ACL Injurys

Now an injury that could possibly destroy your career, but isn't as likely to, but it will hold you back would be tearing your ACL. ACL stands for Anterior Cruciate Ligament. Your ACL is the ligament that keeps your knee from going left and right. It keeps it in place. It also helps keep your two bones attached together. Now usually when people tear their ACL they tear either their meniscus, MCL or both. If it is torn then usually 95% of the time, surgery has to be required. If it is partially torn then physical therapy is occurred to strengthen it without having to go through surgery. The person will be playing through pain.

Why tearing your ACL sets you back so much, is because the recovery takes at least six months. Depending on the person it could take longer than that. Physical therapy usually starts a couple days after surgery. The first couple weeks maybe even the first month the therapist are just trying to wake up your quad muscle, because it goes to sleep after surgery. They hook a machine up to the muscle to make it flex, basically the leg jumps so the muscle starts to begin to work. During this time getting the knee strait is critical. Once the knee is straight then the bending of knee begins to occur. Usually the physical therapist set a goal to get the knee to. Later on in the recovery work on extending the knee. After surgery it is really hard to get the extension back in the knee. A lot of athletes work on it all the time. Every time they are sitting or getting ready for bed, they are extending and flexing their quad muscle to receive the extension.

A couple months after surgery is when the strengthening and re-learning how to jump, run and cut. It is harder than it looks. People never think how hard something so simple as running can be. Everyone grows up just running which comes after walking and it just comes natural to the person. When you are old and have injured something it is harder to teach that part of the body to do something.

People with an ACL injury either come back stronger or just come back and have lost a lot of their talent on the game. That is why and ACL injury could destroy someones career or just push them back from a certain goal they have.