Acl injury...what to do?

I tore my acl while i was playing soccer on sept. 9, had surgery on october 27th and now I am here, I was going to therapy for a while but it started to get to expensive, so Now i am stuck. I want to lose weight and i miss running but my knee does not have enough muscle to support itself. I can jog but only for a bout thirty seconds at a time without it either hurting or me being completly out of breath. How do i gain some muscle back and how can i get my bikin body back in the mean time?? m leg needs the work as does everything else, any answers?Oh and i really cant afford to fo back to physical thrapy, it was costing me about 100 bucks a week.
Answer:
If you can afford a gym membership then you should be okay. Start out by riding the stationary bike. Then I would go through an assortment of leg exercises. At this point you really need to strengthen your hamstrings they will compensate for the lack of strength in your quads. Also do single leg press on the squat machine. Don't do too much weight and focus on completing about 20 repetitions per set. I would do three 3 sets for each exercise. Ideally you should work out for about an hour a day 4 times a week. I would also stop running in the mean time and start participating light impact cardio. You can ride the bike, use the elyptical, go swimming, ect.

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An ACL injury takes time to heal, and you may always have some issues with it for your lifetime. You could do excercises at home to mimic the physical therapy. Sitting with both legs together, and lifting them, and bending them, holding the position and then doing over again will strenthen the muscles in your thighs and knees. Keeping the thigh muscle strong is important to the support of the knee. Using hot tubs, hot springs will ease pain and the arthritis you are likely to develop in the knee. Ibuprofen works well for inflammation and pain. I would avoid contact running/jogging, it's really rough on your knees, and as you have found, the injured knee gets irritated quickly. Brisk walking would be better, utililizing a neoprene knee brace would help also. In fact, the brace may be useful from here on, and will ease inflammation and pain.

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I would be very careful with trying to run...my friend tore her acl around the same time and her doctor told her that she should still be very careful about running on it...

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