5 Year ACL Update - NOT what I expected…

So guys, it has officially been 5 years since my ACL surgery and I cannot believe it. It honestly feels like it was like 2 years ago that I made that initial video. A lot of you guys on this channel have been following along my journey ever since my surgery and going through the rehab process. Every so often I've done one of these, you know, yearly update videos, and since I'm at year 5, I figure it's time for one. And honestly, there's been a decent amount of things that were different from my 4-year update that I want to chat about in this video. Lots of things I've been focusing on doing differently this past year from a training perspective, but also a nutrition perspective. As an athlete, I've always been fairly good at eating healthy and taking care of myself, but this year I got really serious and really meticulously tracked a lot of my food. I actually have a food scale now and focused a lot on protein. Speaking of protein, a few words from today's sponsor before we dive into my full 5-year update. Speaking of nutrition playing a huge role in my recovery, I want to give a quick shout out to today's sponsor, Prozis. If you've been following my journey since day one, then you know that hitting my protein goals consistently has been absolutely crucial, not just during the initial rehab process, but for maintaining the muscle and joint support that I need now, 5 years later. That's where Prozis has been an absolute game changer for me. Their protein snacks actually taste really good and make it so much easier to hit my daily protein targets. I'm talking about protein wafers, protein cookies, these amazing little protein puffies that you can like add into basically anything to enhance the flavor of. Well, that's Greek yogurt or ice cream or anything really. Protein bars that don't taste like cardboard, and even these delicious protein waffles that I can enjoy for breakfast, for a snack, or for a healthy dessert. But ProZis doesn't stop there. They have way more than just like protein treats. They have really great workout gear and clothing and lots of other cool fitness and health-related things on their site. What I love most about ProZis though is that they get that hitting your nutrition goals doesn't have to be boring. You can check out everything they have at ProZis.com and use code Victorious 10 for 10% off. I'll drop the link down below. All right, so let's get the question outta the way that you guys probably all have top of your mind right now is, Victoria, how does your knee actually feel right now, 5 years after your ACL surgery? Because the last update you had, you were having some issues. And yeah, I was, but now I am not. I am pleased to say that my knee feels the best it has since my surgery. I don't think about it hardly ever anymore, and it usually has only acted up maybe like once every couple of months. Just barely. Overall, I'd say my knee feels like 99.5, 0.8%. I mean, again, when you get your knee surgically altered, it's never going to feel like your native knee and your native tendons and ligaments, but it does feel pretty damn good. Now, later on in this video, I'm going to get into like specifically what I changed this past year to get to that point. But just overall, if, if you're in the beginning of your journey and you're wondering if your knee is ever going to feel the same again, it will get very close. To almost the same. You'll get so close. And that, for a lot of people, that is going to be perfectly fine. I'm sure that it feels like a huge relief to hear because I remember being a year out of surgery and being like, isn't it supposed to be all the way better by now? Like, why doesn't it feel normal yet? So, um, I hear you. I understand where you're at, and I really hope that this brings you some, some hope and insight and like from a future version of yourself potentially knowing that this is going to be okay. All right, what actually worked this year to make things change for the better? Okay, so one of the biggest things I changed this year was I decided to do a lot more sports-specific training. In my last update video for year 4, I was kind of at the stage where I was, you know, coming off of doing like full ATD programs. I was combining using like my ladder strength training workouts from the ladder app and integrating some of the ATD components, but overall trying to figure out how to align those in a way that was best for feeling athletic and also making sure that my knee is functioning well. And I think that did pretty well, but I did feel like I was missing a piece. And it was that last like 3 to 4%. So I decided to invest in some of Greg Herzog's, um, volleyball-based programs. If you are a volleyball player and you're watching this, definitely check out his stuff. His handle on Instagram is @thevolleyballstrengthcoach. So I invested in doing some of his like online programs for a while and those were good. And I had my sights set on doing his one-on-one coaching for a good while. So I was like, at some point this year I was gonna make that happen. And I did. So I started working with somebody on his team, Coach CeCe, who has been wonderful. And there's been a lot of sports-specific volleyball training in that program. So including a lot of things that were like managing different plyometrics with explosive conditioning, triphasic training. Overall, just a lot of good plyometric load management and volleyball-specific movements, and that made a huge difference. So if you're an athlete watching this right now and you feel like you have a missing piece to your puzzle of feeling like your knee isn't quite there, I highly recommend finding a sport-specific like strength and conditioning coach or online program or somebody that you can work with or a program you can do that is specific to your sport and that is aware of rehabbing from injuries. That's an important component. The other thing that I did is that I consistently did my Nordics, even though I hate doing Nordic curls. I don't think anybody like loves doing them unless you're like Benji from Freak Athlete, which understandable, like I get it, he's really good at them. But I made it a point to incorporate them, you know, every week. And I feel like from an ACL perspective, that's really helped just with the stability and reducing pain and injury likelihood. Okay, so from a physical training perspective, I would say that That was pretty much like the majority of things that I changed. Now let's talk about recovery modalities that I included this year that I feel like really made an impact in how my knee felt. And honestly, I'd say that there's really only one new one that I incorporated that I feel like has made a significant impact, and that is a combination infrared and red light therapy wrap. Now I'm not saying go ahead and get any infrared red light wrap out there because there are very specific needs for it to be considered like therapeutic. I've actually done a whole video on photobiomodulation and how light and, um, in specific red light can impact healing. I'll link that down below if you're curious. But I will say that Fringe red light wraps have been my best friend. I've used it on my knee many a times in the past few months and it has been glorious. I just feel like anytime my knee has gotten like achy or felt like I pushed it really hard, I do a session a day for like a week using the wrap and it just, it seems to really, really help. I put that wrap on for 20 minutes and it just seems to really help. Aside from that, I've done some hot cold therapy and that That has also been good, I think, but I haven't done consistently enough to say that that is actually doing anything dramatic, but it does feel good to do. And if you have it accessible, like do it, why not? All right, so going back to the nutrition component, this is also a thing that I did differently this past year. Now I've had bouts of tracking and using MyFitnessPal to really tune into how I'm doing nutritionally, but didn't really stick with it for months and months on end. I typically don't recommend that for a lot of people cuz it can feel like such a drag to to do. But I will say it helped me stay aware of some patterns across different seasons, and it really did help me stay accountable to how much protein I was getting, how much fiber I was getting, and making sure I was getting enough fruits and vegetables and different micronutrients that are important for managing inflammation. So there were a lot of things that I was just paying attention to more often that I feel like really made an impact in my recovery, especially the protein component. It such an important piece to recovering well as an athlete, performing well, but also recovering well as an athlete, especially when you're growing new tissue, taxing that tissue, breaking it down, repairing it again. It is so important that you're getting high-quality protein. And I get it, it can be really hard to figure out how you're going to meet your protein needs for the day, especially if you're an athlete. That number can feel sometimes very high. So getting creative with how to do it, like whole food protein sources are great, but you're going to need a supplement sometimes, and that's okay. And being able to keep your food items that you are supplementing with fresh and new and creative is really helpful. I oscillated between a lot of whole food sources like cuts of chicken, chicken breast, extra lean ground turkey, lots of frozen edamame, lots of shrimp, lots of salmon, but also started to utilize a lot of whey protein and a lot of different protein treats, protein snacks, protein desserts, things like that that helped keep things fresh for me. And it made hitting my protein goal a little bit more fun. And the last major thing that I changed this past year that has made a huge difference has been fine-tuning my sleep hygiene even more than it already was. Now I'm a health and behavior change coach. I talk about sleep all the time with my clients, and I practice good sleep hygiene most of the time. But this past year, I tried to get very, very meticulous about a few things. Number one was turning my phone off by 9, 9:30, having it in a completely different room, and then reading a book. Helping myself to fall asleep faster and get better sleep quicker in the evening. Number 2 was tightening up my wake window even more. I talk about this in a lot of my other videos, but it is very important to try to wake up around the same time every single day, even on the weekends. And I feel like that just helped my body train itself to get to sleep at a regular time even more, and again, to sink into higher quality of sleep sooner in the evening. And I do really think that's made an impact on my recovery and how my knee has felt in this past year, because you can train as hard as you want and you can eat all right things, but if you're not getting the sleep, and especially the deep sleep where your body enters into a stage where it's repairing tissues, it's not going to make that significant of a difference. If you're breaking down tissues and you're not able to spend time while you're sleeping repairing it, that increases your likelihood of injury like tenfold. I don't know exactly tenfold, but you get what I'm saying. It's not a good thing. So if you reached this far in the video, you might be wondering, Victoria, did you have any setbacks this year? Was, was it all like rainbows and butterflies, did you? It was just great. They were actually more so related to other aspects of my body that lo and behold, most of the time did stem from my knee injury in the first place. One of those things was that I had Achilles tendonitis for like 4 months, and that was not fun. And that of course was on my right leg, the same side that I had my ACL injury on. The other thing was that I've had a couple of low back issues and that stunk too. Now I don't know for sure if those came from my knee, but I saw a couple of different physical therapists who we suspected, just based on how I was moving in different motions, that it was probably coming from my knee. All that being said though, as an athlete and somebody who trains a lot and is very active, it's to be expected that there are going to be some compensatory injuries that pop up. What was really cool was that once I started doing the right training, eating right, sleeping well, those injuries healed very quickly. But we're all good now. We're feeling great. Things are going well, and I'm ready for the volleyball season. All right guys, so let's round this video out with a little bit of mental and emotional lessons that I learned in this past year, because As you know, ACL recovery is not just a physical process. It is a lot up here. And one of the biggest lessons I learned this year was that I don't have to do it alone. Especially as somebody who's in the health, wellness, and fitness industry, it's really easy for me to feel like I should be able to figure out what I need. And I know, I know better. I know that getting help from other people is good. It helps you see what you can't see, which is why I decided to work with Coach Greg and Coach CeCe and go to a physical therapist and get some movement evaluation. There's only so much you can do on your own, and I really just had to get out of my own way. And that, my friends, is I feel like the biggest thing that opened the door to making the biggest impact this year. All things that are important to do even in year 1 of ACL rehab are still important to do when you're struggling later on in the recovery process. So if you've been frustrated on this journey, if you feel like you should be somewhere else you are not, find your people, get support, and know you're not alone. It gets better, I promise. And to all of you guys watching and staying tuned into my ACL recovery progress and these different updates, I appreciate you. I love all of you guys leaving the comments down below, being able to support one another. It's such a cool community that's developed out of just sharing what I've gone through and different things I would have done differently. Um, so I appreciate all of you guys showing up and sharing your experience. And I'd love to hear where you're at in your journey now. So if you wanna drop a new comment down below in this video, I'd love to see how this community can best support you, or if there's anybody in my network I know that might be able to better support where you're at. Thanks again for watching, and I'll catch you guys on the next one. Bye.