How to use this book
“As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles
can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
We want this book to be a piece of your journey. Bring it with you to your doctor’s appointments, PT appointments, wherever you’ll be waiting and try to learn one or two concepts. Take it to the gym and physical therapy clinic to track your workouts and hold everyone accountable. Use it to ask questions of your athletic trainer, physical therapist, and surgeon. From this point forward, we’ll refer to this group as your “sports medicine team.” You can present our ideas for exercises and concepts to your sports medicine team and see if they are appropriate for you. Their guidance and restrictions should always be followed, even if they contradict with what we write.
This book is a framework and supplement. It is not a replacement for any healthcare professional. We created each workout with a perfect scenario in mind. The truth is that your ACL recovery will not be perfect. There will be physical issues, mental challenges, and recovery deficiencies that arise. That means you’ll need to slow down or speed up your progress through the book. Leaning on your sports medicine team will be paramount to help guide those decisions when they come up. Nothing in this book replaces their expertise.
How this book is broken down
Phases
There are several exercise phases and regular check-ins via testing to make sure you’re staying on track. After 3-4 weeks of training, there will be a few deload (easier) workouts followed by a testing day. If you pass the testing criteria, you move onto the next phase. If you still need more time to meet the testing criteria, work with the sports medicine team to determine how many weeks to repeat and try again. If you’re unsure, just repeat the whole phase. Deloads along the way are important as they help with common issues that arise during recovery. Deload intervals:
give your knee and all the other joints of the body a chance to completely recover.
create a desire to go hard - you’ll feel restrained, held back like a leashed animal, and we want that for test day.
can be timed to coincide with higher demand weeks that require more recovery time or will take you out of the gym- finals, menstrual cycles, vacations
We hope this book stays near you for the next year and when you step onto the field, the book should be beat up, taped up, and marked up by the time you’re back to peak athleticism. Thank you again for letting us be a part of your journey.
Exercises within Phases
You’ll notice that there is a lot of overlap in exercises from phase to phase. This is intentional as it takes the body several weeks to adapt to new demands. If, after every 4-6 weeks we completely overhauled every exercise you were doing, it would be a huge shock and stress to your body.
We’ve staggered when each exercise progresses so you have adequate time to gain comfort with the new movement. This approach will prevent you from taking on too much new activity at once, which sets the stage for a setback.
For example, in the compound lift section of your workout, we transition from back squats to front squats, but keep your deadlifts and lunge exercises the same so you can focus on this new squat variation. You still get to advance your weight and reps with the lunge and deadlift exercises, but time is built in for you to acquire skill with front squatting.
Exercises within each week of each phase
Each ACL180 phase is broken down into week-long cycles that follow a general pattern.
You’ll have a high demand day for your legs where we’ll work on your explosiveness, speed, heavy compound lifts, and higher volume isolation work. We consolidate these physical stresses so you can focus on recovery for the next 48 hours.
The second day will be a lighter leg day with easier cardio, a heavy compound upper body session (or your team’s upper body workout), and a “signal session” for your major leg muscle groups. A signal session exercise for the quads could be light knee extensions with a band to improve blood flow, improve the brain to muscle connection, and send a signal to the body that this muscle group is important and needs to get ready for daily use.
The third day is your “play day” with lower stress exercises and easy cardio. I always encourage everyone to take advantage of this day to work on an aspect of their game they could improve.
Basketball - If you’re right handed, try dribbling left handed.
Volleyball - learn how to serve with the opposite arm.
Soccer - Learn how to control a soccer ball with the opposite foot.
Football - If you’re a lineman, run a few routes for fun
Just have fun with it, and keep your heart rate slightly elevated for a while
You’ll repeat those 3 steps one more time, for a total of 6 workouts, then have a flex day to round out the week. The flex day can be used to rest, make up any exercises you missed, or be moved around within the week if your schedule doesn’t allow you to work out at all. We want this program to be achievable. It demands a lot, but is reasonable in its expectations.
For example, your plan may be:
Monday - High demand leg day
Tuesday - High demand upper body day and lower level leg day
Wednesday - Recovery and play
Thursday - High demand leg day
Friday - High demand upper body day and lower level leg day
Saturday - Recovery and play
Sunday - Flex day
On Wednesday, you stay up late finishing a paper and are exhausted when you wake up on Thursday. We can take that flex day and move it around so we can recover and be ready for the workout:
Monday - High demand leg day
Tuesday - High demand upper body day and lower level leg day
Wednesday - Recovery and play
Thursday - Flex day
Friday - High demand leg day
Saturday - High demand upper body day and lower level leg day
Sunday - Recovery and play
