University of Tennessee Athletics
An Inside Look at Nick Reveiz's Rehab
October 22, 2009 | Football
Oct. 22, 2009
BY DREW EDWARDS
UTSports.com
It's 6:30 on Wednesday morning, and Tennessee's campus is just starting to show signs of life.
The sun isn't all the way up yet, and neither are most of the students. There's a little fog lingering outside.
Even linebacker Nick Reveiz has a few cobwebs this morning as he starts his day inside the Neyland-Thompson Sports Center.
"I was like, `Man, what I would give to sleep in...," Reveiz said. "Sometimes you don't want to get up, but that's life. You've got to get up and do things."
About 15 minutes later, as 20 or so of his teammates are about halfway through their workout, Reveiz yells across the weight room to freshman running back Toney Williams.
"Toney, you're making me feel like a chump," Reveiz says, grinding out a few more curls.
Williams has never played a down of football for the Vols. Reveiz is a junior captain.
Today, though, Reveiz would gladly trade places.
Last Wednesday, at almost the exact same time, Reveiz underwent season-ending surgery at UT Medical Center to repair tears to the lateral meniscus and anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee.
Williams won't play this season, either. He tore his ACL over the summer during offseason workouts. Now, he's off crutches, and he's well into in his rehab. He's standing up as he lifts weights on Wednesday.
For Reveiz, it's just the end of first week. Or the start of the second. It kind of depends on your perspective.
His right knee is still swollen. It still hurts plenty, so much that Reveiz is sleeping in a recliner instead of his bed. But Reveiz, who worked his way from walk-on to scholarship player to starter to captain, has perspective under control.
"I try to learn a lot, but at the same time I feel like my situation's different because it all depends on how hard I work," Reveiz said. "If I feel like I'm going to out-work people and do more, I feel like I'm going to have a faster recovery.
"Everything I take with a grain of salt. I listen and try to learn from it, but at the same time I know not every situation is the same. There are different variables that weigh into everything."
`Make him work a little bit'
Except for a few throwers from the track team, Reveiz is all alone in the weight room as he finishes his workout.
Reveiz is sitting, gripping a wooden rod like a barbell and curling it up and down. Assistant strength coach Dan Hamilton provides manual resistance, opposing Reveiz's motion.
Reveiz hasn't lifted weights or worked out for seven days. He calculates it's the longest he's gone without a workout since he was 15 years old.
Reveiz has gone through the paces already on Wednesday, doing a variety of lifts targeting his biceps and back muscles. Most of his teammates were done by a few minutes after 7 a.m., but half an hour later, Reveiz is just finishing his workout.
During Reveiz's final set with Hamilton, UT director of strength and conditioning Aaron Ausmus barks across the weight room.
"Come on, Nick," Ausmus shouts. "You know we're paying him. Make him work a little bit."
If the words register, Reveiz doesn't show it. He finishes the set and reaches down to grab his crutches. As he leaves the weight room, Hamilton grins.
"If he hadn't done all (those lifts) before," he says, "I never could have moved (the bar)."
`Two short'
Since Reveiz injured his knee in the second half of the Vols' victory over Ohio on Sept. 26, he's been living at home with his parents in West Knoxville.
Well, there and Tennessee's training room.
After a post-workout chat with Ausmus, Reveiz makes his way across the indoor football field for a two-hour session in what's become his second home. Every day since his surgery - and every day leading up to surgery - Reveiz has been in the training room doing whatever he can to help his knee heal.
He begins Wednesday's session by using a resistance band to stretch his calf muscle. Then he uses his hands to move his knee cap so his patella tendon doesn't get too stiff.
Across the room, Williams is in the middle of his own treatment session.
"If I had to go back to that position, I'd die," Williams said, grinning.
Reveiz smiles politely, but he doesn't say much. Williams relents.
"I'm scaring you on purpose, though," he says.
Senior wide receiver Austin Rogers knows too well how tough the first week after surgery can be. He's 13 weeks along in his own rehab after tearing his ACL during offseason workouts.
"The first week after surgery is probably the roughest," Rogers said. "You just wake up out of surgery and you can't move your leg, really. And you're in so much pain that even the painkillers don't help. You look at your leg and it's so swollen, and you're like, `How am I ever going to walk again, never mind play football?' It's a rough week."
For Reveiz, it helps seeing Williams and Rogers moving around.
"I feel good now," says Rogers. "I think it's helping him to see us and see where Tony and I are. I think that's helping him out a lot to just see that he's going to get better. It's just a slow process."
It's definitely slow. Reveiz will spend the next six weeks on crutches. He'll be limited during spring practice, and, if everything goes according to plan, he'll be full-speed by the start of fall camp next year.
Though rehab is slow, Reveiz isn't cutting any corners.
Shortly after Williams moves on to another treatment, director of sports medicine Jason McVeigh is providing resistance as Reveiz moves his ankle and flexes his calf. The idea is to slow the atrophy, even though some is inevitable.
McVeigh stops, and tells Reveiz they're done.
"We're two (reps) short," Reveiz says.
`I'm going to break it'
Around 8:15 a.m., Reveiz's rehab hits a new gear.
He's spends 20 minutes on the Normatec machine, a compression sleeve that is used to stimulate the lymph system. Then it's a circuit of limited movement exercises that has him starting to sweat. Then it's over to the Biodex machine, where director of rehabilitation John Dean programs the machine to bend his knee within a prescribed range of motion.
"Just like Drago from `Rocky IV,' " Dean jokes.
At every turn, Reveiz is interested, engaged, not just the logistics but the medicine behind it.
Dean explains that the goal for the first six weeks of rehab is restore the range of motion in Reveiz's knee while protecting the repairs performed by Drs. Greg Mathien and Russell Betcher last week.
Some of the rehab exercises are working on building back that range of motion. Others, like an extended session with the Hivamat, which uses vibrations to stimulate the lymph system, aim to reduce swelling and the collection of fluid.
About four months from now, Dean will use the Biodex machine to test the amount of force Reveiz can exert with his quadriceps muscle on his injured right leg. Then he'll compare those numbers to the baseline tests Reveiz underwent as part of a three-day physical given to all players when they arrive as freshmen.
For an average person, a force equal to about 80 percent of body weight is ideal. For an athlete, Dean wants to see 100 percent of body weight. He marvels at running back Monatrio Hardesty, whose mark was off the charts at 340 pounds of pressure - more than 120 pounds above his playing weight.
"I'm going to break it," Reveiz says.
"Not today," Dean said, smiling.
"When," Reveiz asks, "can I break it?"
Having faith
Reveiz's day won't end until after 8 p.m.
After finishing his morning treatment with a round on the Game Ready system that provides cold compression, it's off to class. After a lunch break, Reveiz is back in the Neyland-Thompson Sports Center for meetings. He's on the field during the service period of practice, helping his replacements at middle linebacker -- Savion Frazier and Herman Lathers -- with this week's game plan for Alabama.
Then after practice, he caught a ride to William Blount High School (Reveiz can't drive for the time being, either, because of his knee) so he could speak at a Fellowship of Christian Athletes meeting.
"I think it's ironic that people will listen to you because you play football when the most important thing is your faith," Reveiz said.
Reveiz doesn't shy away from talking about his spiritual life. Only days after suffering the injury, he spent nearly 20 minutes with reporters talking about how important that faith is and how he would lean on it during the recovery process.
But there's a different kind of faith involved, too. For an undersized player who propelled himself to becoming a starter and team captain through an oversized work ethic, he'll have to fight the temptation to overdo it. Dean has already told him to be especially careful during the fifth week of rehab, when the pain will be all but gone even though his ACL will still be weak.
"That's what this process is about," Reveiz says. "I'm going to do everything I can, as much as I can. Whatever they tell me to do, I'll try to do more of that. But to the point where I push to where, `I'm walking today, let's try running?' I can't be doing that.
"I've just got to trust (the trainers) and trust God and know that everything happens for a reason. There's a plan set ahead. I just can't see the big picture right now, and I'd rather it be in God's hands than mine."
Follow the Vols on Twitter @UTAthletics, and read Drew Edwards' blog, The Inside Source.
