Why I Selected Other Physios for My Own ACL Rehab

Being the patient instead of the physio

I tore my ACL and meniscus, and within a week I had to decide who was going to run my rehab. I select the plan for other people's knees most days of the week, so the obvious move was to write my own program. I didn't. I put together a small group of physios in three countries and handed the process over to them.

That sounds like paying for something I already do. There were four reasons it made sense, and they apply to anyone weighing up whether to go it alone with a long rehab.

Rehab has a mental load, and it compounds

The physical side of ACL rehab is demanding but fairly predictable. The mental side is what wears people down. Nine to twelve months of training with no game at the end of the week, a knee that feels different, and a constant internal argument about whether today's session was too much or not enough.

If I had programmed my own rehab, I would have spent every session auditing it. Handing that over meant I could stop being the clinician and just turn up, do the work, and report back. Someone else carried the decision-making, which made me far more consistent than I would have been on my own.

How I selected the three physios

I wanted people who spend most of their working week on this one injury, and I wanted different eyes on different phases.

Jorden Radliff in Melbourne works almost exclusively with ACL clients and took the early stage: swelling and range of motion, quad activation, gait retraining, and the basic movement re-education that everything later depends on.

Ravi Patel in the United States, who runs The ACL Athlete, took the middle block. His approach is heavily systems-based, with clear criteria for moving between phases rather than moving on because a certain number of weeks had passed. That changed how I think about progression.

Alan Murdoch at Elevate Speed Rehab in Bath handled the late stage, where the work shifts to speed, deceleration, change of direction and the return-to-performance qualities that a knee actually gets tested on in sport.

Each of them independently gravitated to a different part of the process, and the handovers lined up better than if I had scripted it.

You cannot see your own blind spots

Experience doesn't make you objective about your own body. Having three people assess my movement, my programming and my numbers through their own lenses surfaced things I would never have flagged in myself, including a hip strategy I had been quietly compensating with for months.

The old line about a lawyer representing himself applies to physios too. You can know the framework inside out and still be the worst person to apply it to yourself.

What the stages actually involve

If you're early in this and want a realistic picture, ACL rehab is usually broken into phases with criteria to exit each one rather than fixed dates.

Early (roughly the first 6 to 12 weeks). Restoring full knee extension, getting swelling under control, waking the quad up properly, walking normally without a limp, and rebuilding basic single-leg control. Quad strength after ACL surgery drops a long way, and this phase is about starting to claw it back.

Middle (around 3 to 6 months). Heavy, boring, necessary strength work. Squats, deadlifts, leg press, split squats, hamstring and calf loading, plus early plyometrics once the knee tolerates it. This is where limb symmetry gets measured, commonly with a handheld dynamometer or isokinetic testing, and where progress is judged against the uninjured side.

Late (around 6 months onwards). Sprinting mechanics, deceleration, cutting, jumping and landing under fatigue, then sport-specific volume. Hop test batteries, jump testing and questionnaires such as the ACL-RSI are often used to gauge readiness alongside strength numbers and how the knee responds to training load.

Timeframes vary a lot between individuals depending on the surgery, any meniscal or cartilage involvement, training history and the demands of the sport. Anyone giving you a fixed date in week two is guessing.

Where I'm at twelve months post-op

I'm back playing cricket as a fast bowler and back playing basketball, both of which load the knee heavily in different ways. My quad strength numbers on both legs are the highest I've recorded, and so are my deadlift and top-speed sprint numbers. I feel confident moving, which took longer than the strength did.

That's my experience, not a template. Other people with the same injury have very different timelines and outcomes, and my case doesn't predict anyone else's.

What I took back into the clinic

Working with three physios who each do this all day meant twelve months of watching how other people structure the same problem. I ask different questions now, I test more often, and I'm slower to progress someone on the calendar alone.

Being the patient also gave me a clearer sense of what the process feels like from the table: the weeks where nothing seems to change, the first time you sprint, the quiet nerves before contact training.

When it's worth getting someone else to run it

If you're rehabbing a serious injury and any of these apply, a second set of eyes is worth considering. You're guessing at whether your program is progressing. You've plateaued and can't work out why. You have no objective numbers, so "feeling better" is your only measure. Or you're a health professional trying to treat yourself.

At SportsFit in Five Dock and Gladesville, an ACL consultation usually runs 45 to 60 minutes. We take a history of the injury and surgery, assess range of motion, swelling, gait and single-leg control, measure quad and hamstring strength where appropriate, and look at how you move in the demands specific to your sport. From there you get a phase-based plan with criteria for what needs to be met before the next block, and regular retesting so the plan is driven by data rather than guesswork.

If you would like it assessed, you can book a free injury assessment.