On June 12th we will know whether the surgery is part of the path. Until then, the plan operates on the assumption that it is not, because the assumption that it is not produces the best outcome if it proves correct and loses the least if it proves incorrect.
The rehabilitation work that the physiotherapist is directing three times a week is the same work whether the surgery happens or not: the tissue healing, the range of motion restoration, the progressive reloading of the joint that allows it to carry weight again without the compensatory patterns that injury produces and that, if uncorrected, produce secondary injuries in the structures that take the load the primary injury is refusing.
I want to describe the plan in specific terms because specific terms are more useful than general reassurance, and because the people who are interested in Naora and who have been following the knee story deserve the same honesty about the path forward that they received about the injury itself.
Now Until June 12th: Foundation
The current phase is the foundation phase: three physio sessions per week, daily home exercises consisting of the specific movement patterns and muscle activation sequences that the physio has prescribed, and the walking that is now possible upright and that extends in duration and pace as the joint tolerance improves. No cycling yet. No swimming yet. No padel for months. The focus is on the fundamental range of motion and the activation of the muscle groups that protect the MCL and ACL from reinjury while the tissue healing continues.
The June 12th assessment will determine whether the ligament integrity is sufficient for the conservative path or whether surgical repair is required. If conservative: the plan advances to the next phase immediately. If surgical: the plan incorporates the post-operative rehabilitation timeline, which adds weeks to the overall path but does not change the destination.
The destination is the same in both cases: a knee that is structurally sound and functionally capable of the physical demands of the Naora voyage by May 2027. This is achievable on either path. The conservative path is faster. The surgical path is more certain. June 12th tells us which one we are on.
Summer: The Return to Movement
The summer phase, assuming the conservative path, introduces swimming as the primary training modality: the pool before the sea, the non-impact cardiovascular work that maintains and rebuilds the aerobic capacity that the injury period has reduced, and the hip and core stability work in water that the physiotherapist has identified as the specific preparation for the return to land-based loading.
Swimming is the ideal rehabilitation modality for a knee injury because the water’s buoyancy reduces the joint load while the movement maintains the range of motion and the muscular endurance that the rehabilitation is building.
The cycling returns in late summer: the stationary bike first, where the resistance can be precisely controlled, then the road bike when the joint has demonstrated tolerance to the loading that outdoor cycling produces. The padel court returns when the lateral movement patterns that the sport requires have been validated by the physiotherapist as appropriate for the current state of the ligament repair.
This will probably be autumn. It will not be sooner, regardless of how the recovery feels subjectively, because the subjective feeling of readiness consistently precedes the objective structural readiness and the padel court that injured the knee deserves more respect than that.
Autumn and Winter: The Platform
By autumn the fitness platform that this year was supposed to be building before the injury will be being rebuilt: the padel returning, the cycling at full capacity, the yoga three times a week that has been a constant throughout the recovery and that will continue as the pre-departure fitness foundation.
The winter adds the specific offshore physical preparation that the departure year requires: the grip endurance training, the balance work, the progressive increase in the cardiovascular base that the five-year voyage will draw on continuously.
By May 2027 the knee will have been through something and will have come out the other side of it stronger and more specifically prepared than the knee that went through the padel court in spring 2026. The injury interrupted the preparation.
The rehabilitation is the preparation, conducted with more specific attention to the body’s requirements than the general fitness programme that preceded it. Sven’s knee in May 2027 will know more about itself than it did before. This is not compensation for the injury. It is the specific gift that the injury, unwillingly and eventually, has given.
