5 Exercises to Monitor Your ACL Rehab Progress
Have you recently had an ACL surgery and are going through rehab? According to a recent study, here are 5 exercises that have been found to be a good way to monitor your progress.
In 2020, Nae. et al conducted a study to assess the validity and reliability of an additional test battery for visual assessment of postural orientation errors (POEs) in patients during the late phases of rehab following ACL reconstruction. Postural orientation is the ability to maintain alignment between body segments and the environment during a static or dynamic task. The previous test battery included assessment of POEs at the foot, knee, hip, and trunk. The additional test battery added tests to assess the femur medial to shank and femoral valgus for a more comprehensive assessment of lower extremity POEs.
Fifty-three patients (45% women) in the late phase of ACLR rehabilitation performed 5 functional tasks of varying difficulty. POEs of the lower extremity and trunk were visually assessed from video and scored on a scale from 0 (good) to 2 (poor).
The tasks included: single leg squat, stair descending, forward lunge, single leg hop for distance, and side hop
Forward lunge (1:18 in video)
Single leg squat (1:42 in video)
Stair descending (2:28 in video)
Side hop (3:01 in video)
Single leg hop (3:42 in video)
The study concluded that the test battery includes the addition of the side-hop, the femur medial to shank, and the femoral valgus for a more comprehensive assessment of lower extremity POEs in patients with ACLR in the late phase of rehabilitation. Good internal consistency and reliability were observed for this extended version. The results suggest that the test battery presented here can be used in future studies and in clinical practice to measure POEs in patients with ACLR, including in the late phase of rehabilitation to return to sport.
References:
Jenny Nae, Mark W Creaby, Eva Ageberg, Extended Version of a Test Battery for Visual Assessment of Postural Orientation Errors: Face Validity, Internal Consistency, and Reliability, Physical Therapy, Volume 100, Issue 9, September 2020, Pages 1542–1556, https://doi.org/10.1093/ptj/pzaa092
Written by Daniel Le, DPT