Participant recruitment and allocation
The four physical therapists recruited a community of individuals who underwent anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction (ACLR) at Haisikang Sports Medicine Clinic, Jianxingzhe Exercise Rehabilitation Center, and Peking University Third Hospital in Beijing via print and social media advertisements. The study’s directors adopted Excel software to randomly assign 30 participants into three groups comprising 10 participants each. The process of randomizing the grouping was performed using the RANDBETWEEN function in Microsoft Excel. A column containing a sequential numbering of the 30 participants was created, and a second column was added to generate a random number between 1 and 3 for each participant using the aforementioned RANDBETWEEN function. The output of this function was used to assign each participant to one of the three groups in a randomized fashion. The resulting groups were then sorted based on their assigned number and displayed accordingly, ensuring that each individual was placed into an unbiased and randomly selected group.