Why I built KneeRun

I tore my ACL playing football. If you've done the same, you know the drill that follows: surgery, crutches, months of physio, a slow climb back to walking without thinking about it.

What nobody prepared me for was the gap that comes next.

The advice runs out exactly when you need it most

There's no shortage of guidance for the early weeks. Range of motion, swelling, quad activation. Your physio has a plan and you follow it. But somewhere around the point where you can walk normally and the surgeon says "you're doing great," the structured guidance thins out.

And that's the moment I most wanted a map. Because the next thing I wanted to do was run, and running is where the risk of reinjury is highest.

Running too early, too fast, is the single biggest way people set themselves back after ACL surgery.

Guessing is not a plan

I read everything I could find. Most of it was either generic couch-to-5K plans that assume a healthy knee, or clinical papers that don't tell you what to actually do on a Tuesday morning.

So I did what a lot of people do: I guessed. I ran a bit, felt fine, ran more, and paid for it.

What KneeRun is

KneeRun is the thing I wish I'd had: a structured return-to-run progression that paces you through three phases.

• Recover, where you track range of motion, swelling and quad activation daily.
• Rebuild, where you build single-leg strength against real return-to-run criteria.
• Run, a gradual walk-to-run progression that grows only as fast as your knee can handle.

It's built by someone going through this right now, not designed at a distance. If that's where you are too, I hope it helps.