Lockdown Knee Rehab – Part 1

*This is a long one, so sorry in advance – but it’s one that I’ve been building on as this lockdown has dragged on. I promise the next blog one in the series won’t be this long..

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Just because we’ve been in lockdown, doesn’t mean people aren’t injured or needing rehab following an injury. One lucky person is Josh’s client, Tiana, who sustained a significant knee injury in the last soccer game before lockdown hit way back in June. (Can anyone remember what life was like back then??). Now, not everyone who sustains an injury needs surgery, however in Tiana’s case, a combination of the nature of her injury, her age, her occupation and her goals meant that surgery was the best route.

Tiana had two options in how she was going to deal with this – she could have seen it as the worst thing ever, or she could see it happening during lockdown as a positive. I’ve been seeing this over and over during lockdown. People have been using the extra time off from doing certain movements or activities has given us all the chance to actually take the time to rehab properly. 

We’ve used the time when uni classes went online and well… we couldn’t go anywhere anyway, as a chance to get the best possible strength, muscle and function possible. She was in for treatment only 3 days after her injury to help reduce the swelling and start to restore her range of motion and function. With the surgery date set, we had 4 weeks of Tiana being the best rehab client, and we had her feeling so good, that she was walking normally and feeling like there was almost nothing wrong. (Which her new puppy was so happy with! 🐶)

Knee reconstructions are just like any other surgery – they are traumatic for the body, and it takes a lot of rest to recover. The risk with a reconstruction is that the rest we need will have us lose a lot of muscle mass, so our goal pre-op was to restore function and hang on to whatever muscle mass. Knowing this, we worked really hard before the surgery. This is where lockdown really helped Tiana – she had nothing better to do, so she was perfect in doing her homework.

It might not have seemed it to Tiana in the days following the surgery, however all the pre-surgery work we did allowed her to hold on to far more muscle that she otherwise would have. Even though we have a really small left quad muscle on our hands now, it could have been worse, and it’s been growing steadily every week. 

The first week or so post surgery was rough. It really messes with your mind to go in with a seemingly ‘functional’ knee, and come out with a knee that’s as painful as it was when she first fell in a heap. Lucky for her, she was prepared for this and got through the hardest part post-op.

Now, we’re working hard to come back bigger and stronger than before. She has been flying past every important milestone and is now looking forward to her upcoming review with her surgeon, where hopefully the training wheels will come off and they can plan out the next phase of her rehab to get her ready to go back to work, back into the gym (if we ever can again), and back ready for soccer next season!

Stay tuned for the next instalment where I’ll go over the things we did pre surgery to get her ready for the operation, and the things we’re doing post-op to get her back on the field.

If you or someone you know has an injury, we are still open during lockdown to help get you back doing the things you love. Give the clinic a call or send us an email.

Stay strong,

Josh