In this video, health coach Victoria S. Dorsano recounts her personal journey from a 2020 ACL injury and surgery to achieving a state of true health. She explains that being "fit" was insufficient and that a combination of four deliberate habits transformed her recovery and overall well‑being. The first habit was adopting smart, program‑based exercise planning, moving from random, high‑intensity workouts to structured regimens (ATG and Ladder/Kelly Matthews) that balance joint longevity with performance goals. The second habit focused on prioritizing recovery, especially using percussive massage with a heated‑head Bob & Brad C2 massage gun, which she credits for improved circulation, muscle relaxation, and nervous‑system calm. The third habit involved optimizing nutrition by tracking food intake, correcting protein and fiber deficiencies, and maintaining a consistent, nutrient‑dense diet to support healing, sleep, and mood. The fourth habit was reducing mental load by setting boundaries, saying no, and regularly checking mental capacity, which she found essential for sustained vitality. Throughout, she emphasizes that these habits are personal to her and may need adaptation for others, offers her health‑coaching services, and includes calls to action for viewers to like, share, and subscribe.
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Ever since my ACL surgery, my body and my health overall has been completely different. Let me explain. For most of my young adulthood, I had always been fit, but fit does not always equal healthy, and I can't say I was my healthiest self when I got injured and had my ACL incident in 2020. I was really mentally stressed, I was physically overexerted and undernourished, but having my ACL injury and the surgery and the whole recovery process was really a wake-up call for me, and it pushed me to discover what was really missing for me to create a version of true health and well-being for myself. And once I learned what was missing, I was able to develop some different habits that really, really healed my body, helped me overcome my ACL injury, and also become the most healthy version of myself and feel what it feels like to not just be fit but to also truly be healthy. So here are the habits that helped me to heal my body, overcome my ACL injury, and find the healthiest version of myself. The first habit that helped me to heal my body was really learning the skill of smart exercise planning. Prior to my ACL injury, I was just really doing workouts that I thought were fun and different and challenging, with really not a huge amount of rhyme or reason behind it other than like the harder, the faster, the more intense of a workout, the better. I wasn't really following any sort of set program per se. I was just kind of piecing together different individual workouts that Seemed fun. And then really expected my body to hop into whatever sport I was throwing it into and perform just fine, which is pretty unrealistic in hindsight. But after my ACL surgery, I really recognized that I needed to follow some sort of program that held both my long-term and my short-term goals in mind, meaning having some sort of training program to follow that allowed me to train my joints for longevity and resiliency after going through something like the ACL injury, and also keep my desire for optimizing sports performance and for developing speed and power and strength and all those things too. And the first program I really committed to wholeheartedly and followed their training schedule to a T was the ATG program. And I've made a ton of videos on my progress throughout the ATG series, and I have a whole playlist on that which I'll put down below, as well as a link to learn more about their program. But I found personally that I needed to also add in some additional types of training that were a little bit more like strength and power based. So I added in a training program from Ladder that was built by Kelly Matthews. She has phenomenal strength training program. So I found this really happy marriage between two different programs that I'm following sequentially, one of which that's much lighter in intensity and the other one's fairly intense. This happy combination of things that has really helped me to have a more balanced approach around my fitness. And this balanced approach has helped me to stay pain-free for years now while still crushing it at the sports that I want to play. But really the key here was learning how to create and follow a fitness program that was adaptive to my goals. The second habit that that really helped me to heal my body and find the healthiest version of myself has been prioritizing recovery. Recovery used to be a very foreign concept to me, believe it or not. Really, before my injury, recovery was pretty much an afterthought. I mean, I was like sore 24/7. If I wasn't sore, it felt like something was wrong, like I wasn't training hard enough. But going through my injury really taught me the importance of balancing your physical training load throughout the week with recovery to make sure that you don't have any setbacks in the recovery process. And I— that principle is something I still carry forward now, even though I'm not currently injured. There's still a really big need for recovery that we all need, especially if we're training hard, um, and really following some sort of physical training program. And if recovery is a foreign concept to you too, and you have no idea what I'm talking about when I'm talking about recovery, it's really just a way to help your body heal and repair itself after you've gone through intense bouts of training. And there's many different recovery modalities you can incorporate to accomplish that mission. One of my favorite recovery modalities has been massage, and while it is always great to go get a massage from a professional, it may not be accessible for everybody depending on availability and financial situations, which is why I really love this other option to consider, which is a massage gun. Now, there are plenty of massage guns out there on the market, but I usually opt for a company that is more well known. One of my favorite companies to get massage guns from is Bob and Brad, the two physical therapists on YouTube. If you haven't seen their videos, they're great, but they also make these massage guns, which are phenomenal. And one of my favorite ones I've come across lately and have been using a ton for my recovery in between hard training sessions has been their C2 upgraded massage gun with a heated head. And the heated head just makes the experience so much better. It feels so good. The combination of the percussive massage from the massage gun itself with the heated head has just done wonders for boosting circulation, for helping my muscles feel like they are more recovered in between training sessions. And honestly, just helping me relax too. It's just a really relaxing feeling. So I definitely feel like my nervous system just like chills out when I get a chance to use this massage gun. Another thing I love about this C2 model is that it's light, it's portable. I can pack it with me, I can stash it in my gym bag if I want to utilize it at a different location. It's just great. And it has 5 different speeds on the gun, so if you are addressing maybe a larger muscle group, you can amp it up. If you want to go over a more sensitive area, you can bring the speed down and the intensity down a little bit. Not only have I used this massage gun in between intense training sessions and during like my set recovery days, I also use it for like movement prep, getting my body ready for intense training sessions the day of and just getting my muscles warmed up. And I also use it for when I'm stretching after a session too. Another cool thing to mention is that Bob and Brad allow for a warranty extension from 12 months to 24 months for the massage gun if you register your product within a month of purchasing it, which is awesome. It's great to see a company that stands behind the products that they make. If you're interested in checking out the C2 massage gun with a heated head, I will drop that link down below in the description, and you can use the discount code here on the screen for 10% off your purchase. So the third habit I've incorporated that has helped me to heal my body and find the healthiest version of myself has been to really focus on optimizing my nourishment. When I was going through my ACL recovery process, I really wanted to hone in on my nutrition to do everything I possibly could to make sure that I was healing as fast as I possibly could. And that meant tuning into what I was eating. So I decided to start tracking my food. I'm looking at what was coming in. I recognized really quickly that I had been undereating and definitely not getting enough protein and fiber. And once I discovered that and really focused on increasing my lean sources of protein and getting high-quality fiber— so lots of fruits and veggies and whole grains— I started feeling so much better. I felt like I was healing more quickly. I felt like I was getting better sleep. I felt like I was having more energy during the day. I felt like any kind of like mood swings I was getting throughout the month started to equal out a little bit. Nutrition is such a crucial component to our overall health, and oftentimes we have a faulty kind of perception of what we're actually taking in. So for me, it was really helpful to do a couple of weeks of logging and really taking in what I was actually eating, and it was surprising. So every so often to this day, I will log maybe 1 week out of every month is usually what it ends up coming out to, and just kind of seeing where I'm at on where my nutrients are, if I'm getting enough of my protein, if I'm getting enough fiber, if I'm getting enough veggies, um, and really just taking a more meticulous approach to understanding my nutritional needs and making sure I can put those into action. And last but not least, the 4th habit that has helped me to heal my body has been to learn how to reduce my mental load. Going through any injury recovery process gives you a lot of time to and just be still. And it was from that process, in sitting in that silence, that I realized I had been taking on way too much. I had just been saying yes to too many things coming my way. And it wasn't until I started to say no and set some better boundaries and really take care of my own needs first and start to reduce my mental load bit by bit that I started to realize, oh my gosh, I feel so much more vibrant and full of life. And that's a huge component to our health outside outside of just how we're moving our bodies and how well we're eating, but how we're mentally doing and how we're actually perceiving things outside of our, our purview. That's a huge component to our well-being. And, you know, life is life. There's always chaos being thrown our way. There's always going to be, you know, random things that pop in that are going to feel stressful. But really learning the skill of saying no, of checking in every so often with myself and understanding where my mental capacity's at and making decisions from that standpoint has been so invaluable and has really, really helped me to feel the healthiest I've felt in years. But as a reminder, I wanna say that what worked for me may be different than what works for you. While some of these habits may have really helped me to find my version of health and probably can help you do the same, there may be some unique facets that might be different for you. And it's all about finding your unique balance. As a health coach, this is something I do with my clients all the time, really figuring out what the perfect recipe is for them to help them feel their healthiest. So if you need help in this process, as always, feel free to reach out. I'll leave my contact link down below. You can book a call or you can always reach out to me on Instagram. And guys, as always, if this video was helpful, give this video a thumbs up, share it with somebody that you love, subscribe to the channel if you haven't already. I appreciate each and every one of you guys, and I will see you guys later. Bye.
