Back to Matt
268 days since surgery
I got back to England after a month or so in America. Since leaving Spain in mid June I have been working on the physio and fitness by myself.
So it was good to get back to seeing Matt at Jam Physio to check on my progress and work out what’s next.
The pain I had a couple of weeks ago settled down and I haven’t thought about it much since. I carried on with pool running, workouts in the gym and a lot of Peloton sessions which left me feeling in good shape.
In my first session back we had a good catch up, an examination of the knee and then started a testing protocol for returning to sport. We are following the Melbourne ACL Guide which is free to access for anyone.
The protocol includes various hopping tests (distance, triple-hops, timed lateral hops etc.), strength tests, and a questionnaire to assess pain and confidence.
In this first session we tested quad strength, single-leg squats and some hopping movements. The goal of the physical tests is to measure the performance against the uninjured knee, which should be within 90%.
Everything tested well in this first session and that left me a bit surprised. I am closer to returning to sport than I thought!
I squeezed in another session with Matt before a few days away in Germany for a wedding. We focused on a balance reach test that passed within 90% on each side.
Apart from that, we worked on the pilates machine for working glutes, in a kind of Cossack Squat movement. We also went through various combinations of box jumps, including a 90 degree twist step down.
A final “clock” hop test passed, and everything is looking great! Could I be back to kitesurfing sooner than I thought?
