I passed my FSA!! I'm still smiling typing that out.
Quad strength symmetry on the cable column came in at 85%, past the 80% mark my PT team had set as the bar to even start this assessment. That's the number I'd been chasing for months, so watching it cross the line first felt like the biggest win of the whole day before the rest of the test had even started.
Hop testing was the one that scared me most going in, and honestly, I'll take a barely over a no every time. Hopping is one of the last things to come back after an ACL reconstruction, and there's a good reason for that beyond just being out of practice. A hop asks the quad to absorb load eccentrically and then reverse it into propulsion in a fraction of a second, what's called the stretch shortening cycle. That cycle depends on fast, well timed motor unit recruitment, and after ACLR, the graft site sends altered signals up to the spinal cord that suppress how forcefully the quad can fire. It's called arthrogenic muscle inhibition, and it doesn't fully disappear just because a graft has healed structurally. On top of that, my brain is still relearning how to trust the landing, a hesitation that shows up as a slower rate of force development, even in a leg that's technically strong enough on paper. Strength alone doesn't rebuild that trust. Reps do, and I've got plenty of those left in me.
Long jumps and squat jumps went so much smoother, and I think that's because both give me a two leg base to push off or land on, which takes some of the single leg demand off the graft. Happy to have those two checked off.
Single leg squats measure how far apart my knees stay at the bottom of the movement. The cutoff is 4cm and I came in at 3cm, close enough that I know exactly what to chase next. That gap is a proxy for dynamic knee valgus, the inward collapse of the knee toward the midline during a loaded movement. It's controlled almost entirely by the hip, not the knee itself. When the glute medius and other hip abductors aren't firing strongly enough to hold the femur in line, the knee drifts inward to compensate. This exact pattern shows up over and over in ACL injury research as a risk factor, mine included in my own IRP reading, so this isn't a small technicality on the test. It's telling me exactly where my hip control still needs to catch up to my knee's healing, and now I get to go make that happen.
Lateral step downs I passed clean, which felt great and tracks with the single leg squat result. Lateral step downs load the hip abductors more directly, and that's a muscle group that's come back faster for me than the reactive, split second control tested in the hop and single leg work.
Front step downs showed a pelvic hip drop I need to work on. When the stance leg hip drops on the opposite side during a step down, it means the hip abductors, the glute medius in particular, aren't holding the pelvis level under load. It's the same underlying weakness showing up again from a different angle, which almost makes it easier. One thing to train instead of three.
Flexibility is still limited, and my PT team told me that's normal for where I am, which was reassuring to hear, but normal doesn't mean I get to leave it alone. Loss of terminal knee flexion is common after ACLR because of graft harvest site stiffness, lingering swelling, and scar tissue formation around the joint, plus a protective tightening the body does around a joint it's still not sure it can trust. The reason it matters is that if flexion stays limited, everything else, squatting, landing, hopping, ends up compensating around that missing range, and compensations are exactly what put the other knee, or the same one, at risk down the line. Good thing I like a project.
Passing was never going to mean finished, which of course is slightly disappointing. It means my hip control and my flexion and obviously time are the things standing between where I am and being back the way I actually want to be back. I know exactly what to work on now, and that feels like momentum, not homework
