He started me in the actual "gym" part of the clinic which is different than the doctor-y room I was in on Friday. That alone made me feel better. He started by moving my kneecap around (ew) and then checking my flexion which was roughly 70% this time. Then we hit the "leg press" contraption. Side note: I have not been on equipment "machines" in a gym in longer than I can remember. The hardest part for me is welcoming things outside my own personal philosophy for how to workout. I'm not stubborn...I swear!
So he had me do some mini squats on the leg press where my body is the resistance, first with both legs then a couple sets with my bad leg. It feels good to work on my range of motion. Then we limped over to the Cybex leg curl machine. I attacked that as if I thought my leg would actually CURL. It feels good to bend my leg and focus on my quads...it felt AMAZING to focus on my hamstrings! So that was good despite the severely limited range, then he had me balance on my bad leg I gauge that which really hadn't faltered since before surgery. We took balancing a step further by placing me in front of a small trampoline and I threw a 2lb med ball into it while balancing on my left leg and threw and caught 30 times. My leg was TIRED after that but I didn't need to put my right leg down for support.
Next he strapped me into a resistance band and paced me away from the wall so I could bend and extend using the band as a strengthening agent for resistance. About 2-3 sets of 10 wasn't bad. The worst part of the day, pain wise was him settling me onto a stationary bike where my good leg pedals as normal while my bad leg is set to limited range of motion. It. Hurt. And I only did it for 2 minutes. Ugh.
We finished up with 10 minutes or so of the GameReady ice machine and electric stim and then I left. I worked the rest of the day at home and it was wonderful!
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