I didn’t know it at the time but I had completely ruptured my ACl on 5th of Nov 2018.
A complete ACL rupture usually requires surgery. But a small percentage of people will have their ACL’s spontaneous reattach.
I’m quite confident that I will be one of those people.
So when it does, I want this to be a record that I had predicted it would. And this routine I did.
5th of Nov 2018
I was interstate for work and decided to do a drop in BJJ class. During the free rolling a weird awkward takedown was performed on me. And I heard my right knee pop.
In my mind, I thought I had blown my whole knee. And I was wondering what I would do since I was interstate. This thought process was probably only a second long. Because I then stood up, walked around and did a few squats. My knee felt a little sore but otherwise feeling fine.
The next day I was expecting a lot of swelling to be around my knee. But to my surprise, it didn’t swell up that much. It was a little sore but not swelling. I put a compression bandage around it, which alleviated most of the pain, and continued as if nothing had happened. Within a few days, the only place it hurt was at the very bottom of a squat.
Back Home
I went to training at my normal gym. I could feel that my knee was a little weak in doing side to side motion so I decided to only drill technique.
One of my training mates said the same thing happen to him. He warned that he kept on training thinking nothing was wrong and then he ended up having a full tear.
With this in mind (and because my knee had locked out and collapsed when I was drilling an arm-spin throw) I decided to get an MRI done.
MRI
The first doctor I saw thought there was nothing wrong with my knee. Told me to rest over the Christmas break and to resee him afterwards. Saw him again and he still said there was nothing wrong with it.
But I knew there was something wrong. I saw a second doctor who agreed and ordered an MRI scan.
MRI Results
“Likely subacute anterior cruciate ligament rupture with associated complex medial meniscal tear and grade 1 medial collateral ligament injury with a small joint effusion. Longitudinal tear of the anterior horn of the lateral meniscus also noted.”
Waiting To See The Orthopaedic Surgeon
Luckily for me, my BJJ coach does a lot of work with professional AFL and NRL teams, so he knows who are all the best surgeons. He told me Tim Whitehead is the man to see.
Unlucky for me Tim is on holidays, so I can’t actually see him until Feb 11th 2019.
My training mates told me that Tim usually likes you to do prehab before surgery so I booked an appointment with some physios.
Training Routine
I saw two physios. Both did some manual test on my knee and confirmed the ACL has been complete ruptured.
Both the physios think there’s a chance I may not need to get surgery because of how asymptomatic I have been. They have recommended doing a leg strengthening program to get the muscles around my knee strong.
The routine mainly consists of variations of the following exercise:
- Squat
- Deadlift
- Calf raises
- Hamstring curls
- Exercise bike
My addition
I’ve done a lot of reading on the topic and decided to add some of my own addition.
Blood flow restricted training: I use a vodoo band and wrap my quad or knee while I do some of the above exercises. Here’s a good summary: https://thebarbellphysio.com/science-blood-flow-restriction-training/
Closed EyeTraining: Proprioception is the buzz word in fitness at the moment. When I do very light squats and calf raises I do them with my eyes close. You can read more about it here: https://www.outsideonline.com/2184466/getting-band-back-together
Water Resistant Training: I’m going to start adding water resistant training. This is what GSP did when he was recovering from his ACL surgery.
Supplements:
- 750mg of glucosamine with chondroitin twice a day. No real evidence for me taking this. Some people with osteoarthritis take it and that’s pretty much the only reason why I’m taking it.
- Hydrolyzed Collagen. There’s some good enough evidence to suggest that hydrolyzed collagen can help with joint pain and may have a repairing effect. I take about 20g 1hr before I do my exercises with 500mg of vitamin C. You need to exercise to pump the collagen to your joint. Combine with the blood restricted training and hopefully, I flood the knee joint with it.
TimTam Massager
I did a review of it here when I was looking for something to help with my hips: https://medium.com/off-label/timtam-massage-review-999f13c95406
I have a hypothesis based on absolutely zero science that the TimTam Massager may help with the reattachment.
It comes from when I sit on a chair and use the TimTam on my knee I can feel the vibrations all the way to my feet.
And part of the reason why the knee joint takes a long time to heal is we get very little blood flow.
So if I can feel the vibration in my feet when I’m doing it on my knee it should mean that the vibrations are going deep through my knee as well. In my head, that means I’m helping the flow of things and perhaps the ACL might just vibrate together.
FIN
Will any one of these methods be the reason why ACL re-attaches? Who knows? The point is I’ve called it.
So for the future haters and doubters, here’s the record on how I re-attached my ACL.
