Hip Replacement Exercises: Making Progress

Hip Replacement Exercises: Making Progress

When doing post-surgery hip replacement exercises, patients typically progress pretty quickly from lying down to sitting to standing to walking.  For walking, some will require a walker or crutches initially to help with balance.

When using a walker or crutches, you should stand up straight and as comfortably as possible with your weight balanced evenly on the device.  Move the walker or crutches forward a short distance, then move yourself forward by lifting your operated leg in such a way that your heel will end up touching the floor first.  As the step progresses, your knee and ankle will bend until your whole foot is resting evenly on the ground.

Let your toe lift off of the floor as you complete the step.  Move the walker or crutches again, and your knee and hip will move automatically into the next step.  The more you practice walking and the more you’re able to walk, the more weight you’ll be able to put on your operated leg.

If you start off using a walker or crutches, you’ll eventually graduate to one crutch or a cane.  You’re ready to be promoted when you’re able to stand without support, with your weight placed completely on both of your feet, without having to lean on your hands on the walker or crutches at all.  The single crutch or cane should be held in the hand opposite of the operated hip.

Stair-climbing is another milestone in hip replacement physical therapy.  This is an activity that demands strength and flexibility.  To begin with, you’ll require a handrail, and you’ll only be able to go one step at a time.  You should always lead up the stairs with the good leg and down the stairs with the “bad” (or thinking cup-half-full, improving) leg.

It might be a good idea to have someone to assist you with stair-climbing until your strength and mobility have returned, but don’t let that stipulation deter you from stair-climbing, because it’s a great exercise for strength and endurance.  However, avoid steps that are higher than the standard seven inches, and always use the handrail!

A full recovery from hip replacement surgery will take many months.  Your hip muscles were weakened first by pain of a deteriorated joint and then by pain (but a healing pain, hopefully) and swelling caused by the body’s natural defensive reaction to surgery.

You may have noticed that strength is a common theme when talking about hip replacement recovery:  less strength, more strength, regaining strength, returning strength, building strength.  How do you strengthen your muscles?  By exercise – it’s the only true way.

Your doctor will give you continuing strengthening exercises to do once you’ve progressed through the official physical therapy exercises.  These might include working with elastic tubes, exercycling, and, of course, walking.  There are other strengthening and endurance exercise routines available to you as well.  Just stick with it, and remember:  there is a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow—a fully functioning and pain-free hip.