Here is a common question I get asking how long will I have to be on crutches after ACL surgery and should I try to get off them as soon as possible?

Question:

First of all I want to say a very big thank you for all the information that you have provided on your web site its fantastic.

I had my Op last week in the afternoon so I stayed in overnight and was discharged the next day which was Wednesday.

Whilst in hospital I was given a nerve block before surgery to numb my leg for up to 12 hrs which took more like 20hrs to subside, I also had a PCA which contained morphine, which I could click every five minutes for pain relief. Apparently I didn’t use my PCA enough as I still felt pain and the nurses said Id hardly used any..I think I was out of it. Anyway when I came home on Wednesday afternoon that’s when all pain hit, I felt like chopping my leg off. Especially at night.

Thursday I could only do 2 of the exercises without help…but the leg lifts my husband had to help me.

Friday, today I woke up okay…have been up all day…my exercises went fantastic am now ready to start increasing sets. Also walked a few steps without the use of crutches.

My knee is still really swollen and am still using cold packs to reduce the swelling, yet my pain is about a 3 walking alone.

My question is should I still continue with the crutches or not. Or how long should I wait?

I’m being very careful not to twist my knee at this point as that kills, also I was never given a brace after surgery as my surgeon felt that it would take longer to heal.

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My Answer:

Before I answer your main question let me just say that on mt first ACL surgery I had a very similar experience in the hospital. I went a full 9-10hrs shortly after surgery with no nurse coming to provide any painkillers. Once the pain comes it can be really hard to get rid of!

For people that have the option of staying in a hotel or your home with someone taking care of you let me suggest that option.

Now, regarding the question… should you continue using the crutches after ACL surgery? The sooner you start using your leg and not relying on the crutches the faster you will recover. If you can take a couple steps without crutches in a CONTROLLED environment it will decrease your recovery time. But be careful, dont put yourself into a position where you would use the crutches but dont have them.

For example I know one person who decided to go on a shopping trip the week after her ACL surgery and decided she was doing well walking around the home without crutches so she didnt bring them. She ended up walking that afternoon way further than she had before and her knee swelled up like a balloon and had to call security to help her into a wheelchair and out of the mall.

Bottom line is you should always be trying to gently increase the ability of your knee but never put it into a situation it can not handle with no back up plan.

What is the most important muscle to exercise so that you protect your knee?

The most important muscle that you must exercise to protect your ACL and knee is your hamstring. The hamstring and ACL work together to prevent the bottom of your leg moving forward beyond your knee. That explanation was very simplified but essentially if your hamstring is strong than your ACL does not have to work as hard.

Knee Strengthening Exercises Should Focus On Hamstrings

After an ACL surgery you will notice the biggest decrease in strength in your Hamstring. Your quadriceps will also decrease in strength but not as significantly as your hamstring. For this reason you will find a lot of the ACL surgery recovery exercise routines focus heavily on hamstring exercises.

The problem for many of us is not whether or not we know if we should be strengthening our hamstring it is how do we find time to exercise. Well the exercise below is a great way to add a little bit of ACL rehab and preventive exercises into your daily work routine.

How To Exercise and Strengthen Your Knee While At Work – Chair Hamstring Curls

This exercise is great, it can strengthen your hamstring and decrease the chance you tear your ACL. It is especially effective if you are still recovering from ACL surgery and have weaker hamstrings than normal.

Basically while sitting in a computer chair with wheels you should do the following 5-15 times 3 times per day.

1. Sit in a chair with wheels
2. Plant both feet on the ground
3. Push away (like you would if you were going to stand up)
4. Pause when you have pushed as far away as you can without your feet coming off the ground and your without standing up
5. Pressing your heels into ground and flexing your hamstring pull yourself back towards the the desk.

This exercise will work both your hamstring and your quads and can be done discretely enough that people wont start talking about whether you’ve lost it.

If you are wanting to make this exercise easier on your knee then keep your hands on the desk to give yourself a little extra help.

To make the exercise more difficult you can lift one leg off the ground and

7. “I will be off work for too long after my ACL reconstruction”

Most people, regardless of their profession, need to be able to be able to walk around for their job. Therefore this fear is very common.

In my two surgeries I was able to walk 1-2 weeks after surgery but the physio and doctor both recommended I not return to work(mostly office based construction management) for 4 weeks.

If you are having surgery and are fearful that you will be off work for a long time it is understandable. I recommend you read my tips on when can you walk after surgery.

6. “ACL surgery is going to hurt!”

During the surgery you feel nothing. You go to sleep then wake up and your knee has been fixed. However, the pain generally starts within the first hour after you wake up. The nurse in recovery will continuously be checking you making sure your pain and blood pressure are under control. Once they determine you are safe for discharge they will let you go to wherever you will be staying for the night.

If you follow some simple pain management tips you should be able to control the pain level to below a 5 but this will depend on the extend of your surgery. 7 Tips To Manage Pain After ACL Surgery

5. “The ACL Surgery Scars Will Be Ugly”

This isn’t a concern I really had but I understand those of you that are concerned. Supposedly there are creams that you can put on your skin, specifically Mederma. The ACL surgery recovery blog YesKneeCan wrote a great post about healing her ACL scars (Heal ACL Scars).

Luckily for her the picture below is of my scars 16 months after surgery.

My Knee 16 Months After ACL Surgery

Maybe I should have used Mederma or another cream to help reduce the scars.

Cream To Reduce ACL Surgery Scar

4. “I am afraid of Weight Gain After ACL Surgery”

This is another very common fear. There are a lot of different stories on here about people both gaining and losing weight after surgery.

Weight gain after ACL surgery was a concern for me on my second surgery so I took some steps to make sure that I eat healthy after surgery.

My thinking before the surgery, based on what I learned from the first, was I know I will be around the house bored and when I am bored I tend to eat unhealthy snack food. Here is what I did and it resulted in me actually loosing 5 pounds in the first weeks after surgery(some of the weight would be muscle mass).

1. Collect all junk snack food in the house and throw it out or store it in a difficult to reach place
2. Buy healthy snacks, vegetables and fruit
3. Eat a lot of fiber for breakfast! (see pain med side effects!)
4. Pre Make Healthy Meals
5. Continue to eat meals on a routine

Hopefully some of these tips will help you with your fear of gaining weight after ACL surgery.

3. “After my ACL reconstruction I won’t be able to return to the sports I love”

A fear I definitely had/have, this applies to people not just concerned they wont be able to return to the sport now but that in the future they wont be able to play because their knee is damaged.

This fear of not being able to do the activities I love because of my 2 ACL reconstructions on my knee is still with me. The only thing I can think of doing to address this fear is doing my ACL rehab exercises.

If anyone has any great tips on addressing this fear I would enjoy hearing them!

2. “I wont wake up from knee surgery”

I understand this fear and had to put a little effort into fighting it but unfortunately I don’t have any really good tips. Basically I just kept telling myself I was being irrational and everything was going to be fine. Also the knee is a long way from the heart and brain so everything will be fine!

1. “I am afraid I will Re-Tear my ACL after I get it reconstructed”

This is another fear that I continue to struggle with. We put all this effort, time and money into getting our ACL fixed and one abrupt movement can make it all for not!

This fear is valid and here is what I am doing to make sure I don’t re-tear my ACL…

1. Don’t rush back into sports too soon
2. Do all your phsyio
3. Start slow into any new activity
4. Listen to your knee

So that’s it, those are the most common ACL surgery fears that people have.

What about you…do you share these fears or have other ones?

After acl surgery you will only be able to walk on crutches resulting in you having a difficult time taking care of yourself. Because of how much not being able to walk affects peoples lives/livelihoods the question of when will they be able to walk after surgery is one of the first ones they ask.

Before I can help answer the question I should define what qualifies as walking… For the purposes of this question walking is when you are able to move on a smooth surface at slow/moderate speed with a minimal limp for short periods of time.

So what is the typical timeline for being able to walk after acl surgery?

The short answer is it can be anywhere from 1-6 weeks until you are walking. For me I was walking 5 days after surgery as shown in the video below. But, like everything else with surgery your recovery time depends on a lot of factors, severity of injury, type of surgery and your age.

After my first surgery I was not able to walk for about 1.5 weeks. One of the biggest reasons was that at the time I was living in a small apartment going to university and had very little reason to move around so I don’t believe I tried walking enough.

6 Tips To Be Able To Walk sooner after acl surgery

When-Can-I-Walk-After-ACL-Surgery

1. Don’t Limp

If you limp after surgery when you start to walk it will actually delay you ability to be able to walk normally. It takes work to re-train your muscles to walk normally so its best to start right away and not limp.

2. Don’t over-commit

Often people are both in a hurry to recover and in a hurry to get out of the house. This combination can lead to problems where people commit to going places where they will be having to walk a lot ie shopping or to a restraunt before they are actually ready to walk that distance. Stay patien and dont over-commit.

3. Practice

Start slow and try often. The longer until you start practicing slowly the longer it will be until you can walk.

4. Start Weight Bearing

Training you leg muscles to be able to walk again is important. To start these muscles being activated its a good idea to start putting weight on your injured leg shortly after surgery.

5. Improve Knee Range of Motion

On of the limitations to being able to walk is whether or not your knees range of motion is adequate. Here are some great exercies to improve your knees range of motion.

6. Reduce Swelling

Similar to your knees range of motion, if you dont reduce the swelling enough your overall recovery time will be slower. So make sure to put in effort to reduce swelling. Here is my favorite technique for reducing swelling.

Tearing your knee playing soccer is one of the most common ways people tear their ACL. If you are a female it has been shown that you are more susceptable to tearing your ACL playing Soccer (Gray, J. A survey of injuries to the anterior cruciate ligament of the knee, International Journal of Sports Medicine).  In fact the National High School Sports-Related Injury collection listed all sports and the rate of ACL tears, Womens soccer is the most common sport that involves ACL tears. (ACL Study) Here is a list of the highest rate of ACL tears…

1. Girls Soccer – 1 torn ACL for every 6,500 times a girl competes or practices
2. Boys Football – 1 torn ACL for every 9,800 times a guy competes or practices
3. Girls Basketball – 1 torn ACL for every 11,000 times a girl competes or practices

After seeing these stats and thinking about the results it does make sense to me. My wife played competitive soccer and went to University on a soccer scholarship, comparing the number of teammates of hers that tore their ACL it was higher than any team I ever was on. Although in our house I am “loosing” 2-0 in ACL tears the real life comparison of her teams ACL tears vs my teams ACL tears makes these statistics believable.

Common ACL Tear Story From Female High School Soccer Player

I’m a 16yr old girl and I tore my ACL back in August 2011 playing soccer and I finally had my surgery on the 10th of January using a patella graft taken from the same knee.

First of all I want to thank you for your website as it has helped me a lot especially leading up to the surgery!

I was having a look at the recovery timeline and I am worried that I am a little behind, so I am 12 days in and I am still on crutches(2 but I only lean on one most of the time and use the other for balance mainly) and I am finding the straight leg raises very difficult and the problem is that on friday I popped one of my stitches and I popped another yesterday so now it is more fear that makes it more difficult for me as well as the pain.

Another thing, I can only bend my knee 90º and I am afraid to push it further because it is very painful in the front of my knee(patella area). Should I be worried that it could damage my patella tendon or should I push it further?

And finally, the day of my surgery, a few hours after it I had to go to the loo so I got up on my crutches and on my way there I fainted. Then after 5 days I had my first physio appointment, which was the first time I had been up and about since the surgery, after about half an hour or so I got very light headed and felt like I was going to faint but didnt. Then again today I decided that I had to do more exercise to make my muscles work a bit more so I went to a shopping centre and after just 15mins I had to go back to the car because I was very light headed again. I was wondering, since you have probably heard alot about these surgeries,I was wondering  if this is normal and when will it go away because I cant go back to school at the moment if Im going to faint after a few minutes?

My physio has asked me to order this machine to stimulate my quads because they are not responding like they should:
http://www.neurotechgroup.com/uk/products/kneehab-xp

Hopefully this will help because the worst part about this for me is that it is all so slow and I get very frustrated when I cant do the straight leg raises.

My Answer to her and other girls soccer players in a similar situation…

Everyone recovers and different grates depending on how much work the surgery was….don’t worry that it’s taking a little longer.

Regarding the popped stitches I don’t think its too big of a problem you just need to be a little more careful about keeping the wound clean and dry.

With you lying down so much being light headed when you wake up is pretty normal. Try and have yourself get up and move around a little bit every hour you are awake this will help both with the recovery and the light headed issue.

Hope some of these tips help and good luck with the recovery.

Professional Female Soccer Players Tear Their ACL

Professional female soccer players are not immune to ACL tears. US Soccer Star Ali Krieger is now out for 6-8 months with an ACL tear. Playing against the Domincan Republic Jan 20, 2012 she was struck in the knee and went down in pain as shown in the video below.

Prevent ACL Tears in Female Soccer Players

If you are a female soccer player and want to learn how to prevent ACL tears I recommend having a look at the easy to follow knee injury prevention exercises. Click Fere for soccer knee injury prevention.

The main take away from Ted’s story is that joint supplements specifically Flexcin Load Up Formula is worth considering especially if your knees are a little more “experienced”.

Supplement For Knee

Thanks for all the experience and input on your pages. i had my left knee done two days ago …. 1-10-12. i was banged up as a result of car accident, but not what you would think. the driver that rear-ended me fled the scene. i was not injured as a direct result of the accident, but after a quick chase where he pulled over and did not want me to call the sheriff. as i walked back to my car, i got body-slammed from behind. guess that’s the answer he wanted to hear.

long story….. short. that was in October 2011. i did start physical therapy right after my mri showed a pretty good amount of damage to my acl. lcl, mcl and meniscus. once i had that figured out, i stopped going but had to wait for accident report, sheriffs report…. etc. walked with a brace, then was able to walk w/o brace after doing a lot of reading. nothing fancy for sure. the one thing additional i did was to start taking FLEXCIN LOAD-UP formula. i listen to a medical program hosted by an MD/ND (duke and the doctor on am radio) that also does alternative medicine and compares both sides. my major concern is arthritis.

My ACL surgery went well. I had a nerve block which i was unaware of. that took 24 hours to wear off, and then i started a few pain pills just incase of possible future pain. hopefully a non-issue. i got an allograft which makes sense because i only have one healing site. had asked for graft from a russian weight-lifter but they couldn’t help me there. came home with a cold cuff system called cold rush. also have a cpm which i maxed out on second use and will probably call supply house to come pick up. dr gasser (sports doctor who does the lighting hockey team and the usf bulls) also used screws to attach ligament…. no bone plugs. interesting, the screws are made from the same material as the dissolving sutures. two to three years and they are gone.

my success (i think)……. i am a 58 y/o male living in tampa fl, swam competitively through college, decent shape and hit the flexcin load-up formula pretty hard after injury and will continue for some time after surgery. flexcin load up is about 97$ for three bottles. cheap if it works latter in life.

There are other joint supplements you can find by googling or by looking for flexcin reviews.

Thanks for all your support and time in sharing your experience.

First off I want to say thanks to the many readers of this site. Many of you have sent me emails saying how much the information myself and others have shared on here has helped you. Those messages have kept me motivated to share as much useful information as I can.

Well my recovery started off really well with being able to walk without crutches 4 days after surgery but I bumped my knee in the second week carrying a laundry basket(stupid) and believe that has led a little “looseness” in my knee. The rest of my recovery went well especially the great physio I had who was getting me ready for returning to activities by doing a lot of jumping and balance exercises.

So what have I learned that can benefit other people about to go in for ACL surgery or are currently recovering from it…here is my top 12 lessons!…

The Top 11 Recovery Lessons I Learned In My First Year After ACL Surgery

Stay on top of the pain
Questions about pain in the first week after acl surgery is one of the most common here on aclsurgeryrecovery.net. My answer is always the same, the best way to minimize pain in the first week after acl surgery is to stay in top of it. What I mean by this is that once you are feeling a lot of pain it can be very hard to get rid if that pain. Therefore it’s best to proactively take your prescribed pain medication at the instructed time intervals. Many people will not take their pain meds since they think they aren’t in pain but then the pain will come and they will try to take the medication but it’s too late and the pain is already there. 7 Tips to manage pain in the first week after ACL surgery.

Use a cryo cuff
If you are getting acl surgery and are thinking regular ice packs will work let me tell you that’s it’s not worth it! Make sure you use a cryo cuff or air cast ice thermos. They are great and can stay cold for long periods of time.

I have used both the one with the electric pump and the themos jug style. I much prefer the thermos jug style since there are far fewer cords/plugs etc and it therefore encourages you to move around helping in the recovery.

My Aircast Cryo Cuff

Inexpensive Aircast Cryo Cuff

Do your at home exercises
There are many exercises that you should do at home in the first weeks. If you only do your exercises when you are at physio you will not recover very quickly.

Here are some of the at home exercises I did to recover. ACL Surgery Recovery Exercises

Don’t overdue it
In the first few weeks/months you will start to feel better and when this happens it can be very tempting to push your knee too hard. One not very well known fact is that the acl graft is the weakest at week 16 right when you usually start to feel like you can be doing a lot of activities. Make sure you don’t do any activity that causes your knee “pain”, discomfort is ok but not pain. If your knee swells up significantly after an activity you can be sure that it was too much too soon.

“Secret” Icing tip

Here is how to get rid of swelling that wont go away, the swelling right inside your knee that no matter how much you ice it wont go away! One of my most popular posts on this website is the one how to get rid of swelling inside the knee. I go into the thermodynamics of why it works HERE, but the basic premise is to ice your ankle and knee(yes ankle) and then apply heat to your upper thigh. This tip really helps with the swelling that is inside the knee that is so hard to get rid of.

My "Secret" To Reducing Swelling Inside Your Knee

Go to physio
Some people, including myself, have a hard time taking the time out of there week to make it to physio, especially when your knee starts to feel better and you question whether its worth it. When I tore my ACL the first time I stopped going to Physio after a couple months and thought I was doing everything right on my own. However, I paid dearly since I did not do enough cutting and balance drills which resulted in me re-tearing my ACL when I played soccer.

Bike

Biking after ACL surgery is one of the best things you can do for your knee. It helps increase the range of motion and helps get the blood circulating. Not only that but it will be the first activity you will be able to do with any level of intensity and therefore is the fastest way to get back into shape.

Me Biking After ACL Surgery

In the first few months after my ACL surgery I really put a large emphasis on biking and as a result was able to go on a mountain bike trip 5 months after my ACL surgery.

Don’t return to sports too soon (like I did once)

If you return to sports to soon you can have the same result I did on my first ACL surgery. I re-torn ACL at 8months when I played soccer. The decision to play soccer was dumb on my part and I have paid for it with another knee surgery. After my second surgery I took my time, didnt return to skiing at the 4 month mark like I did on my first surgery and didn’t do any high intensity cutting sports until the 10 month mark.

If this is your first ACL surgery you are recovering from and you are really wanting to return to a given activity make sure you take your time….its not worth it.

Stay Motivated

Whether its in the first week or 4th month there comes a time where your motivation to go to the gym, do your exercises or protect your knee starts to disappear. It will be important to find something that will keep you motivated, everyone is different and the same strategy wont work for everyone but here are a few of the tricks I used to keep me motivated.

• Schedule a vacation a few months out that will take a lot of preparation for your knee (see my bike trip above)
• Pay for physio in advance (this makes you go)
• Set and track goals (range of motion etc) – see my acl surgery recovery timeline
• Have friends, family keep you accountable – my wife and this website helped keep me accountable

Start any activity slow

Whenever you are returning to an activity whether its walking or rugby make sure to start slow. Don’t jump full speed into any new activity, make sure to take your time and make sure your knee gets its balance back. Most activities use sets of muscles in unique ways that cant be duplicated in the gym or physio and for that reason the only way to do the last 10% of your physio is by doing the activity at 1/2 speed and then full speed. For example when you return to skiing the right way to do it is to start on easy hills in smooth conditions at 1/2speed and slowly but surely over the course of a few days work your way up.

Continue exercising your leg

Once you have finished going to physio and have returned to a few activities it can be easy to forget about your knee and no longer make a concerted effort to exercise it. This is a big mistake, your knee/leg will now always require a level of exercise to ensure you don’t end up re-tearing it. Over the next year this will be my big focus when it comes to my knee, making sure I continue to go to the gym reasonably regularly and do the required ongoing exercises for my knee.

What’s next for aclsurgeryrecovery.net
I plan on continuing to provide useful information on how to manage your knee after acl surgery but I hope to get feedback on some of the questions below to see how much value different ideas will have for you the readers…

Take The 5 Question Survey – HERE – Help Me Help Others With Their ACL Surgery Recovery

My acl injury story….. I am 39  from Minnesota and for the past few years I have been into racing ” vintage snowmobiles”. Normally we race on a lake, but the last race of the season, we have a race through the woods. As the race progressed, there were about six sleds really close together and things can get a little rough. Well, as things happen one of the other riders suddenly started sliding sideways in front of me so I had to swerve to miss him so I wouldn’t “T” bone him at 50 mph. As this happened, I had realized I was heading straight for a beautiful white oak tree, again at 50 mph. So in a split second I started to bail off my machine, but my leg was still draped over the seat. Which caused it to slam into the motor and then sent me sailing through the air about 25 feet. To be honest, I cant believe I didn’t break my leg. I was able to hobble back to my machine and I sat down on it and my first thought was I hope I didn’t tear my acl. Some friends pulled me out of the woods and loaded up my sled, or the remains of it anyways.

I Hope I Didn’t Tear My ACL

I stayed around for about a hour after, but the pain was getting too bad so I went home and iced it. The next day I went to the hospital and had an Xray and the Doctor said my acl was fine. Probably just a bad bruise. I never had any instability just a tremendous amount of pain and swelling. About five weeks went by, I decided to go see an Ortho Doc. He told me that I did in fact tear my acl. Or as he put it, “I think you got your acl buddy”. My heart sank. But that’s not all I also had a large tear of my medial meniscus and a lot of bone bruising in my femur and my tibia. I now have some extra bumps around my knee to prove it. Did I mention the person I swerved to miss was my brother……..

On May 2, 2011, about six weeks after my accident I had my surgery. I used my own patellar tendon as my graft. I am now about six months post-op.  Everything seems to be going fine. I got my full ROM back right away, but I can tell my leg is still weaker than the other one. I just keep doing my exercises and take it one day at a time. I do a lot of biking that has been my main source of therapy, but now the days are getting shorter and the weather is getting colder I have been doing more squats and things more focused on the quad strength. Lots of stretching too.

For me right now, the hardest part is being on my feet all day at work. My knee just gets a little sore and swells up through out the day. It does seem to be getting better. Ironically the reason I am on my feet all day is because I am a Surgical Technician and stand in a operating room all day and do procedures. Many times acl reconstructions. It is a interesting operation, just one I never wanted to have done on me……

If you are interested in sharing your story to the readers of ACL Surgery Recovery than please contact me.

After ACL Surgery I was in intense pain the first night (got home from surgery around 8:30 p.m..) from my big toe all the way up to my hip. I didn’t sleep at all and was taking my the max of my meds every 3 hours. I realized the next day that someone had wrapped the bandage too tight after my surgery and that’s why I was in excruciating pain! And I’d even decided post-surgery to get a block because the pain was so bad. I didn’t realize it was the bandage until after my bandage change the next day when my pain level from 1000 down to 1 or 2, as in normal post-op pain. And it wasn’t until later in the afternoon that it dawned on me what caused the tremendous drop in the pain level! And yes, I told my doctor about it. It was actually his assistant who wrapped me up after surgery so my doc was going to have a chat with him.

ACL Surgery Pain Management

Anyway, I’m almost 2 weeks post-op and doing well! I’ve had full and hyper extension 2 days after my surgery and I can flex my knee to well past 120 degrees, as in my heel is maybe an 2″ from my butt when I’m sitting and doing passive flex exercises. The pain is only bad at night. It will wake me up. So that’s when I’m taking most of my meds now. I hardly have any swelling at all but ice has been my best friend. And I’m doing my rehab on my own since I don’t have insurance and I’ve rehabbed my hip, shoulder, and knee on my own previously. My doctor saw me yesterday when I got my stitches out and he was amazed! He said he’d like to use me for a case study of what can be accomplished without PT when a patient is motivated….but I also had PT for 3 shoulder surgeries before I did my 4th shoulder surgery, hip surgery, and knee surgery on my own.

As I said, the pain is the bad at night. I can get by during the day without taking meds. My doc said I don’t have to sleep in my knee brace but I’ve tried doing that, elevating my lower leg, and every other position to try and make it not hurt but nothing seems to work. The pain will actually wake me up in the middle of the night. I know it might hurt more than usual because I’ve been pushing the PT pretty hard and have been up and about much more than I probably should be, but as my doctor says, it’s not hurting the the knee itself; it’s just causing ME more pain.

My Advice For Dealing With Pain After ACL Surgery During The Night…

Well the best advice I can give is to try and stay ahead of the pain. If you know the pain is going to occur at night and wake you up then set an alarm and wake yourself up before the pain gets bad, when you wake up take some pain meds and ice your knee then go back to sleep. By getting up before the pain forces you to wake up you will have a much better chance to reduce the pain.

Hopefully this helps you sleep through the night.

From both witnessing many teammates with ACL injuries and now my own two ACL tears and surgeries I am confident I can share with you what the common ACL injury symptoms are.
After abusing my knees extensively and exiting my youth with no knee problems to speak off I really felt I had been lucky enough to have a pair of knees that would continue to be problem free.

My ACL Injury

When I was 23 at University I was playing on a club Rugby team for the 2nd year. During the start of the 2nd year we were having practice and playing a simple touch rugby game. It was a freshly cut, dry and level field and half way through the game I went to make a fake to my right side and hard cut to my left and when I planted and cut on my right foot I felt a pop and immediately fell to the ground.

ACL-Injury-Symptoms

The pain was moderate, my knee didn’t feel “right” but I couldn’t figure out exactly what the problem was. I sat out for about 15 minutes and then got up and walked a little, it still didn’t feel right so I decided to head home before my knee started to seize up more. At this point there was no swelling to speak of, minimal pain and the only indication that something was off was the instability I had when I was on my toes on my right leg. Unfortunately, I had a 4 mile bike ride home where I mentally agonized over what I may have done to my knee. I kept running all the possible ACL injury symptoms through my head.

At home I followed the standard RICE protocol for a couple of days…
R – rest
I – ice
C- compression
E – elevate

As I tried to run through the symptoms of what could be wrong with my knee I dismissed a torn ACL since there was almost no swelling and very moderate pain. From seeing teammates destroy their knees and tear their ACLs skiing I did not believe my knee problem could be that bad.

After 1 week I was having instability issues and the pain, although moderate, was not getting any better therefore I decided I had no choice but to get my knee looked at by a doctor.

Misdiagnosis of ACL Injury Symptoms

Although I saw a sports medicine doctor she compared my two knees and felt that my ACL was not torn and had only bruised the meniscus. I was happy to hear this even though I didn’t fully believe the diagnosis since I didn’t feel it explained the instability issues I was experiencing.

5 Months After ACL Injury
The pain in the knee stays about the same for 5 months, there was minimal swelling but I was able to do most activities I enjoyed including biking, running, squash and skiing. The instability issues seemed to be manageable and I was able to function pretty well. When I returned to skiing my knee would give out once a weekend but wouldn’t cause very much pain when it occurred. I was convinced something more must be wrong and I would have to get an MRI to know fore sure.

MRI Results
After I see another sports medicine doctor and telling her my story she sends me for an MRI. Luckily I was able to get on the cancellation list as I was living close to the university Hospital and had a flexible(classes can wait) schedule.

When I got the results it was clear, torn ACL with some medial meniscus damage.

I tell you this story because I wish I had been able to read this blog post back then and understand better typical ACL Injury Symptoms.

ACL Injury Symptoms:

The ACL injury symptoms are listed in order of relevance. For example almost all people that injur their ACL to the point of tearing it feel a popping sound and have instability issues where as not all people have swelling and pain.

• Popping Sound/Feeling
  • When you injur your ACL one of the most common ACL Injury Symptoms is the sound or feeling of popping. This sound is quite literally your ACL popping like an overstretched elastic band. It is almost always followed by the injured person falling to ground.
• Swelling in Knee
  • A very common symptom is that of significant swelling in the knee. Most people when they tear their ACL also cause significant amounts of other damage in their knee and the combination results in severely swollen knees. However, as was my case there was very little swelling in the knee. For me my right(injured knee) was more swollen than my left but not by as much as most people say it would be after injuring their ACL.
• Instability after injury
  • When you have an ACL injury one of the most unique and telling sypmtoms is instability in your knee. The ACL is a key ligament that controls your knees movement. When you have injured your ACL you will find your leg “giving out” when you go to do various activities. For some people it can be as simple as walking or jogging. For me my knee would give out when I was skiing after my ACL injury.
• Moderate to severe pain
  • Right after the injury you will feel moderate to on some occasions severe pain especially on the outside or back of the knee. This is where the ACL attaches and the feeling of pain will be coming from those areas.
• Limited movement
  • Limited movement will be a symptom of an injured ACL since the swelling of the knee, especially the swelling inside the knee, will reduce your knees range of motion.

ACL Injury Symptoms Summary

When you injury your ACL you will almost always feel or hear a pop, fall to the ground, may or may not be able to walk after but likely cant return to the activity you were doing. The swelling and pain will both be moderate to sever and you will likely experience moments of instability.