Phase 3: 6 Weeks to 3 Months After ACL Surgery
You've reached six weeks. This is Phase 3 — the phase where the brace comes off, the crutches go away, and you start walking on your own again.
Your Brace and Weight-Bearing
You can now stop wearing the brace and remove any range-of-motion restrictions, even if you were still limited in the past four weeks. You're also cleared to full weight bear as tolerated.
This means your repair or reconstruction is now structurally safe to take your full weight. But whether you can do that comfortably depends on your pain and your strength — and this is where your diligence in the earlier phases starts to show.
If you were already at full range of motion and full weight-bearing before this point, this transition will likely feel smooth. But if you were still partial weight-bearing or limited in range over the last four weeks, give yourself at least two weeks to properly transition into walking without a brace or crutches. That's completely normal.
Follow your physiotherapist's guidance closely. Start by moving without your brace or crutches in a safe space at home before progressing to outdoor walking. If you're ever unsure, it's fine to keep wearing the brace as a visual cue — for yourself and for the people around you — to be careful.
Stay Alert
This phase brings the biggest practical change — no brace, no crutches. Some of you also would have completed your hospitalization leave and is now back to work or school (Feel free to communicate with me for extension if your work is more physical and has no work- from-home option. I can support you with a leave extension). But that also makes it a common time for accidental injuries, simply because patients feel more confident than their knee's strength may support. Be mindful of your surroundings, especially in the first few weeks of walking unaided.
Learning to Walk Normally
Many patients unconsciously avoid walking with the knee fully extended, even after being cleared to do so. This is why gait retraining matters in this phase.
Work closely with your physiotherapist on this — for example, focusing on landing on your heel as you step, so your knee moves through full extension with each stride. Getting this right now prevents compensation patterns that are much harder to correct later.
Don't Slack Off Now
You'll still be doing home-based exercises for the next six weeks. Keep at them. This is often where patients start to lose discipline — you're walking freely again, feeling much better, and it's easy to forget why you had surgery in the first place.
The reason is simple: this surgery is meant to get you running by six months and back to sport by one year. What you do in this phase directly determines whether that timeline holds.
Start Preparing for the Gym
Alongside your home exercises, start securing access to a gym — whether that's an ActiveSG gym, Anytime Fitness, your workplace gym, or an army camp gym. What matters is that it has these machines:
- Leg extension
- Hamstring curl
- Leg press
- Stationary bike
The leg extension, hamstring curl, and leg press allow single-leg exercises, which are essential for rebuilding strength on your operated leg specifically. This is your preparation for Phase 4.
The stationary bike is also excellent equipment to have access to — it's a good option for low-impact aerobic training, and doubles as a reliable warm-up before your strength work.
What's Next
By your three-month mark, at the end of Phase 3, the goal is for you to walk into the clinic confidently — without a brace, without crutches — and with a gym membership already secured.
Ready for what comes next? See your recovery hub →