Bon Secours St. Francis Health System provides support + challenge to get athletes back on their feet. // This article is in partnership with Bon Secours St. Francis Health System.

Imagine being an outdoor person your whole life: spending days on the lake, wakeboarding or at the ocean surfing. Then something happens that makes normal motions like walking up stairs or getting in the car nearly impossible...but it doesn’t have to stay that way. Orthopedic surgery + physical therapy gives patients the support needed to get back on their feet (sometimes literally).

Scott Ryerson, 43, plays on pretty much every adult league sport you can imagine, including City of Greenville Rec soccer and sand volleyball. He’s been an athlete all his life – which is why it was so important for him to get back on his feet after tearing his ACL during a soccer game three years ago. It was nothing crazy, he says, just while running planted his foot awkwardly, and moved quickly, causing the tear with an audible popping sound.

Ryerson was referred to orthopedic surgeon, Thomas E. Baumgarten, MD at Bon Secours St. Francis Health System, who performed his surgery six days after the diagnosis of a torn ACL.

“They gave me three options [for surgery]: go through the back of your hamstring, to use your patella tendon, or to use donor cells from a cadaver,” Ryerson said.

He chose the cadaver’s ACL and was able to walk just ten days later. Ten months later, he went skiing, his first big adventure since the accident.

St. Francis Sports Medicine athletic trainer and Ryerson’s friend, Blair LaMarche, and physical therapist Reneé VanArtsdalen worked with Ryerson to challenge him and give him the tools to a quick recovery.

One of the earliest exercises they worked on was "alternate arm dumbbell presses on a physioball" after Ryerson was able to bend his knee past 90 degrees. “It's very important to get the hamstrings working. This exercise works the hamstrings substantially due to the need to keep his balance on the physioball. His hamstrings are essentially doing strong isometric (not moving) contractions,” said LaMarche.

Twelve weeks after surgery, the Bon Secours team and Ryerson worked on three exercises to help develop balance and contractions for stability. According to LaMarche, the first exercise was the single leg squat, where Ryerson would stand on one foot and squat down to about 90 degrees at the knee and then come back up. The second exercise was the single toe touch: standing on one foot, he would bend at the waist (not the knee) and reach down to touch the ground just in front of his toe. The third exercise was the single leg heel raise, in which Ryerson would stand on one foot and raise his heel off the ground as high as he could and lower it down slowly and smoothly.

“The rehab program was more grueling than my training for college football,” Ryerson said. “In six weeks they had me jogging on the treadmill. It’s an amazing rehab facility. You think it’s going to be a horrible experience, but after going through it, it’s a rewarding experience.”

He would also do conventional lifting exercises such as leg curls, leg press and squatting, where LaMarche worked with him on breaking old weightlifting habits. LaMarche and Ryerson still work out together and LaMarche says (of Ryerson) “He’s in the best shape of his life even post-surgery because of all the work we’ve done.”

For more information about Bon Secours St. Francis Athletic Sports Medicine programs, click here.