Last year I tore my Anterior Cruciate Ligament during sparring and recently I had it re-constructed using a hamstring tendon.

Has anyone else had this and returned to training? I only ever trained Thai Boxing for fitness and fun and I don't want to risk a recurrence of the injury for a hobby. (My employers wouldn't be very happy.)

Taking heavy leg kicks on the pads - is that a good idea after what I've had done? (Altho that wasn't how it tore the last time, there are surely more forces involved than general sparring.)

Am I better off going to something with kicks above the waist only?

Cheers

hi pin,yer also did my acl about 5yrs ago and after keyhole dr advised never to do kickboxing again as replacement knee would be next option. but was determined not to give it all up, so worked this weaker leg twice as hard. and sure it gave way a few times in the early days but now (touch wood and all that) it feels as strong as the other one. good luck anyway mate.

Hi, a good Orthopaedic consultant will take your life-style into consideration prior to surgery, discussing your expectations and offering you physiotherapy both pre and post op.

Obviously the body needs to heal so it would be silly taking/throwing heavy shots or trying to do too much too soon.

I'm assuming you were in a Raymed splint and advised to use elbow crutches initially post op?

Any questions or queries you have I would say contact the secretary of the consultant looking after you, have them pass on your concerns and arrange a meeting, failing this ask your physiotherapist to write/phone the doc, your physio will then work with you to stregthen the muscles, ligaments and tendons which will all have been effected.

Good luck

a good Orthopaedic consultant mostly see's surgery as the only option

No they don't,the majority will try to go for conservative treatment instead of invasive treatment, this lowers the risk factor involved with surgery. However in some cases surgery is the better option.

Pin-Head

From month 6 onwards your Physio should be happy for you to return to contact sport depending on your rehab progress.

K :)

Thanks, yeah i'm at physio regularly. They have told me a year before contact sports, advice which i'll follow. i guess having confidence in it then is going to be hard.

Just do as your told and hopefully you are working with a good physio :)

Kelly - I think my statement was a bit black and white, though i do think there is some truth in it...

Mark, I work with some excellent and some not so excellent Orthopaedic surgeons I will admit that, however sometimes the body does need fixing and with the help of these great surgeons many a life has been saved or improved :)

K

Are you a surgeon Mark or do you just work in that line of work?

i've just been put on the waiting list for my ruptured acl. the consultant said that there is no reason why after surgery and following the rehab to the letter that i can't fight again. he said that it would probably be better than before.

Hope so Jamin and you're probably right mate.

It's just there's people at my physio class who've done the same leg twice, and when you think of the trouble people like Michael Owen have had it makes you wonder. Well it makes me wonder anyway!

cheers

i know what you mean pin head. its one of my concerns. get my leg fixed up....follow the rehab and it goes pop again but its a chance i'm willing to take.

i know how you feel i've been there but it should be cool.
i suggest.. don't rush back to training, spend good time at the gym first building up your leg muscles to help support your knee area. and obviously take it easy on that leg when you do go back until you fell confident again. but always be aware of the injury and generally protect that knee more if possible.

im also waiting to have mine repaired im having mine done in oz the consultant has told me after six months can resume full training and the knee should be as good new until the osthoprosis kicks in ten years lol

All the best with the rehab 'kneetrouble'.

Frustrating aint it!?

6 Months?! Thats fast, we follow at least a 12 month rehab programm where I work. Listen to your body... aches and twinges here and there and lol yeap the osthoarthritis kicking in! JOY!

Good luck with the recovery guys

K :)

i had reconstruction about 4 years ago,im still weary of it but only mentally,physically i get the odd twinge which is worrying but can kick harder than i ever could before and it feels fine when training.

thats what i like to hear nathan!!!

kick harder than before!!!

got the date for my surgery!!

March 9th. soon be back on track!!

Nice one jamin. I got kept in overnight but only cus i went to surgery late in the day.

I'm now 7 months post op. Loads stronger. Been discharged from physio. Not back to 100% normal stronger but feel like I could at least try a bit of martial arts to see how it held up. My consultant has said 9 months to a year tho. Gonna do a triathlon in the meantime.

One thing i'd say is make sure you to do your strengthening exercises regularly at home. At my physio class some of the others did nothing else other than at the hospital and their progress lagged behind. Im sure you will anyway.

Good luck.

thanks.i'm in no rush to hurry things. it ruptured in april 2009 so its been nearly a year.......whats a bit more time on top of that!!

hope your back to 100% soon!!

i'm now 2 weeks post surgery and am able to walk without a limp and without my crutches. physio is getting stepped up a gear and i'm really feeling the benefits of sticking to the rehab programme and doing daily excersises.

Good work Jamin mate! I think i was 5+ weeks before that!

Did you have a hamstring tendon graft?

I broke my arm years ago and had a plate inserted and 6 months after taking up muay thai I managed to damage the bone and muscle to the point where I had to press the doctors to remove the plate and give me physio. Previous to the surgery I injured the arm time and time again by being TOO keen to get back into training - most humiliating thing ever was catching a knee on the arm from some overweight little 13 year old on his first night when I told him to "come on put a little aggression into it" then having to go to hospital lol.

Best piece of advice I can give you mate is to do whatever the doctors tell you to do for recovery, make sure your diet is spot on for as speedy recovery time as possible nad most importantly, DO NOT try to get back into it too quick. Personally I waited over a year from the surgery before I took a fight and that was jsut for some minor muscular damage.

yeah, i had the hamstring graft. quite a neat little procedure.

just got told this morning that i'm being referred to the ACL clinic down the local hospital to participate in twice weekly circuit sessions desgined to strengthen the knee. still a long way off any training but its nice to know that i'm maknig progress.

i've got a bend in my operated leg of 120 degress which is only 40 degress of the unoperated leg at full bend. feeling confident that i'll be able to make a return to full activity in the distant future!!!!!

Stick with the physio exercises for longer than you think you need to. Doesn't do any harm and all the more strength you can build up the better. This isn't just about training but everything else you use your knee for as well. When I dislocated and fractured my shoulder in July 2008 I had to wear a sling for a month and the day it came off I reached for something on a supermarket shelf and the muscles had wasted so much that my arm just drooped. However I booked in with a private physio a couple of days later to get things started and then saw an NHS physio for the next 2 months. I'd been doing the exercises twice a day and by the time I was discharged in October I had more or less full movement back. Quite a bad dislocation, as shown in the x-ray. I started the strengthening exercises in August and gradually phased them out by November. Had to take it carefully for a few months but I resumed Thai boxing in October, had a comeback interclub in February 2009 and my first fight in May. A couple of physios have told me that being in pretty good physical shape before the bike accident that caused the dislocation helped with the recovery. These days I've got full range of movement and I'm strong enough to pick up someone who weighs more than me.

Pin Head
Keep up with the Rehab and then just train in Boxing for a while.
Youll be amazed at how fast your hands will be after that.

Nice X-ray, see you had it @ LGI :) Physio's there are the best (Bias) lol x

You don't get much choice of hospital when you're in the back of an ambulance on a 999 call but I was in so much pain that I didn't care and just wanted to get there as soon as possible. I wasn't even bothered that they didn't have blues & twos on and weren't running red lights to get me there, but I suppose I wasn't in any immediate danger and I'd had enough presence of mind to ask people to take me to my GP's surgery which was just up the road. Somehow I decided it was better to go to a building with a doctor, my medical records and next of kin details rather than sit by the roadside. Still had to wait about half an hour in A&E before I was given gas & air and a load of painkillers though. Physio was actually at Jimmy's. I went there because they had the earliest appointment available.

I expected the rehab to be slow, painful and frustrating and I wasn't disappointed, but accepting it and just getting on with it made it easier to cope. Also had the beginnings of PTSD at one point (I have to be very careful of that kind of thing because stress and depression run in the family) but again knowing about it and understanding it helped to keep it under control. The mental side of this can be easy to overlook but I was determined to get back into things and make sure my fighting career wasn't over before it had begun. I think that's part of the reason why I made such a good recovery.

i'm doing my physio three or four times a day....just depends what time i wake up. each session has about an hours worth of excersises and they are spaced two hours apart.

be back in the ring for 2011 no problem!!!!!

Jamin, 3-4 times a day lasting an hour each time... thats intense?!

MH I work @ LGI but the out patients are spread across site depending on injury, rehab and postcode!

Nice to see some people actually do some rehab as instructed :)

monkey say monkey do!!!!!!!

I'm finding my leg goes numb now when i'm running. I can't feel my foot after a certain distance. Back to the consultant methinks.

:( not good

Numbness to the foot can be a sign that you may have a damaged or compressed nerve.

I'd ring the secretary and arrange a follow up appointment.

K

since my op the area just below my knee has been feeling numb. this sensation comes and goes but i've not had any numbness during excersise.

i'd go back to the consultant if i were you but having said that, any strange feelings i get in my knee are discussed with the physio. aire on the side of caution dude.

Yeah that's kinda what I was thinking Kelly. Are you a doc or summat?

I am gonna go back to the hospital. Guess I was hoping it would just go away and back to normal.

I was discharged from physio early Feb Jamin mate.

Thanks peeps!

i've still got a long way to go ;)

Jamin your numbness is normal and expected following ACL surgery, especially if you consider the amount of jiggling around they do in there! (if you've watched the procedure) the nerves can be knocked and bruised :/

Nope I work in physio/rehab so see many ACL reconstructions, n=but mine are mainly through trauma not elective.

I would get it seen to ASAP though!

K :)

Hi pin head,

I had all my ligaments inside my left knee replaced with my hamstring tendons, when the doc was carrying out the operation he found that the hamstring tendons in my left leg were not strong enough and had to take a graft from my other leg.

Two years - im back at muay thai and feeling alot more powerful than before. Ease yourself into training. walking to start then light weight work on legs and conditioning to build up the muscles around the knee, gentle running and build up till you fell confident to take on bigger challenges!

No time at all you'l feel great and be training better than before!

just wondering how long it should be before sum1 whos had acl replacement surgery to be back doing full spar eg. punch,kicks,knees,clinch ect..........

eat gelatin - best is to make broths by boiling whole chickens, take the meat off when ready and then boil the remainder - take out bones you must and use remainder for a stew - Sally Fallon has great recipes and so does Dodie (spel?) that does the metabolic typing stuff though not sure if public has access to recipes.

Sally Fallon "Nourishing Traditions" has loads of great info and loads of recipes including broths (and sports drinks, healthy home made pops and beers etc). You could find broth recipes on westonaprice.org (Price Pottenger Foundation)


"Grandmother Knew Best

Science validates what our grandmothers knew. Rich homemade chicken broths help cure colds. Stock contains minerals in a form the body can absorb easily—not just calcium but also magnesium, phosphorus, silicon, sulphur and trace minerals. It contains the broken down material from cartilage and tendons--stuff like chondroitin sulphates and glucosamine, now sold as expensive supplements for arthritis and joint pain...

When broth is cooled, it congeals due to the presence of gelatin. The use of gelatin as a therapeutic agent goes back to the ancient Chinese. Gelatin was probably the first functional food, dating from the invention of the "digestor" by the Frenchman Papin in 1682...

Gelatin was universally acclaimed as a most nutritious foodstuff particularly by the French, who were seeking ways to feed their armies and vast numbers of homeless in Paris and other cities."

tells you how too


http://westonaprice.org/food-features/515-broth-is-beautiful.html

Great Lake Gelatin is a company you can order good quality gelatin from...

You can mix it in smoothies and make stews and broths etc

Some experts have told me they think you get more from the gelatin capsule around products like glucosamine and chondroitn etc than you do from the product itself...

kc84- i had my operation in march and despite following the rehab religiously i'm still not allowed back to training. my physio says it will take at least another six months before the knee can handle the twisting and pivoting involved in most techniques.