While his team was on the road in Golden State on Monday, Andrew Bynum continued to rehab his injured left knee. Bynum suffered a subluxation of the patella and a bone bruise of the knee in the Lakers 100-99 win over the Memphis Grizzlies in mid-January. There remains no specific timetable for Andrew's return.
On Monday, Andrew continued to workout the knee through a series of of weight-training exercises aimed at strengthening the area where the injury occurred. The center also ran for several minutes on the team's Alter-G treadmill that simulates low gravity situations. Since the machine controls what percentage of body weight a player runs on, it is less physically demanding for an athlete returning from an injury.
For more details on Andrew's recovery we asked Chip Schaefer, Lakers Director of Athletic Performance/Player Development, a couple quick questions.
What types of daily drills is Andrew participating in?
The primary focus of Andrew therapy at this point is for him to recover the strength of not only the muscles that control and stabilize his patella but additionally those that stabilize and control his foot and ankle all the way up the kinetic chain through his hip and back. This is accomplished through a combination of traditional weight training exercises such as squatting and various explosive movements utilizing Olympic lifting exercises. These are combined with some very specific exercises used to essentially retrain and reeducate these muscles to fire in a specific sequential order. Andrew has also begun combining these strengthening exercises with various basketball specific movement patterns and agility drills designed to challenge Andrew in a logical progressive order.
What particular areas have you been focusing on?
Conditioning is also a concern for Andrew. The addition of the Alter -G treadmill has allowed us to initiate running with Andrew much earlier than otherwise would have possible. Andrew has been combining aerobic based running (10 minute bouts at moderate intensity) as well as more basketball specific anaerobic bouts (30 to 45 seconds at a high intensity followed by a 1 minute recovery) with a gradual systematic increase in the % body weight that he runs at. The most important thing for Andrew will be the ability to control the ground force reactions in the highly unpredictable environment that basketball demands. His progress to this point has been excellent.
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