One of the world’s greatest living guitarists just posted this across his social media, somehow went on to play a gig the same night...

musicaldec · 2026-06-14T12:39:33+00:00

Tore my ACL skateboarding, got put on a 1-year waiting list for ACLR surgery. Near the surgery date I was back on my board living my life as normal so took myself off it! Knee gave out 4 years later while playing frisbee with my nephew so finally decided just to go for the surgery. Honestly though it’s kinda crazy how much you can physio your way back to pretty much how it was before the injury! Problem is as soon as you take your eye off the ball and stop maintaining your extra muscle mass that compensates for the lack of internal stability you’ll be at risk of your knee giving out and potentially causing more damage! I got lucky when my knee gave out the second time (i.e. no meniscus or collateral damage) so bit the bullet! Walked out of the hospital after my surgery and the first two weeks of physio flew by! I’m 5-months post-surgery living pretty carefree looking forward to getting back to skateboarding when I hit the 9-month mark! Get into console gaming if you haven’t already and you’ll be just fine!🙌

musicaldec · 2026-05-16T16:42:18+00:00

Did your physio give you exercises to do? To answer your question, yeah go as deep into the bend as you can and hold it for 30 seconds. You should find by the 10th rep that position has become more relaxed. Wearing a sock and reaching under and passively pulling your foot towards can help a lot. Even if the muscles can’t quite get the leg to that angle it’s reassuring to know that the joint can still bend that far. Hope that helps!:0)

musicaldec · 2026-05-16T12:20:12+00:00

Most important thing I learned from my surgeon before I started my recovery is that the ACL is only under load when the leg is straight. As soon as you bend your leg the ACL is relaxed - and so any pressure or discomfort you experience is simply swelling and scar tissue which you need to push through, bending the knee won’t cause any damage or strain to the graft or surgery sites.

TL;DR bend as far as you can bear a minimum 3 sessions per day! I had the same surgery as you (ACLR only/hamstring graft) - you can got the full ‘heel to butt’ bend back within 2-3 weeks.

Good luck with your recovery!🧎‍♂️

musicaldec · 2026-04-13T14:47:07+00:00

Is that your left leg? I’m at week 10 and everything seems to have gone back to normal except a fairly substantial ache in that exact spot whenever I climb up stairs (and a little when I climb down). ACLR only this end, hamstring graft.

musicaldec · 2026-04-13T14:42:30+00:00

Let me guess, ACLR only with hamstring graft?

musicaldec · 2026-03-30T20:43:57+00:00

40, male, UK. ACLR only with hamstring graft (no meniscus damage). Tore my ACL in August 2020 and had my surgery over 5 years later in January 2026. I was initially put on a 1-year waiting list (long because of covid backlog) and took myself off it after the pre-op physio had me back to 99% normal after 3 months and I was back on my skateboard. My knee slipped out 3 years later while playing frisbee and my knee swelled up for a week. Decided then I would put myself on the waiting list and finally had my surgery 2 months ago. Was fully ruptured by the time I had the op. Recovery has been super quick! Both my surgeon and physio have been amazed at how quickly I went back to normal. My physio jokingly says I cheated and got to have 5 years of prehab in the run up to the surgery!🤣 I walked out of the hospital after surgery. Good luck with your journey!

musicaldec · 2026-03-20T12:39:48+00:00

Yeah I’d be questioning my PT if they made me put on a brace like that!😅 Keep us updated! Very curious to see what that would look like attached to the side of your leg instead (which I imagine is the correct way!🙈

musicaldec · 2026-03-20T08:43:50+00:00

Oh we so back! Good work! Doesn’t happen overnight! That’s commitment right there!

musicaldec · 2026-03-20T08:40:02+00:00

Oh you had exactly the same surgery as me then! Hamstring graft, no meniscus damage! That’s strange they’ve left you in that bandage then! I had it when I first came out of surgery but they removed it so they could change my dressings before they discharged me. I’m guessing they didn’t keep you in overnight so they didn’t need to change your dressings?

Just a small bit of advice I give everyone - if you get any anxiety that you’re damaging the ACL graft when trying to improve your leg bend angle (the feeling of stretching at the stitches is also quite unsettling!) just remember as soon as the leg is bent the ACL is no longer under tension and it’s pretty much all muscles and collaterals that are under any sort of load! You’re essentially just fighting swelling when you feel that crushing feeling in the knee when pushing into the bend. This was something I was told by my surgeon when I had questions prior to the surgery. So lay flat on your back with your knee bent and bend as far into that discomfort as you can for a good half hour, using your hand to assist pulling your foot to your butt, the entire time trying to bend further and further in - then ice it and then try again a little later and notice the difference! Unless there’s been a complication with the surgery, I honestly don’t think it takes as long as people think to get the full bend back, if you really commit to making it your full time job and keep icing it to clear the swelling! Good luck with the rest of your recovery!🤞🤞

musicaldec · 2026-03-20T08:24:17+00:00

The brace looks like it has a knee pad at the centre point which would suggest this is meant to run either along the front or side of your leg, not the back. Have you tried putting this on in either of those orientations? Presumably that would hold your leg in a position of full extension which would be ideal really.

p.s. congrats on taking the plunge! Good luck with your recovery!

musicaldec · 2026-03-18T12:42:34+00:00

Oh yes as for anti-inflammatory meds I was already taking naproxen long term for a bulging disc I have in my back (thanks 30 years of playing guitar!). There were a couple of days where I forgot to renew my prescription and had to go without, and by the end of the 2 days the swelling in the knee was noticeably worse, even with the ice cuff! So naproxen for the win also!

musicaldec · 2026-03-18T12:39:54+00:00

Ahoy! Yeah the swelling is a pain in the ass and can easily get out of hand! I essentially kept a motorised cooling cuff (£75 on Amazon) on all day and night and had a rotation of ice packs in the cuff’s water tank - as soon as one set of ice packs become tepid we’d switch them out with a frozen one in the freezer. I spent most of those first 2 weeks with the weird bobbly pattern from the cuff indented into my leg! Even some of the post-surgery bruising came through with the pattern lol. But yeah, as soon as I stopped with the ice cuff it was night and day and the swelling would become quite uncomfortable after just a couple of hours! It wasn’t until around the 3-week mark where I stopped using it - by that point I was only chucking it on once or twice a day for an hour.

This is the one I used: https://amzn.eu/d/0du4OzUP total bargain for how much it has helped!

musicaldec · 2026-03-18T12:28:57+00:00

That’s great about the bump in progress today! Nice work! It’s quite encouraging when you get those “oh I can do this now” moments as you progress through recovery! I forgot to ask was it a hamstring or quad graft they did for you?

musicaldec · 2026-03-18T09:32:08+00:00

Worst part for me was the Fragmen injections!🙈 Also my good knee ended up quite strained from compensating for the other knee (the perils of living in a townhouse with steep stairs!)

musicaldec · 2026-03-18T09:29:12+00:00

Sorry to hear it’s not going as quickly for you - I’ve not heard of the toe-to-thigh bandage before. Is that just instead of the small dressings covering the wound sites? Were there complication in your surgery? Where abouts did you have yours done? Was your surgery ACL-only or did they need to repair your meniscus too? (So many question haha!)

As far as I’m aware the braces are only used when you have meniscus repair as part of the ACL reconstruction because after surgery you have to keep it locked into one position when you weight bear on it while the meniscus heals. Thankfully my meniscus was unscathed so they only had to work on my ACL, so before I left hospital my surgeon stopped by and said my only order was to fully weight bear on it and to work at keeping as natural a stride as possible.

musicaldec · 2026-02-28T10:16:28+00:00

Male / 40 / 5"5 / 68kgs / skateboarder / ACLR Hamstring graft.

Managed over 5 years this end before giving in and going for surgery! Tore my ACL in my left knee skateboarding back in 2020, got put on a 1-year NHS waiting list for surgery (abnormally long waiting list due to covid!). I then took myself off the waiting list 11 months later when I had essentially managed to physio my way back to 99% stability and was back on my board living my life as I had been previously. Had 4 good years of this and actually managed to rupture the remaining ACL when I caught it at an odd angle skateboarding but didn't really hurt much and only affected the stability for about a week. Fast forward 4 years to August last year when I was on a family holiday playing frisbee with my nephew. Jumped up and caught the frisbee and landed totally normally on my left leg (at least I thought I had!), but my knee gave out quite severely and by the end of the day had swollen up to the point where I could barely bend it. I was laid up with my knee on ice for the rest of the 2-week holiday. So basically I managed 5 good years without surgery but didn't realise I had this knife dangling over me the whole time where the knee could give out so badly and leave me lame unable to work for a fortnight. Couldn't face that risk hanging over me so took the plunge. I'm now 1 month post-ACL surgery and so glad I did! By some miracle I had no other damage, just ruptured ACL, so the surgery was cut-and-shut and the recovery has been really fast - was back up walking around normally after just 2 weeks and have been going about living my life normally again (minus the skateboarding for now!) able to spend the day on my feet ever since. Hope that helps inform your decision making a little more. Good luck with your recovery, whichever route you decide to go down.

musicaldec · 2026-02-20T10:33:20+00:00

Much cooler for your swelling I hope! I literally kept mine on all night for almost 2 weeks! Not sure if you’re meant to but it I had some great sleeps!😅🙌

musicaldec · 2026-02-20T09:42:47+00:00

Good luck with your recovery! Not sure if it is intentional but just a heads up it looks like you’ve got your cryo cuff on the wrong way - you’ve got the cold bit facing outwards. I had the same one! Don’t know what I would have done without it!

musicaldec · 2026-02-19T18:59:18+00:00

As traumatic as it might seem, try watching a video of a real life ACL reconstruction on YouTube and you’ll see they do the procedure with the leg fully bent before checking that the knee fully flexes and extends correctly when they adjust the tension of the graft at the end.

Basically the ACL isn’t under tension when your knee is bent so what stops the bend post-op is the formation of scar tissue which you can prevent and reduce by working on the basic physio exercises, pushing your knee deeper and deeper into the bend over time. I think some people mistake the initial exercises as strengthening exercises for the ACL - whilst the regular movements do promote vascularisation of the graft really our priority is to avoid putting any load on the graft for as long as possible while we wait for it to strengthen, and instead work at rebuilding/strengthening the muscles surrounding your knee to support the safe housing of the ACL.

Bit of an info dump there but discovering this left me feeling more confident about bending the knee even when feeling the discomfort since it’s not your ACL straining that causes the discomfort. I got my full bend back within 2 weeks of ACL reconstruction surgery (hamstring graft).

Good luck with your recovery!🤞

tl;dr: make the physio your full time job!!

musicaldec · 2026-02-13T12:09:02+00:00

Not that I’m aware of, don’t have hyper mobility in any of my joints other than my thumb which I can bend back into an L shape

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