A little background: I am 12 weeks post op for a partial patellar tendon tear repair. Tear was from an offroad bike crash resulting in a rock slicing my shin to the bone. I walked into the hospital and did not know my tendon had been damaged until the orthopedic surgeon examined it.
I am about to complete the portion of PT covered by my insurance. I am able to walk down stairs without issue, and can bend my knee 130 degrees. I have done some RDLs and Leg Press. Other than that, to this point everything has been balance work, band work, calisthenics, and skierg cardio.
Would it be reasonable to use the Knee Rehab template for the next 12 weeks, or is that too aggressive? I have successfully rehabbed a myriad of aches, pains, tweaks, etc in the past, but wonder if tendon repair requires additional patience.
Thank you for the excellent content. I have been following for many years all the way back to when Jordan ran the Nutrition subforum in the land of Egypt.
Mark,
At this point I do think the knee rehab template would be reasonable. Having 130 degrees of flexion is excellent and it sounds like overall daily activities are feeling normal.
The big thing I would keep an eye on is the return of your quad strength. It’s the norm after having a patellar tendon repair to have some residual strength deficits in your quad, even as things start to feel more normal. I would definitely be working on some open chain knee extensions as part of regular programming. If you have not gotten much exposure to those, I would take about a month to acclimate then do a proxy test for strength. I will have athletes aim for a set of 10 at RPE 9/10 on their non-surgical leg then repeat this with the same weight on their surgical to 1 rep in reserve. This can give you a limb symmetry index to ballpark strength. So if you get 10 reps on your non-surgical side and 7 on your surgical, we would call that ~70%. After this type of injury, we want to aim for >90% long term. The only real caveat I would add to running the knee template is making sure you are keeping tabs on that. It is also probably worth give these two pieces a look.