After about 7 months of doing minimal physical therapy (but thinking I was doing a sufficient amount) I reached out to my dear friend John and vented a bit about my frustrations and how I wasn’t sure what needed to be done. John told me about this exercise program he has been doing for his knee health and strength through ATG personal training (also known as knees over toes guy on social media). John studied exercise science in university and is very knowledgeable on the dynamics of the human mind and body in general, so it meant a lot that he was sold on this guy’s program. John confirmed a lot of what was said in my phone call with a physical therapist and went into further detail explaining it all a bit more. After scoping it out a bit and hearing all the information that John had to share with me, his program was looking like a good route to take.
John explained to me that optimal is both legs functioning through their full range of motion pain-free. Due to my injury, my connective and muscle tissues have remodeled themselves to compensate for the injury and the atrophy due to less usage after the injury. They need to be stimulated in a balanced way to remodel them back to optimal functioning. After a severe injury, the body will need specific training to get it functioning optimally again. John further elaborated on how we are the ones that separate body parts in the mind when we talk about it and look at it. There is no separation in the body, it is seamless. So optimal is to train the whole body in a balanced way. He gave an example of how a foot injury can lead to neck pain. The muscles from the head to the toe are a seamless chain.
Your Tibialis, Gastrocnemius, and Soleus make up the lower leg muscles that connect the knee to the lower leg. Then your hamstring, quads, adductors, and Glutes connect the legs and hips to the knee. You have to work all those in balance with each other to heal your knee and have it work properly. If the lower leg muscles are much stronger than the upper proportionally then it will cause knee pain or vice versa.
John continued on to highlight that the ATG’s principles are to regress to pain free level of movement, then once you have full range pain free, you start increasing weight. You train your muscles in a balanced way under structural balance principles. The program was specifically designed for destroyed knees. There are target levels you work towards so you can see based on your reps/sets and resistance level how you are progressing. This can be broken down into specific body parts but the body is a whole system. So your knee injury could weaken your hamstrings which can cause an imbalance in your lower back and cause low back pain (something I started experiencing at the end of the summer). This could, over time, move into shoulder pain due to compensation your muscles make when it loses structural balance.
John explained how the program breaks the week days into upper and lower body. MWF lower, TTH upper/mobility. Each day you do some isolation exercises to target specific areas around one joint and then there is a compound exercise each day to get more than one joint working together. You regress to a pain free level and that tells you where you need to start building up. You patiently start there and give your body however long it takes to progress.
Specific Exercises I Have Been Doing
Monday, Wednesdays and Friday’s (1-2 hours)
- 10 minute walking backwards, I walk backwards on a treadmill that is turned off for the resistance. Ideally one has a system where they can pull weight backwards but this works for me for the time being.
- “Cone” pick ups, 10x each leg. You place a cone or a water bottle type object on the floor 1-2 feet in front and then bend at the hip while one leg stretches backwards (getting your body in more or less the airplane yoga pose) pick up the object, come up right then back down to set it down. On my injured leg it is really tight in the 90 degree angle so I try to hold it there every time to loosen it up before pushing that leg back and bending to grab the object.
- Monster Walk w/ band- a couple laps
- Side Lunges with Band- couple laps
- Leg Extension- I usually do both legs together x10 then each on it’s own x10, paying attention to what I am able to do pain free and moving up weight incrementally.
- Leg Press– Same as above
- Tibialis Raises x25
- FHL Calf Raise x25
- Tibialis Raises x25
- KOT Calf Raise x25
- Patrick Step x25 (this has been the most crucial for my strength recovery with going down stairs, this exercise not only works the muscles but completely remodels the joint)
- ATG Split Squats 5 sets of 5 reps
- Elephant Walk 30 reps x2
- L-Sit 1 min x2
- Couch Stretch 1 min both sides x2
- Bike 20 Min
Tuesday/Thursday (1-2 hours)
- Warm Up on Bike 10 min
- Calf Stretch 1 min
- Hamstring Stretch 1 min
- Outer Glute Stretch 1 minute
- Groin Stretch 1 minute
- Inner Hamstring Stretch 1 min
- repeat above 3 times
- Ring Row 10 reps
- Full Range Ring Push-ups 10 reps
- Band Pullapart 20 reps
- Repeat above 3 times
- Ab exercises 5-6 minutes
- Swim around 1 hour
- Go for walk 1-2 miles
Saturday/Sunday
- Active Recovery like walking backwards, full body pilates and yoga work outs, walking, biking, swimming ect.
This is the gist of what I have been trying to do as of lately. The videos I have added were the ones that I sent to John for progress reports and feedback.
I hope this sheds a bit of light on your own healing and progress. Are you also recovering from a TPF? Or another type of fracture? Let me know in the comments below what kind of exercises you have been doing and what has been the most helpful!
Thanks for reading,
Lynne Wummel
