rider1960
post-grad
Carol, the stretches are pretty basic and you may already be doing them.
Note: These stretches are on my surgeon's list to do only after the hip precautions/restrictions are lifted (6 weeks for me). I didn't start doing them until after I saw him for a follow up and got his blessing to go ahead with them.
First one--put your foot of the operated leg on top of the knee of the opposite leg. Let the knee kind of "drop" down to the outside --don't be tense. If you can tolerate it, add some gentle downward pressure on the knee to kind of "flatten" out the leg more, but you don't have to be aggressive to get results with this one--it just takes a while. Doing this while sitting is more effective than lying down, at least for me. Try to get in at least 20 seconds with each stretch and do at least 5 twice a day.
The other one is simply a hip flexor exercise that stretches out muscles that prevent the hip from flexing (again, you would need to wait until your hip precautions are lifted). While lying on your back and grasp your operated leg knee and bring it up towards your chest as far as you comfortably can and hold it for about 20 seconds. I find this one to be easier than the first exercise, so I spend more time on the first one.
Just an FYI for anyone interested, my surgeon gave me a handout with only 4 exercises he "required" patients to do. I thought this was interesting because I had a bunch of exercises that the PT had told me to do that took a lot of time to get through the list. After I started doing the ones my surgeon gave me, I realized that doing just these exercises used all the muscles and/or stretched out all the areas than the longer list of exercises the PT gave me to do. The surgeon's were more difficult at first but they took less time.
--At the 2 week mark--start working on lying-on-your-back straight leg raises, bringing the foot up as high as you can. At first I could only do an inch or two if I was lucky. The second exercise he wanted patients to start at the 2 week mark was a side-lying leg lift. I couldn't do this much at all and I ended up starting with clamshells. I could do a partial clam shell at around 3 weeks and built up to a few inches of the side lying leg raise probably within a week after that. It wasn't until probably 5 weeks that I could do a full straight leg and side lying leg raise.
Those were tough exercises for me, but I found that once I started doing them, my walking got much better very quickly. I had a lot of weakness in my leg--probably a combination of all the muscle cutting they did during surgery and how weak the leg had become from general disuse before surgery. My right leg is not too weak now, so I'm hoping that that one will recovery quicker than the left did, although generally I was pleased with how the left leg did.
At 6 weeks (after he saw me and lifted my hip precautions), I added the 2 stretches and started seeing a rapid improvement in my general range of motion of the leg. It kind of loosened up.
Hope this helps.
Dorothy
Note: These stretches are on my surgeon's list to do only after the hip precautions/restrictions are lifted (6 weeks for me). I didn't start doing them until after I saw him for a follow up and got his blessing to go ahead with them.
First one--put your foot of the operated leg on top of the knee of the opposite leg. Let the knee kind of "drop" down to the outside --don't be tense. If you can tolerate it, add some gentle downward pressure on the knee to kind of "flatten" out the leg more, but you don't have to be aggressive to get results with this one--it just takes a while. Doing this while sitting is more effective than lying down, at least for me. Try to get in at least 20 seconds with each stretch and do at least 5 twice a day.
The other one is simply a hip flexor exercise that stretches out muscles that prevent the hip from flexing (again, you would need to wait until your hip precautions are lifted). While lying on your back and grasp your operated leg knee and bring it up towards your chest as far as you comfortably can and hold it for about 20 seconds. I find this one to be easier than the first exercise, so I spend more time on the first one.
Just an FYI for anyone interested, my surgeon gave me a handout with only 4 exercises he "required" patients to do. I thought this was interesting because I had a bunch of exercises that the PT had told me to do that took a lot of time to get through the list. After I started doing the ones my surgeon gave me, I realized that doing just these exercises used all the muscles and/or stretched out all the areas than the longer list of exercises the PT gave me to do. The surgeon's were more difficult at first but they took less time.
--At the 2 week mark--start working on lying-on-your-back straight leg raises, bringing the foot up as high as you can. At first I could only do an inch or two if I was lucky. The second exercise he wanted patients to start at the 2 week mark was a side-lying leg lift. I couldn't do this much at all and I ended up starting with clamshells. I could do a partial clam shell at around 3 weeks and built up to a few inches of the side lying leg raise probably within a week after that. It wasn't until probably 5 weeks that I could do a full straight leg and side lying leg raise.
Those were tough exercises for me, but I found that once I started doing them, my walking got much better very quickly. I had a lot of weakness in my leg--probably a combination of all the muscle cutting they did during surgery and how weak the leg had become from general disuse before surgery. My right leg is not too weak now, so I'm hoping that that one will recovery quicker than the left did, although generally I was pleased with how the left leg did.
At 6 weeks (after he saw me and lifted my hip precautions), I added the 2 stretches and started seeing a rapid improvement in my general range of motion of the leg. It kind of loosened up.
Hope this helps.
Dorothy