I have a question for those of you who have nearly reached the milestone of being allowed return to play

Hi guys, I have a question for those of you who have nearly reached the milestone of being allowed return to play, or those who have returned to play (by this I mean high impact contact sports)

How does your knee feel after doing high impact exercise such as lots of sprinting, cutting, jumping? I’m talking about your knee itself, not your ACL.

My graft feels super strong, I have no issues with it whatsoever. However, I’ve recently started easing back into non contact training with my team and I find my knee can feel tired and stiff. I understand the tiredness, as I’m still building it back up. My physio said I need to push myself to feel a certain level of tiredness, but need to use my own judgement not to let it get toooo tired. The stiffness however spooks me a bit and I tend to stop what I’m doing out of fear of me exasperating my knee. Both my own physio and my team physio aren’t worried about the stiffness as it literally is me losing maybe 1-2 degrees off my full hyperextension and flexion. It tends to come on mid session, and can last a day or so.

Am I being overly paranoid and is this just how my knee is going to feel for the next while? I definitely feel I’m capable of doing more, but I just have this fear that stiffness = bad!!