Montis · ACL Bridge
Cleared is a medical decision. Ready is a physical one.
Somewhere around month four, physical therapy ends and the season hasn't started. ACL Bridge is the coached strength program for that gap: written by a physical therapist who does this for a living, delivered in the app, and progressed on what your knee tells you rather than on what week it is.
Best started once your surgeon or PT has released you to progress beyond early rehab, typically four to six months out. It doesn't replace physical therapy in the first months after surgery, and it doesn't clear you for anything. Your surgeon and your PT do that. ACL Bridge is what you do with the clearance.
What usually happens in month five
Insurance visits run out before the leg catches up. You're walking normally, you feel close to fine, and the operated side is still doing less work than the other one in every squat, every step down, every landing. Nobody is watching that part anymore. So most people either sit and wait, or go back to sport on feel.
Sitting and waiting
The graft heals on its own schedule. The quad does not. Time off does not rebuild what surgery and weeks of protecting the knee took away.
Going back on feel
Feeling normal walking says very little about landing on one leg. That is why ACL Bridge earns impact one rung at a time, on the ground before in the air, instead of on a good day.
A generic strength app
Sensible programming for two matched legs. It has no concept of a side that is behind, no daily knee check, and no reason to hold impact back while strength moves.
Two levels. One rule.
Every prescription in ACL Bridge is a ceiling, not an automatic progression. Load, range, volume and impact each climb only after two clean exposures and a quiet next morning. A good week moves you. A bad week holds the line instead of following the plan off a cliff.
Level one · Rebuild
Eight weeks. Dumbbells, machines, isometrics. No barbell.
Four sessions a week: a quad and braking day, a posterior-chain day, a single-leg control day, and a short landing-shapes day. Impact stays on the ground. Weeks five to eight swap two lifts toward their Elite versions and lengthen the holds. It ends at a checkpoint with your coach, not on a date.
Level two · Elite
Sixteen weeks. Heavy strength, staged impact.
Two heavy lower days, a single-leg control day, two impact days. Band-assisted contacts, then running, then planned cutting, each behind a post-op floor and your own response. Nothing opens early, and nothing breaks by arriving late. Built for the athlete who wants the whole season back.
The knee check
One tap each morning: green, amber or red, against your own recent normal. Green trains. Amber or red earns a recovery session instead of a harder day, and the program waits. Gave way, new limp, lost extension, swelling clearly up: those are automatic reds, and in the Coached tier a red reaches your coach the same day.
No printed weights
Your first set of each lift sets the load
Work up to a weight you can move for the listed sets and reps with three clean reps in reserve, log it, and it climbs a little each clean week. Nothing grinds, nothing is a dare.
Graduation
Rebuild to Elite is a checkpoint, never automatic
Clean single-leg sit-to-stands, a split squat you own, quiet landing shapes, two green weeks on the knee check. Your coach looks at the whole picture and opens the next level.
Two ways to run it
The app
ACL Bridge
$29 a month
- —Both levels, Rebuild and Elite, in the Montis app
- —The daily knee check and the recovery session it points to
- —Guided sessions with every dose, cue and swap
- —Your own history: loads, holds, checkpoints, knee days
With a coach
ACL Bridge · Coached
$149 a month
- —Everything in ACL Bridge
- —A coach who reads your week: knee days, loads, what moved
- —Checkpoints reviewed by a person, and the next level opened by one
- —A note when a red shows up, and a progress report you can hand your surgeon or PT
Month to month. Cancel when you're done, which is the point.
Who this is not for
ACL Bridge is coaching. It is not a substitute for physical therapy in the early months after surgery, and it will not take you through them. Before you can sign up, the page asks you one question, and a no closes the door until it changes:
Has a PT or ortho signed you off for higher-level strength and performance training?
Specifically: squats, deadlifts, single-leg loading. If you're not sure, ask them. Bring this exact sentence. “Am I ready for progressive strength training: squats, deadlifts, single-leg loading?” Their yes is your start date. Don't guess it on our behalf.
We could quietly let everyone through. The question costs us signups on purpose. If the answer is no today, come back when it changes. The link will work then.
Built by people who do this for a living
ACL Bridge is written by a Doctor of Physical Therapy, from the same return-to-sport work Montis runs in person in Montana, and it is the program those athletes train on between the clinic and the mountain. The app carries the programming. The knee check, the checkpoints and the coach are what make it a bridge instead of a spreadsheet.
Questions a page can't answer: hello@montislab.com
ACL Bridge is strength coaching and education. It supplements the care of your surgeon and physical therapist and does not replace it. Clearance to progress, run, jump or return to sport is theirs to give.