Returning to sport after an ACL injury is a long and demanding road. The common time frame following surgery is 9-12 months before a person can make a safe return to sport. The main reason for this is the time it takes the anterior cruciate ligament to vascularize (more on this later). However there is several problems within providing a recommendation based solely on a time frame, or even just evaluating the knee itself to see if it is intact. What I am going to show you in this article is that the evaluation criteria for returning to sport which uses a blanket template can be majorly flawed, for it often ignores that each person is different, and their weaknesses or reasons for sustaining the injury in the first place is what must be identified and corrected before returning to sport. Neglecting to address faulty movement patterns or restrictions at other joints is why so many athletes, both professional and amateur will suffer repeated injury and can derail even the best of athletes such as Derek Rose a former MVP with the Chicago Bulls. If you are an amateur or professional athlete and looking to return to sport after ACL surgery this article is a must read as I show you 5 critical factors you must achieve if you want a safe return to sport and minimize your risk of another rupture.

Medicine ball training is one of the most enjoyable exercise to use in strength training programs with a focus on core strength, with many fun partner exercises and games used to achieve this. It is also one of the simplest and safest ways to teach power training and rotational power with people and because of that is also very underrated. Elite athletes in many sports are aware of the incredible benefits to using this piece of equipment and understand exactly why and how to use this to generate explosive power that cannot be replicated with barbells and dumbbells. So why is it abused or underused in many gyms and training programs? This is one of the answers we will cover in this article and we will also give you some examples of favorite drills you can add to your training.

Here is a unique case study of how we helped a client to successfully manage a very difficult hip problem. This client who still trains with us, has now trained with us for nearly 3 years. But it took a good 2 years of constantly changing the plan, going backwards and forwards and constantly using various tools and methods to find a way forward with certain movements that were continually aggravating her. It was a very bumpy road, and before we met her she had already tried many things from other health practitioners with little to varied success. We wanted to share this story to show how difficult working with chronic pain can be, and why you need to very patient with the approach and also be wise enough to make changes were needed. Sometimes going backwards in the plan is the best way forward. Keeping notes is vital and I cannot stress this enough for this helps you to see patterns and establish what is the source of the problem. Otherwise you just end up reacting and treating symptoms which never leads to a good long term result. This article was written in combination with trainer Nathan Fejes who spent a majority of the time with this client.