Sebastian Brosche · Rehab · 14 min
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Post-op ACL rehab exercises for BJJ athletes. Day 4 program with stretches, band work, step-ups, and hip bridges to safely rebuild strength.
Hi everyone, welcome back. This is day four of our post-operative ACL rehab plan. So today we're going to start introducing a few more exercises, but we still need to be quite careful because at this stage the graft is still healing. We want to make sure that we don't do anything which is going to put too much stress on it.
So we're going to start out as we have done on previous days. We've got our belt, loop it around the ankle and we're going to go into a quadriceps stretch. So once again I'm stretching by pushing the hip forwards rather than just pulling the ankle back. I'm encouraging it but I'm not going to force it.
Make sure I keep breathing as I do that. Just relax, bend the knee up towards me, move it back and forth a few times. Go back into another stretch and relax there. We're going to take the rolled up towel, put it under the ankle, belt around the foot, pull back on the toes, encourage the knee into extension and try and flatten the knee as far as it'll go.
Make sure I keep breathing. Relax the tension on the foot slightly and lean forwards. Come back, one more time. Relax and lean forwards.
And rest there. I'm going to grab my TheraBand and this time I'm just going to put it between my ankles. I'm going to balance on my good leg to start with and what I want to do is just kick the right leg, the affected leg, forwards against the pressure of the band. I've done that.
I'm now going to go backwards so again making sure I keep my hips facing forwards and working the hip muscles. And then take the legs out to the side. And then I'm going to switch sides. So I'm now going to stand on the affected leg and do the same thing on the other side.
If you're not confident with the balance, it's okay to put a hand on a wall or the back of a chair. But the idea is you're going to try as much as possible not to rely on that. Backwards. Backwards.
Back out to the side. And switch sides. Do it once more on each side. As we said before, it's a really good balance exercise in addition to working the hip muscles.
And switch feet. So do and rest there. So keep the band handy. We're going to need that in a second.
We're going to go on to step ups. This time we're using the full height step. So the bottom step of your staircase will work fine. Or if you want to use some books or magazines, that's okay as well.
So once again I'm going to make sure I'm pushing up with the leg that's on the step and then lowering down under control. And grab the band again. Drop the step to one side. I'm just going to pop the band around my knees.
So just below the kneecap and we're going to do the squats to the chair, keeping my knees pushed into the band. So I'm making sure I'm engaging those hip muscles. And the idea now is I'm going to just try and touch the chair without putting my weight down. So back to the step and do one more set of these.
So so drop the step to the side. So so And drop the equipment to one side. Finally we're going to finish off with some hip bridges. So I'll lie on my back.
I want to make sure that my heels aren't too close to me. I'm going to take them these to about 90 degrees, maybe even slightly further out. Again the idea is I'm going to use, the idea here is I want to use my glutes and my hamstrings to lift my hips up and down. And rest there.
Quick hamstring mobilization. And rest there. And that's all for day four. So day five, the next program that will take you from about 12 weeks post-op.
So for now go through day four, go back over the previous days so you can alternate from day one to day four and then when you're ready come back and we'll start adding in a little bit more dynamic movement.
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