Four ACL Tears in 8 Years — My Story
From 2015 to 2023, I tore the ACL in my right knee four times. After my fourth tear, I decided enough was enough and opted not to get surgery again. That was almost four years ago now.
You may read that and wonder why I'm qualified to help you with your knees. The truth is, I'm not a physical therapist, and I don't pretend to be.
I'm a strength coach and personal trainer. I'm someone who has been through the wringer with knee injuries, and I've learned what it takes to persevere through them.
The full tally: four ACL tears, countless medial and lateral meniscus tears, an LCL tear, and a fractured tibial plateau, all on the same right knee. I'm not telling you that for sympathy. I'm telling you because even with my history, there's a light at the end of the tunnel, and I need you to know that.
Here's the whole story.
Where It Started
I grew up in Connecticut striving to become a professional freestyle skier. You don't need a big mountain to slide rails, and with my local hill open until 10 pm, my buddies and I would get picked up from school and taken straight there. By my junior year of high school I was training at Carinthia, one of the best terrain parks on the East Coast, and traveling the country to slopestyle and rail jam competitions.
I podiumed in several East Coast events, and in the spring of my senior year I placed 4th at a national slopestyle event, which earned me a spot at US Freeskiing's Gold Camp in Mammoth. Instead of a gap year, I found a small school in Lake Tahoe that offered scholarships for freestyle skiing — Sierra Nevada College — and headed west to ski and study.
2015 — Tear One
February 2015, freshman year. The Aspen Open, on the same slopestyle course they ran the X-Games on. I landed my first run but sat just outside the semi-final cut, so on my second run I went to one-up my switch 1080 with a switch 1260. I got the grab and held the spin, but I came down far deeper on the landing than I'd planned, landed on my heels in the backseat, and my right knee gave out. The pain made me scream out loud.
One Lachman test at the doctor's office and an MRI later: torn ACL, torn medial meniscus. Surgery on March 12th, 2015. Four weeks on crutches, which I hated every minute of, then PT twice a week all summer. That October, six months out, a few physical therapists ran me through a return-to-sport test comparing my injured leg to my healthy one. I passed with a perfect score. The doctor gave me the green light, and I went straight back to skiing, determined to make up for lost time.
Back then, the recovery literature said six months was enough. Let my story be the lesson: for most people, it isn't.
2016 — Tear Two
Over winter break in Park City, I landed deep on a switch 540 and felt a sharp pain behind my knee. No fall, no swelling. I iced it, took a week off, and when the pain faded I figured it was a fluke.
A few weeks later I got out of class early and went to Boreal alone to train my competition run. Third time through, I landed a switch 540 completely clean, and felt a strange pop in the knee I'd had rebuilt just ten months earlier. I didn't even fall. I skied straight to my car, clicked out of my skis, pressed weight into the knee to test it, then called my mum and cried. I knew it was gone.
The MRI confirmed it. I'd passed my return-to-sport test, worked my ass off, hadn't even crashed, and it re-tore anyway. Here's a fact nobody had told me: a reconstructed ACL has upwards of a 30% chance of re-tearing. And because reconstruction cuts nerves in the knee, a re-tear often doesn't even hurt.
I made an admittedly selfish decision: no surgery yet. I was a sophomore in college and I wasn't ready to lose another year. I took a month off, got the leg strong in the gym, put on my knee brace, and skied from March to June without an ACL. It was a damn good season.
Styx n' Stones — the season I skied without an ACL.
In June I went home to Connecticut for the surgery I'd been putting off. It should have been routine. Instead, the surgeon found a torn lateral meniscus and a torn LCL that the MRI hadn't shown — the price of months without an ACL. A 2-hour surgery became a 7-hour one, and four weeks of crutches became six. This time the doc was clear: nine months minimum. I accepted it and got to work.
2017 — Tear Three
Nine months later I passed another return-to-sport test with flying colors. This time I eased back in: groomers first, coaching friends, no tricks until the confidence came back in April. That spring turned into one of the best stretches of skiing in my life. Tahoe got record snow, resorts stayed open into July, I won best overall skier at collegiate nationals, and I landed tricks I never thought I'd do again. I even cut a season edit and named it my comeback season. Oh, the irony.
The "Comeback Season" edit — 2017.
A month later, first week of senior year, I joined my buddies for ultimate frisbee and soccer. My knee felt tired, and that should have been my cue to stop. Ten minutes into the soccer game I scored, did a flat-ground flip to celebrate, and heard the pop I knew too well. No fall. No pain. I sat down and cried in front of everyone.
Same knee. Third time. I refused to spend senior year on crutches, so I held off on surgery again, but this time I didn't push my luck. I coached our freeski team instead of competing, met the regional K2 Skis rep, and started working in the ski industry. If I hadn't torn my ACL a third time, I might never have made the connections that shaped everything after. After graduating in 2018 I landed a marketing job with LINE Skis and moved to the Pacific Northwest, and in September 2019 I finally got my third reconstruction. With a desk job, I figured that tear would be my last.
2023 — Tear Four
February 2023. I was in Japan on a team shoot for LINE, and between storm days I couldn't help myself. We found the avalanche barriers Japan is famous for, which make perfect jumps, and I ripped a flat 360 off one. Bucket list, checked.
Later that day I dropped a small cliff and did a casual 180 into deep snow. When I landed, I was headed straight at a small tree I hadn't seen. I got most of my body out of the way. My right knee took the full impact, and I felt it shift. This one hurt like hell.
Japan, February 2023. The day after.
The damage: fractured tibial plateau, torn lateral meniscus, and no ACL. Then the MRI got weird. There was no sign of a recent ACL tear — no fresh residue at all. Two separate doctors told me the same thing: I'd likely torn it about six months earlier without even knowing. I'd been playing flag football, running half marathons, doing CrossFit, and skiing hard, all without an ACL.
No Surgery. Strong Instead.
That was almost four years ago. I never got the fourth surgery.
Part of it was mindset: what's the point of another reconstruction if it can tear again without me even noticing? But the bigger part was what those eight years taught me.
Throughout my 4 ACL tears, I did the rehab, listened to the doctors and physical therapists, and got cleared through passing return-to-sport tests. Every single time. Yet every single time, my ACL would re-tear.
That's how I learned physical therapy gets you cleared, not ready. My rehab made me strong enough for daily life. It was never built to prepare me for what high-level sport demanded. That gap is where I kept getting hurt, and closing it is what I've spent the last several years figuring out.
No ACL. Still sending it.
If you're in the middle of your own knee injury right now: sh*t might suck today, but it gets better. Don't let the injury get you down. Use it to fuel your fire and push you into your next great thing. If I'd never torn my ACL, I wouldn't be doing work I love, and you wouldn't be reading this.
You Are Not Your MRI
An orthopedic surgeon recently looked at my right knee and wrote: severe osteoarthritis. Bone-on-bone. Knee replacement likely before I turn 40. My MRI reads worse: full-thickness cartilage loss, a complete ACL graft tear, most of my meniscus gone. You can see a snapshot of it below.
On paper, my knee should be done. That same knee skis, runs, trains, and lives a very active lifestyle. Pain-free.
A scan is a snapshot of structure, and structure is a poor predictor of who actually hurts. Plenty of people with clean MRIs have knees that ache every day. Plenty of people with ugly ones are out skiing, lifting, and running.
Your scan is a snapshot. Your strength is a choice.
What I Coach Now
I'm not here to replace your physical therapist. I'm here for the part after: when you're cleared, out of pain enough to move, and nobody has a plan for making you strong. That's the Strong Knees System. It's the progression I wish someone had handed me in 2015, and it's built so you don't need four tears to learn what I learned.
Backed by my 30-day "stronger knees or your money back" guarantee.