Recovery from knee surgery?

don't rush it! I've had a total of 4 knee surgeries over the years (one complete reconstruction) and the biggest lesson is ride easy until all the connective tissue / muscles has had a chance to recover. If you try and build too soon you're going to get some severe rebellion.

Best to concentrate on spinning under reduced load for the next few weeks as you recover. Once you start to up your efforts more, pay very close attention to how it feels the next day and proceed cautiously. As Sui said, you don't want to sacrifice the rest of the season by trying to come back 2 weeks too early. Just be patient. Even Hincapie had to put his early goals on the shelf in order to save the rest of the year.

Dr. Dru

Ye gods man.

Knee injuries are the worst because so many areas don't receive blood and so those injuries take forever to heal. Or in my case, won't heal without surgical intervention.

I can report that my knee feels fantastic today after the spin yesterday, but it's real tough to keep it flat where I live, so I'm going to spin out the trainer for awhile.

You really have to learn to differentiate between the degrees of pain, i.e. sweet pain and bad pain.

You guys take any glucosamine or other supplements that helped?

Thanks much,
jason

You are unfortunately incorrect.  The knee has more collateral circulation than almost any of your joints.  Healing time is a function of the nature of hyaline cartilage (a bone product), collagen and the great fluid that was formerly in your knee, washed out during surgery by the saline that was pumped in there so your orthopod could see.  You have two choices, try to take healing into your own hands or walk when you're 65.  

I was under the impression the inner part of the meniscus doesn't have any blood vessels, which means little to no healing at all?

So far the worst part of the procedure was the vicodin they administered afterward and the charley horse from the tourniquet.

I don't know about a sprint, I just want to be able to keep turning 'em over as the road rises ... and rises ... and rises.

I went for my first ride on Monday, 12 days after the procedure, it was 2 hours, some nice rollers in there, and my knee felt fantastic afterward! I put in another hilly 2.5 today and it feels even better!

Now it seems the worst part is that the lower part of my quad is sore, I assume where they had to move it/cut it to get through to the meniscus.

Thanks for all the tips, I've got a cycling/yoga rehab program going, so thus far I honestly can't complain about a thing.

best,
j

and overload your knee too soon. Slow and steady wins it.