Episode 205 | Never Zero: Building Momentum in ACL Rehab

Happy new year, everyone! Or, if you’re listening to this after it is early January of 2025, welcome to the ACL Athlete Podcast. I appreciate you guys for listening, maybe it’s a different timing. And anyways, we’re going to try and focus this around, coming into the new year, or maybe you are someone new to the ACL rehab process, you’re going through the episodes. And this is something that can really apply to any period of time. But especially as we kick start this new year, this is going to be something that I always love to come back around to. It’s actually something that I talked about previously, and did an episode at this time last year around this idea, if you will, but we’re going to kind of flip it. 

When I had this conversation last year, it was around Newton’s first law in ACL rehab. I want to bring this back around and think of it in this different light. To remind you what is Newton’s first law? An object at rest remains at rest or an object in motion stays in emotion unless acted on by a net external force. And this ties into this concept of never zero, all around momentum. If you’re in motion, it’s easier to stay in motion. If you’re in a stand still, it’s easier to stay there and takes a lot more work to get back in motion. The goal is to never get to zero. Hence, never zero can slow down but not stop. 

And with it being the new year, all of these New Year’s resolutions people going hot out of the gate, having these all or nothing mentality and mindsets that don’t sustain. I’m raising my hand here because I can tend to be a person like that, but that’s something that is very common human brain, human logic, especially around New Year’s resolutions and goals that people set. It’s these all or nothing mindsets. 

And honestly, I’ve been thinking about this a lot with our life being so busy now with a kid and running a business. It’s easy to say, oh, I’m tired. We were up in the night with Asher, or skip a workout or eat something bad, etc. In our daily lives, it’s easy to slow down and a slide into complacency or going through the motions, especially during seasons of life that are busier than others. Maybe you’re tired from a long day or feeling overwhelmed by work or family. Maybe there’s some other variables in play that are really just kind of weighing down on you and your ACL rehab. 

It’s easy to skip this one workout or it’s exercise or taking a “break.” Sometimes it’s needed and sometimes it’s more of avoiding it. This is when people stop the momentum and they let their progress get to zero. In the blink of an eye, they realized that they’ve let themselves go to stop down rehab, instead of it being a few days, it’s been a few weeks and this just kind of snowball. And getting back into it it feels almost impossible like a huge mountain to climb. Everyone knows this feeling. You went through this season where you got sick, or maybe it was just a busy season and you start working out and you got to get back into it. Man, is it such a bear beause you just feel out of shape, you feel weak and it’s not the same thing as you’ve been working months and months and months. You’re building up this strength or this athletic ability and then all of a sudden, you might get hurt, or you do just get busy and then you start working out for a little bit. It doesn’t take very long for you to feel like you’re out of shape. If you gained some weight or you just don’t feel very strong. And that could be super frustrating. I wish it worked the opposite way. But of course, as human beings, we have to work really hard for these things and can lose it pretty quickly. 

But with that said, we know it is very exhausting to climb back up just like that mountain and I was sharing. This is something that we want to make sure that we come back around to this idea of never zero. It means you can slow down but you never stop. If you’re in motion, easier to stay in motion, allowing that momentum to keep you going and building. But if you have none, then it’s hard to get going. It’s easier to remain at rest. You’re going to feel a lot of these shifts in your momentum, especially as you go through ACL rehab. To be honest, it’s a long process. It’s going to ebb and flow. And that’s okay. I think that’s something where we have to make sure we normalize these things. There will be those times where it’s like you’re building and it’s like crazy and you’re building that momentum. And other times you have moments where it feels like you literally hit a wall, whether it’s a setback, whether it’s to adjust life is throwing a lot of stuff at you and you have very limited bandwidth. That is okay and normal. I think we need to normalize these things because for us to assume that it’s just this linear process and it’s just going to go as expected. It honestly be really weird. When does life ever really do that? We needed to normalize this process and now we’re going to go through seasons. I talked about this in a previous episode where we’re talking about different seasons. It’s okay for us to maybe hit the gas or maybe hit the brakes or coast for a little bit. And that’s where we need to be able to understand where we are. 

And sometimes it’s reactive, something happens, someone gets sick, you get laid off your job. Maybe something happens at school and you had to take a break. With that said, sometimes it has to be reactive, but then when we can reflect and be able to be like, all right, this is where I’m at, cool. Now, let’s be able to understand that, normalize it. In all honesty, if we thought it was going to be linear, it’d be really weird because in reality 99.9% of ACLers would say this whole process in a nutshell is non-linear. So that’s how we need to treat it. Is that graphic of that reality versus expectations, which is why we’re trying to make sure this podcast. And honestly, this mission is to help share the realities of what I went through as an ACLer, and also set realistic expectations of this process and we get to also pull from so many different people we work with and talk to, and be able to really make this as real as we can for all you ACLers and people who are working with ACLers. And even on your most challenging days as we kind of come back to this never zero concept, you can still take a step forward, no matter how small. 

And practically, how can this look? We just want to make sure we don’t go to zero or just stop. This might be just that little 1%. Heck, it could even be a half percent, but these are some practical ways for us to be able to look at even just a non-zero or never zero mentality. And that might be doing some extension work or flexion work for maybe five minutes. That’s all you had in the day, that’s all you had mentally, physically, and you did it for five minutes, getting on the bike for 10 minutes, walking into the gym and doing a three by five wrap-up heavy knee extensions and walking out. Honestly, that’s probably what a lot of people could be really benefited to do, but that may be the only thing. It took you maybe five, 10 minutes to do, get warmed up, get it knocked out, hit the quads and you’re out. That’s actually a really productive. Or opening up your app and knocking out one movement versus the whole workout. Maybe it’s eating 20 grams of protein versus the snacky, maybe it’s actually hitting seven hours of sleep instead of really choppy five hours of sleep, maybe it’s one positive affirmation or gratitude, and it might just be showing up to PT for that one session versus really wanting to cancel it because you ain’t got nothing in you. 

The momentum thrives on action. No matter how small by taking those micro steps consistently, you’ll keep building momentum and move forward without feeling overwhelmed. Every positive choice keeps your momentum alive and not zero and nly you can in reality let your momentum get to zero. So that’s the theme I want you to take into this new year or whenever you’re listening to this podcast, maybe there’s someone listening to this in 2027. And you’re listening to this and you’re like, alright, cool, never zero. That’s my theme, that’s my mentality. So that’s what I want you to take in into this new year or where you are.

This is a big one for me as we have more on the horizon for the business and as my life continues to get busier with a family and a little one. And that is something that I’m really, really trying to focus on because it’s easy for me to say, Hey, you know, I’ve got this call or I’ve got this meeting, or we were up late in the night and we only got a few hours of sleep. Yeah, but is there a way for me to make sure that this goes never zero in my momentum. Even that small step, that just little bit at 1% that we talked about is going to be so key. I do want to round this out with never miss twice. That’s an episode that we talked about before and some ideas that you can take with you of like, okay, cool. Maybe you do miss that one day or maybe miss that one workout or maybe miss that one meal. How about you’re able to just take this concept of never zero and what helps with this as also being able to never miss twice. If you string two in a row that starts to form a habit, maybe in the negative direction. And this really impacts that never zero, because then you are slowly stopping yourself. But if you’re able to really focus in on this concept of never zero and never missing twice, then hey, you’re in a really, really solid spot as you start this new year and especially continuing to build as much momentum as possible; continuing to stay in motion because guys it is hard once you stop and need a restart. Never zero. Go do the thing. Let’s have a freaking good year or wherever you are. Let’s keep on doing it as best as we can. Until next time, this is your host Ravi Patel signing off.