Video Transcript

Hi, I'm Darwin Fogt, Licensed Physical Therapist and owner of Evolution Physical Therapy and Fitness in Culver City, California. Today we're gonna demonstrate drills that you can do following an ACL repair. Okay, so I'm gonna have Melanie go through a quick assessment here and make sure that this, we're gonna pretend that her right knee has just gone though an ACL repair and she's going a one-legged squat. I'm looking to check here stability as she goes through that squat looking to make sure she maintains that good stability in her knee and that there's no pain. So she's doing just fine with that, it would be okay to start to progress her to some pivoting drills. So every sport is a little bit different, the challenges are a little bit different whether it's basketball or football or baseball or soccer. So I'm gonna give you a very set of basic instructions to start pivoting and that what you need to do is adapt them specific for your own sport. So we're gonna start very low level here. Melanie's going to plant that right foot and she's just performing step arounds this way. So you can see there's starting to be some torque here at her knee. Now a good ACL graft is going to keep that knee stable as she performs this twisting motion and she's doing a really good job with that. Okay so that's kind of stage 1 here as we start to transition to more pivoting drills specific for your own sport. From here we can make this just a little more intense by bringing her left knee up in the air. She's just gonna unlock this right knee and she's really gonna open up her hip and have very big motions as she comes across this way. Again we're putting a lot of stress on that ACL graph so if you feel like there's a lot of instability or especially if there's any pain certainly don't work through that it's not time for you yet. Okay so Melanie is going to lunge or pivot here with her right foot onto an unstable surface and then bounce off. So now the knee is getting accustomed to transitioning all the weight on it through a dynamic motion. We got a little bit of twist there in the knee and as long as this is pain free and she's doing it very stable probably means the knee is ready to move onto the next level. This is a very simple exercise that's that works for a lot of different sports so we can start here and then adapt it to make it more crucial for, for your particular sport so Melanie's gonna start here we're just gonna very quick 3 comb drill. She's gonna plant here, pivot, open up her hip, and then move onto the next cone. So she's just gonna start off very slowly here, plant, pivot, and then rotate this way and she's just assessing how the knee is feeling. Now again, if there's any popping, if there's any pain, if there's any discomfort you want to back off a little bit. If it's continuing to feel good and feel strong we're gonna have her speed up. So next one through she's gonna start to move on to 1/2 speed to 3/4's speed, cutting, pivoting, and launching that really big first step, boom, go. Let's do it one more time and here we go. So we're gonna pivot, cut, go. I'm Darwin Fogt, owner of Evolution Physical Therapy and Fitness and today we discussed pivoting drills that you can do following an ACL repair.