4. Do Your At-Home ACL Exercises
You definitely need to do your at-home ACL exercises as well. Physical therapy is no substitute for the at-home exercises that you will be given. Sometimes, these instructions will be given by the surgeon themselves and sometimes it will get sent home with you after your first physical therapy appointment. In either case, you need to make the best effort you possibly can because all of these are factored into your treatment.
If your doctor is giving you a recovery period of six months after an ACL injury, and you fail to do any of the at-home exercises that they assign to you, then it is most likely the recovery period is going to last nine or 12 months instead.
You will need to keep performing these exercises even after physical therapy has stopped in many cases. By then they should have become so routine that you can do them without thinking about them.