You’ll forgive me for chimming in when I’m not quite qualified for membership (turned 30 yesterday).
I ruptured my ACL (it’s gone, we can’t find it on the MRI) and got a radial tear in my meniscus, along with a fracture where my patella and my tibia meets on 10 Oct in a strongman competition. I was able to box squat the bar a week later for sets of 25, and the week after I worked up to a heavy box squat of 290+lightbands and chains as part of a 55 rep drop set.
I’m going to second the motion for box squats as a viable option, and also further echo that ATG has been largerly overrated by people who frankly aren’t very strong. You can get plenty strong squatting higher than ATG, and in reality I’d say that there are more strength athletes NOT squatting ATG than squatting ATG. If you go the box squat route, make sure not to just plop onto the box, but maintain control the entire time.
Also, it doesn’t have to be all or nothing, and it doesn’t have to be forever. The main thing is not to force it.
You could just use the box while you recover. You could warm up with front squats. Or do daily goblet squats like Dan John. Or do high bar, close stance pause squats as an assistance exercise like Ed Coan.
I saw a strong dude doing giant cambered bar squats to come back after an injury.
Another guy was too worked to do heavy, heavy RDL’s, so he did some lighter split stance RDL’s.
I’ll further add that, like most things, I find ROM progression to the answer. Every week I’ve been increasing the weight and the ROM on the box squat as my knee recovers. Might be a way to ween yourself back to fuller ROM squats.
A little update, the MRI showed no ligament damage or meniscus tears, or any wear and tear. The doctor said everything looked good and I shouldn’t need any sort of knee surgery or replacement for a long time. I guess that’s good news, but surely I thought it would be something bad due to the extreme pain I have been in.
Doctor suspects arthritis in the knee is causing my knee pain, and I’ll be doing physical therapy.
Knee is still stiff and tender, so will start slow doing body weight squats onto bench (box squat style) and go from there.