. You also probably had a surgery if you went this route, reconstruction or repair or whatever that might be. There’s also another altered state of the name. Now you’re dealing with this knee that is a little different than what it was that you were born with. It’s normal for your body to maybe not react normal. It’s also normal for our plans to not necessarily be so perfect where it allows the near to respond in such a perfect way that you’ll never have a setback. It’s just not the reality of the way our lives exist, the way these surgeries are, the way that muscles respond, joints respond, you’re taking it tendon and turning it into a ligament. There’s so many different things going on. With that said, it’s normal to have a setback. The most important thing is to make sure you have an adaptable plan, going back to that point earlier, that when that setback occurs or something comes up, you can have a redirection back onto the right plan. That’s what’s really key here. I always tell athletes, you’re on the road, you’ve got your GPS and maybe there’s some sort of roadblock. Well, maybe there’s a detour you got to take, but there’s options for detours. You can take a really long way around, or you could take a really short way. Hopefully, you just get off the interstate and you get right back on. So that’s the goal we’re trying to do with roadblock here, is that we’re trying to make sure that people can get back on track and handle these setbacks in a more time-sensitive situation and be as efficient as possible.

Number 14: Run your own race. This goes back to the point of everyone’s timeline is different. Comparison is literally the thief of joy. This ACL process will rob you of that. If you start watching other people, comparing yourself to other people, the same person at the same procedure, the same weak as you, and they’re doing “better,” or they’re ahead, run your own race because you are the only person you need to compete against.

And last but not least celebrate the small wins. Now, I talked to you guys about the honeymoon phase. You’re going to have more small wins there because you’re going to be making progress on your flexion. Hopefully, your extension, you’re getting off the crutches, you get that first bike cycle, that revolution. You’re starting to take the stairs. You can drive yourself around, all these things that open up the door. You feel like week, two weeks, a week, you’re making those wins. There becomes a certain point where it kind of has these gaps in between. It’s harder to measure or see that week to week because your life is less impacted. You don’t notice maybe the 5-pound gain on your knee extension. But that’s a huge win. I encourage you to celebrate the small wins. And if you’re like, I don’t really have any wins. Come on now, if you’re doing the thing and if you’re working hard, I really encourage you to, to look at this past week, even today and be like, what is one small win that I had? It could be literally, I’ve made it to the gym and the past few days I haven’t wanted to, but today I made it to the gym. Maybe you worked out for 30 minutes instead of an hour. It’s any little thing that is going to help, create that momentum in the right direction. It’s basically focusing on being never zero. You just don’t ever want to be zero. You just want to have, even if it’s just the smallest degree of momentum in the right direction. That’s what those wins are and what you’re showing up for to get back to the thing you love to do. We just want to make sure our momentum never hits zero. So that’s where I think celebrating the small wins, even if you are in your last week of this process. Celebrate that small win, whatever it is, and literally list that stuff out. Maybe you want to list it on your phone, put a reminder in your phone of being like what’s my small win today. Some gratitude moments I think are so helpful as humans because it’s easy to get trapped into this isn’t as ideal or not perfect, or I’m not necessarily seeing any progress which can happen all the time in ACL rehab. 

If you’re an ACLer listening to this, I hope that this is helpful to go through this stuff because it is really key. I wish someone had told me this stuff in my ACL rehab. That’s why these are 15 timeless reminders I wish I had during mine. Because I know that if I was reminded of these things, I can zoom out for a second and be like, all right, do I feel like I have this stuff dialed in? What areas could I potentially work on to be able to move the needle in? 

Those 15 points are: Number one: Expectations are everything. Number two: It’s long; managed burnout early. Number three. It’s okay to take a short break. Number four: Master the basics. Number five: Strength is the foundation for athletic development. Number six: Less is more. number seven. Your quad is the most important muscle. Number eight: Eat lots of protein and fuel yourself. Number nine: The timeline is different for every ACL. Number 10: Have a clear, structured and adaptable plan. Number 11: Get really strong before you start running. Number 12: Your KPI testing should inform your programming. Number 13: It’s normal to have a setback. Number 14, run your own race. And number 15, celebrate the small wins. 

I hope this was helpful, guys. Please do me a favor. If it was, leave us a review, five stars on Spotify, go a long way. It helps us to reach more and more ACLers. If you’re on Apple podcasts, just leave us a five star review, super helpful. And we are so appreciative of any love that we get and any of the messages, I appreciate all of you who send me emails, messages. I read and save every single one of those and respond back. 

Thank you all so much for just being so supportive of this podcast and our general mission. Now, one last thing, as I mentioned earlier in the episode, if you’re a clinician or a coach listening to this, check out our mentorship cohort that is launching in September. The sign up for the waitlist is in the show notes. If you want any of the details for this, you got to be on the waitlist. I promise you it’ll be worth it. This does not assign you up to automatically have to join. It’s just for you to get the info. Right. And so you will have exclusive early access before anyone else does. So jump on that. If that is something that interests you. Otherwise, I’m going to sign off here. Appreciate all of you for listening and your ongoing support. This is your host, Ravi Patel, signing off.