Hi five weeks after breaking my ankle and tearing some ligaments, my doc has allowed me to put weight on my foot and to start exercising again. Have reactivated trainer road and wondered what programs would best suit my return to fitness. Will be indoors for another month or so, should I just be doing long recovery rides or is there anything more suitable that I should know about?
I broke my ankle in two places a couple of years ago. Like you, I was allowed to do light weight bearing exercises around week 5. I don’t know about you but by then my leg muscles and stamina had atrophied quite a bit. I started with TR workouts like Lazy Mountain and Petit, but had to put on flat pedals for obvious reasons. By week seven I was doing Zwift free rides for 75-90 minutes.
By week eight I was able to unclip with my SPD pedals set to lowest resistance. By week 10 I could unclip my road SPD-SL pedals. Around week 12 I started riding outside with flat pedals and proceeded to swap to different pedals after 2 weeks. This was in combination of doing PT 3x a week plus home exercises starting around week 6.
I did a 45 minute ride this pm (lazy mountain -2) and felt ok. Key was to get heart working again as sitting on sofa drinking beer and watching Netflix not good training. Muscles feel ok, but don’t want to stress ankle unnecessarily, and rebuilding aerobic capacity is more important than power at this point.
Hey there @Markbidwell,
Sorry to hear about your injury! Broken bones can be really tough to deal with. 
I’d say first off, make sure that whatever you’re doing has been approved by your doctor. It doesn’t hurt to give them a call and verify that whatever you’re planning on doing is okay. It’s always best to double-check rather than worsen the injury and slow down the healing process.
Generally speaking though, it’s probably best to stick to “Active Recovery” rides for the time being. You can filter our workouts by training zone in our library as shown below which makes finding something suitable pretty easy.
There is nothing wrong with riding easy for a while, and there are plenty of benefits to be had, so make sure that you’re sticking with your doctor’s orders and you might have to remind yourself to dial it back every now and then. Once you get things moving again it’s really easy to get carried away and overdo it. Ask me how I know! 
I hope you heal up quickly! Best of luck!
I didn’t break my ankle but I did have ankle surgery to repair a torn tendon and damaged ligaments. Like you, I was NWB and really looked forward to getting back on the trainer. When I initially started back, I did not do any workouts that required concentrated pushing. My purpose was to spin to help loosen up the ankle (improve mobility) and burn a few calories. If I felt any strange pain in the calf, I backed off or quit. After just a few weeks of NWB, it’s amazing how much your calf muscle can wither away. I would also use the 24 hour rule as I increased time or intensity on the trainer…24 hours later, if it was hurting then I need to back off. If no pain then I continued to progress. Luckily, my PT helped guide me to prevent doing too much (and hopefully you are receiving similar guidance from your doc and/or PT).