What Exercises Should Be Done After Hip Replacement?
Hip replacement surgery is a procedure that yields highly satisfactory and successful results, enabling patients to quickly return to daily life. However, like any surgery, if proper rehabilitation is not done postoperatively, it may lead to restricted movement and limping. Therefore, simple exercises performed after the surgery can help you maximize the benefits of the procedure.
First, your doctor needs to inform you about your safe joint range of motion. Within this range, strengthening the muscles around the hip is essential.
The first exercise you should do is ankle pumping. This exercise involves moving your ankle up and down. By improving blood circulation in the leg, it speeds up recovery and reduces the risk of blood clot formation, which can occur after surgery.
Another important exercise is strengthening the quadriceps muscle at the front of the thigh. To do this, place a small towel or pillow under your knee while lying down, and press down on it with your knee. This will improve your muscle strength, making it easier to step forward and balance when standing.
The third set of exercises focuses on increasing the range of motion in the hip joint. Bending your knee and hip towards yourself while lying in bed, and carefully opening your hip joint side to side, are the foundation of these exercises. These movements will help you regain balance in sitting, standing, and walking during your recovery period.
Lastly, tightening and releasing your hip muscles to help maintain balance while standing is important for walking comfortably and steadily in the early stages.
In addition to this, walking as much as possible, within the limits set by your doctor, is generally an important exercise. On the first day, walking may be limited to a few hundred meters, but it is crucial to try to increase this distance each day. In the initial days, walking is done with the help of a walker or two crutches. Depending on the patient’s physical performance, the support can be gradually reduced each day or week. You may move from a walker to two crutches, then to one crutch on the opposite side of the operated leg, and finally, the support can be discontinued when the patient is able to tolerate it. This process generally takes around 1 to 1.5 months.
In the second phase of rehabilitation, the main goal is to increase the walking distance. Along with this, basic strengthening exercises against resistance in four directions of the leg, simple mini squats, and sit-to-stand exercises from a chair are added as the rehabilitation moves to its final phase.
In the final phase, the goal is to make final adjustments according to the patient’s activity expectations and ensure a complete return to daily life. At this stage, the patient may start sports activities such as swimming, cycling, or light jogging. If the patient participates in a specific sport such as golf, horseback riding, or sailing, exercise and movement modifications specific to that sport should be introduced.
Before starting the necessary exercises, it is important to consult with your surgeon about which exercises you can and cannot do. Not all hip replacements are the same or equally durable. Rehabilitation may proceed more slowly, especially if a hip replacement was done in a deformed hip, such as in the case of a hip dislocation.
