Arthroscopic Knee Surgery - Training and Recovery

Medical Q&A [Moderated]
1

I am a 39 year old (6’3", 203 lb) maybe Advanced Novice staring at some basic arthroscopic knee surgery in the near future. Cleaning up some torn cartilage and relieving a cyst. I have 7 training sessions left until I am scheduled for my appointment. I intend to keep going on my current training up until I hit my surgery date.

My questions mostly surround post surgery. I intend to keep going to the gym to at the very least Bench and press from a seated position early on. What I don’t have a solid feel for is when and how early to begin working my legs back in.

  1. Should I do single legs work with the good leg?
  2. How early to even range of motion stuff? like body weight squats
  3. Lets say I’m 4 week out from surgery and I’m ready to go back to weights, should I start at 50% my previous 5 rep max?

Any advice or direction you and other could provide would be much appreciated.

Thanks!
Dan

2

  1. Doing single leg work on the other side is entirely up to you. I probably wouldn’t bother if it was me.

  2. I don’t consider bodyweight squats to be simple “range of motion stuff”, because there is a non-negligible resistance there (i.e., your 203 lb body weight). Simple ROM work can begin immediately after surgery, but this means unresisted active ROM, then move to light work on a bicycle, then to the leg press, then to bodyweight and ultimately weighted squats. I recently did this with one of my trainees who was similarly post-meniscal surgery.

  3. I’d work back up using a simple LP, and not at a specific number based on your previous performance.

3

FWIW I had bilateral (both knees repaired at the same time) medial meniscal repairs April 2016. I took two weeks completely off from the gym until the sutures were removed although I was walking the day after surgery w/out my crutches. My Doc said to let pain be my guide as the specific location of the damage wasn’t impacted by low bar squats (I still have problems with stairs though).

I believe I started with the bare bar and quickly worked my way up to 50%. I added 5 pounds per set after that until I was at my presurgery weight then I followed normal LP again until I hit a PR of 405 three months post op. My Doc loved it but my form fell apart so I backed off and am concentrating on perfect form, every rep (like I should have been). I didn’t realize my form had deteriorated until a fellow SS lifter pointed it out to me.

Best of luck and a speedy recovery!