I had an ACL tear injury on September 15th, 2007 and had surgery November 20th. I have lost nearly 30 pounds of muscle during recovery and I still am not able to bend my bad leg back as far as my good leg (I will have pictures soon.) most of the muscle was in my legs, which shrunk to less than half the size as they were before.
My cardio was basically shot to hell because even still I cannot run, and I can only bike short distances because my knee is still tender. I have noticed that I’m getting better, but progress is extremely slow (read: my legs still cant handle the impact of running.) At the moment I can do lots of exercises in a pool, but the gym at my pool is almost always crowded.
another connected problem is that now my abdominal muscles are uneven. my right side is stronger than my left, and a muscle (Can’t remember the name of it, it runs from my lower spine to my hip flexor) on my right side is tight whenever I do any kind of abdominal work and makes the workout harder. I have tried stretching the muscle, but I cannot find a way to directly stretch it.
Also, my left leg is trailing behind my right in terms of strength and mass.
I guess what I’m trying to ask here is, How do I get my body even again and how do I work myself up to running and doing cardio again while at the same time keeping my knee from further injury?