Hip Replacement Exercises: Beginning with Basics

Hip Replacement Exercises: Beginning with Basics

Exercise is extremely important after hip replacement surgery to help to restore normal hip motion and strength and allow a return to daily activities.  In the early stages of recovery, your surgeon and physical therapist will probably recommend 20 to 30 minutes two or three times daily of hip replacement exercises.

Early postoperative exercises are essential to increasing blood circulation to the legs and feet in order to prevent blood clots.  These exercises will also strengthen muscles and assist in the restoration of normal hip movement, and they can be started almost immediately after surgery while still in the recovery room.  Some initial discomfort is normal, but ultimately, beginning these exercises right away will decrease pain and increase the rate of recovery.

These immediate postoperative exercises should be performed as you lie on your back in your bed with your legs spread just slightly apart.  The first suggested exercise is ankle pumps, which is pretty much what it sounds like:  simply pushing your feet up and down—specifically the foot of the affected leg, but it can’t hurt to pump the other one a little, too!

Ankle pumps, obviously, are to strengthen the ankles and enable them to better support the unbalanced weight that will define your movement as you’re learning to walk with your new hip.  Ankle pumps should be done several times in one sitting and repeated as frequently as every five or ten minutes.

Another popular exercise is ankle rotations, which involve, as you can probably imagine, moving your ankle inward toward your other foot and then outward away from your other foot—again, pretty simple, but effective!

Bed-supported knee bends are similar to the heel slides that you will do a little further on in your recovery.  With heel slides, you sit on the floor with your legs out in front of you.  With the bed-supported knee bend, you essentially do the same exercise—sliding your heel toward your buttocks by slowly bending your knee and keeping your foot flat on the bed or ground—just lying on the bed rather than sitting up on the floor.

With buttock contractions, also known as gluteal sets, you tighten your buttock muscles and hold for five seconds, repeating 10 times three or four times per day.

With abduction exercises, slide your leg out to the side as far as you can and then back, repeating 10 times three or four times per day.
When you do a quadriceps set, tighten your thigh muscle and try to straighten your knee, holding for five to 10 seconds.  Repeat 10 times in a 10-minute period or until your thigh feels tired.

All of these exercises are very simple and very basic, but if you do them consistently, they will help you in your recovery!