Tool
Knee readiness check after ACL reconstruction
Nine criteria drawn from the return-to-sport literature, grouped the way a clinic groups them, with a printable summary and a shareable link at the end. It does not clear you to play. It tells you which conversation to have.
Nine criteria, checked honestly
Tick what is actually true today, not what you expect to be true next month. Nothing you enter leaves your browser, and the link at the bottom carries your answers so you can send this to your physical therapist.
Where these nine come from
They are the components that recur across the cohorts that actually reported outcomes: time since surgery, measured quadriceps and hamstring symmetry, hop test symmetry, a quiet joint with full motion, movement quality on landing, and psychological readiness. Each one carries the study it came from in its own hint text, and all of them are listed with PubMed identifiers on the sources page.
How to use the result
Print it and bring it
The print button produces a one-page summary with the header, footer and navigation stripped out. A clinician reading a list of nine criteria will get to the point faster than one listening to how your knee feels.
Send the link
The copy button gives you a URL that carries your answers. Nothing is stored on a server; the answers are encoded in the link itself, which is why it works and why it is private.
Rerun it monthly
A single snapshot at month six is a lot of weight on one afternoon. Three runs at months five, seven and nine show you whether the gaps are closing, which is the more useful question.
Fix the unchecked boxes, do not argue with them
Every unchecked criterion is a measured deficit and a few weeks of specific work. None of them are permanent.
What this check is not
It is not clearance. Clearance is a clinical decision made by a physician, usually with a physical therapist and an athletic trainer, and it depends on things this page cannot see: what your surgeon found in your knee, whether your meniscus was repaired, your sport, your position and your age.
It also cannot promise anything, and the literature is clear about that. A meta-analysis of four studies found the pooled risk difference for passing return-to-sport criteria was -3% and not statistically significant, with 14.4% of those who passed still sustaining a second ACL injury, at very low quality of evidence. Meanwhile in the Delaware-Oslo cohort 38.2% of those who failed were reinjured against 5.6% of those who passed. Both of those are true. Checking nine boxes is how you find the deficits, not how you buy safety.