The cast is gradually becoming obsolete: only seven percent of ski injuries are lower leg fractures. The risk of knee injuries tripled. You don’t break your leg as often anymore – the most common ski injuries are now medial ligament and cruciate ligament tears. It doesn’t just happen in winter sports, but also in other sporting activities: the cruciate ligament rupture is now the most common disease of the knee joint.
With conventional physical therapy, it takes about 13 weeks for the patient to be able to move their injured leg normally again. It goes much faster with running training in the water: with aqua jogging, you are fit again after 10 weeks.
The advantages of water therapy are the buoyancy of not carrying your own body weight, the compression from water pressure, and the cooling effect from the water.
Aqua jogging, the most effective treatment method to date after a cruciate ligament tear, also uses all of these advantages. The patient swims on the surface of the water and performs the walking movement without resistance, stepping into emptiness.
You just don’t know to what extent you can perform this normal running movement. – On a bike you have security. So you don’t have this feeling of fear that you’re stretching too much, that you’re training to the pain threshold.
The underwater bike is attached to the edge of the pool. The patient then sits upright in the saddle, but – as with a recumbent bike – pedals horizontally. He can adjust the pedaling resistance – depending on the day’s form. Patients usually start mobility training immediately after they are discharged from the hospital.