How to Stay Motivated During ACL Rehab

Many people who’ve undergone ACL reconstruction wonder how to stay motivated during ACL rehab. ACL recovery is an excruciatingly long process. While there are always exceptions (on either end of the spectrum), you’re generally looking at a 9 to 12-month recovery according to most doctors.

My recovery process after my ACL and meniscus surgery in 2018 was just under 12 months long. Right after, I re-tore one meniscus and had to get a partial meniscectomy, leading me to another surgery and roughly 3-month of rehab.

In my experience, recovering from any long injury is as (if not more) mentally difficult as it is physically. Finding the motivation to stick with rehab and do your exercises day in and day out is hard. It’s even more difficult when you hit obstacles or don’t progress as fast as you’d hoped.

In this post, I’ll break down some of my personal tips for staying motivated during ACL rehab (or any long injury recovery).

Track Your Progress

Hands down, one of the best things I did during my ACL recovery was tracked my progress. I did this by making YouTube videos with updates along my journey. Therefore, I was also taking many photos, videos, and notes throughout the process. Note that you don’t have to publicly share your progress, keeping track of it privately can still be helpful!

Why is this so helpful?

• It gives you something to do and helps you feel a sense of purpose.
• It makes your progress clear, even when you may not “feel” you’ve been progressing.
• See how far you’ve actually come and gain some inspiration to keep going.
• You may see patterns or identify areas to focus on to improve your recovery.

How to Track Your Progress During ACL Recovery

Consistency is vital for tracking your ACL rehab progress. There are tons of ways to do this, but I highly recommend including a visual component (photos, videos, etc) in addition to some notes. Set a reminder or an alarm to ensure that you update your progress regularly (at least weekly).

To make tracking ACL recovery progress easier, I designed this downloadable eBook. I WISH I had something like this when I was going through my rehab! It gives you a guided strategy for tracking your feelings, progress, exercises, and more. Since it’s digital, you can easily add photos or other notes to various pages as well. You can check it out HERE.

Explore Your Other Talents

ACL recovery did not just change my athletic career, it changed my life. One of the reasons was that it forced me to explore my other talents, interests, and potential outside of playing soccer.

I tore my ACL AFTER college, and I knew I couldn’t play for a MINIMUM of 9 months. Which meant it would be even longer until I could pursue playing overseas again. Instead of sitting there and feeling useless or like a failure, I took initiative to progress my life in other ways. Throughout the years I was recovering, I:

• Coached soccer at three levels (club, high school, and NCAA DIII college).
• Cross-trained with many different activities that I never had time for before. Swimming, biking, hiking.
• Worked in digital marketing and content writing (which I still do now while playing overseas).

Take this time to explore your other talents outside of your sport. It doesn’t mean you’re giving up on your dream. It is extremely valuable for your mental health and long-term life to foster other skills, and it can help you feel like more than “just an athlete.”

Express Your Feelings

Holding it all in is a great way to explore or implode during your rehab. Let your feelings out. Talking through things can be helpful in the long run (even if nothing seems to help at the time). Find trusted friends, family, teammates, or other ACL warriors to talk with. Share how you feel, express your anger, fears, doubts, etc. It can be helpful to talk with different people at different times and to let them know if you want advice or just support so that the conversation is beneficial for both.

Stay Busy

The more time I sat at home alone, the worse I felt throughout my ACL recovery. Keeping busy was extremely helpful for staying in a good head space. Working, coaching, etc helped me stay busy. But those aren’t the only things to do.

Take this time to spend more time with family and friends. Try new restaurants, work on some crafts, find a new hobby. In general, don’t just sit in front of Netflix and then expect it’ll be easy to get up to do your workouts.

Find a Support Network

Talking to others who are currently or were previously in your shoes can be helpful IF you don’t compare. Trying to learn every little detail about someone else’s recovery is unlikely to help you. The more you compare, the worse you can feel. I experienced this throughout my journey. It’s not actually very helpful to talk about someone else’s milestones.

Instead, find a support network that can help encourage you, motivate you, and just generally support you. Thanks to the internet, it’s very easy to find creators on all platforms posting about their ACL journies. This is a great way to find like-minded people who may be in a similar boat as you, and it can help you strengthen your support network along the way.

Stay Focused On Your Goals

During such a long, grueling recovery process, it’s easy to lose sight of your “why.” That’s one of the biggest mistakes you can make in life. Not having a purpose or a “why.”

Keep your long-term goal front and center. Dig deep. Return to your sport may be your end goal, but why does this matter? Why do you want to play your sport again? What does it mean to you? Reflect on this, and have a clear, strong “why.” When you feel like giving up or you just can’t get out of bed to do your workout, think about this. Remember the reason behind the 20 leg raises that you need to do.

Create Smaller Goals to Fuel Success

In direct contrast to what I just said, you sometimes also need to zoom in and break down your goals. This was the case for me early in my recovery, like when I couldn’t walk without a limp. Or when I still wasn’t jogging after 4+ months. Thinking about my ultimate goal and my “why” only made me depressed. It induced fear and panic because my process was so slow.

In times like those, you’ve got to break it down. You have a long-term purpose that matters so much to you. But what do you need to focus on this month? This week? This morning? Write out shorter-term goals and make that your purpose for now.

My guided ACL recovery journal helps you do just that, but it’s also something you can do on your own. Start writing monthly, weekly, and daily goals for what you want to accomplish. Make sure that your daily goals fuel your longer-term goals. These goals should not only be about hitting the next ACL rehab milestone. What can you control? Examples include:

• Daily water intake
• Mindfulness/ mental health (meditate for X time, breathing exercises, journaling)
• Exercise list/ completion
• Non-workout things to get done that day
• Stretching frequency
• Meeting nutrition goals

Stay Mentally Strong During Your Recovery!

Motivation will not always be high, and that’s okay. We all experience fluctuations. Understandably though, ACL recovery can eat away at your overall motivation and put you in a pretty tough place mentally. Use the ideas above to help stay mentally strong and focused throughout your ACL recovery. If you have any other ideas to share, please do!