ACL recovery consists of 4 stages:

phase	goals	my timeline
pre-op	pre-hab preparing for surgery	November – March, 3.5 months
early	↓ swelling ↑ quad activation/control normalize walking achieve “quiet knee”	March – Oct, 8 months
mid	introduce running	Nov – …
late	return to play progression	March?

One year ago today, I tore my ACL and my life completely changed.

As the weakest, most helpess, and most frustrating parts of rehab come to a close, I’m affirmed this has been the best thing to happen to me. Many more months of hard work to go, and I am so grateful for this challenge.

Here’s what helped me get through this stage.

• My ACL Club Notion page
• Recovery protocols
• Power phrases
• Motivational messages

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Recovery protocols

Iterating on these recovery protocols helped set up my recovery for success. Shout out to my ACL coach, Alex and Tommy from All in ACL, who helped me implement a majority of these.

• Sleep hygiene
• Protein/Nutrition intake
• Monitoring walking load
• Recovery aids
  • Normatec
  • Cryopod
  • Neurokinetic Therapy
• Scar tissue mobilization
• Celebrating wins
• Finding joy
• reflecting on progress in 3 month blocks (and not yesterday or last week)
• Isometric exercises
• Eccentric loading
• Form analysis

Power phrases

Whenever negative thoughts or feelings of not wanting to do rehab floated through my mind, I tried to let go of them and replace them with these.

• showing up for me every day
• doing my best, doing what I can, and that’s the best I can do
• you are more capable of more than you can imagine
• pounding the rock daily for another chance

Motivational messages

One of my coaches got me hooked on voice recording motivational messages to myself.
To remind myself to keep going, to fight daily for my hopes and dreams.

There is power in the words you say to yourself. You can train self talk to be positive and let go of negative thoughts.

This is the mental game tool I use the most .
I listen to my affirmations before performance or whenever I feel nerves.
I listen to myself cheering myself on – which has picked me up in many, MANY hard times.

Hey. It’s me, your biggest supporter.
I just want to remind you of all the work that you’ve put in until today.

To set yourself up for success, to have the best recovery possible, towards your end goal of achieving big dreams.

You’re going through one of the hardest things an athlete can go through. It’s scary, long, grueling, and so many feelings.

These feelings remind you how much you love sport: the community and people you’ve met from all over, and their stories and dreams; the strength, challenge, and dedication required to grind, chip away at it, and the joy from it all. You decided you want to live that life, you can’t imagine life any other way. You want to get back to it so you can have many more years doing sport.

You are NOT willing to be sidelined.

So today, is another day that you say, I’m still fighting.

This is hard, but I’m fighting for a life worth living

every. single. day. and today is no exception.

You are willing to do whatever it takes for your knee rehab.

Keep fighting.

Every rehab exercise is one step towards feeling stronger, more able.

Running, jumping, sprinting, rolling around.

The grit and thrill of a grindy play.

The ability to lay my body on the line because it is strong and resilient.

Rebuilding to be a f**ing MONSTER ELITE ATHLETE, wearing Team Canada threads again, showing off the honed skills I am incubating – what a privilege.

One day, I’ll wear those threads again, caress a medal in my hands and be bursting with pride for how far I’ve come. We’ve come.

Keep going.

My dearest knee,

You have been working SO hard, suffering not just one, but TWO traumas – the injury and reconstruction surgery. I ask so much from you day in and day out and I have the audacity to ask, why aren’t we healed yet? I have no doubt that one day, we will be running, jumping, and sprinting again. Whatever timeline you need, you got it. I will take care of you.

Together, we continue showing up, putting in the work, getting stronger day by day, week by week.

Taking care of the little things, sleep, recovery, and nutrition. One day, we’ll be able to do hard physical things again. Until then, we take on the mental challenges, planning and biding our time as we heal.

The lessons I learned during prehab did not stick; I continued to struggle to ask for help and show myself grace.
I felt weak, incompetent, and a burden, I hated asking for help.
With Shay at The Solace Flow, I learned I have an irrational core belief that people are only worthy and competent when they’re strong, independent, and able.

Now I am starting to believe people are happy to help.
It’s still hard to ask, but it’s a work in progress. 🙂