Almost Four Years After Hip Replacement: I Stopped Pushing So Hard, and Everything Changed
I'm coming up on four years since my hip replacement. Like many people here, my recovery has been anything but straightforward. I've dealt with persistent pain, tightness, muscle dysfunction, and mobility limitations. And frankly, I've spent years trying to figure out why my body wasn't responding the way I thought it should.
But over the past year, something remarkable happened. I now have better hip mobility than I've had in probably 20 years. I'm stronger, I move more naturally, and I rarely experience the exercise-related soreness that used to be part of my life.
The breakthrough wasn't a new exercise or therapist. It was completely changing how I think about exercise and movement.
I call it
exercise snacking.
I stopped chasing muscle failure. Stopped worrying about three sets of ten. Stopped thinking I needed to exhaust myself to accomplish something.
Instead, I started moving frequently, in small doses, throughout the day. Isometric holds, active stretching, climbing stairs, getting up and down from the floor, bending, reaching, and exploring whatever range of motion my body comfortably allows.
I also focus on compound movements, things like sit-to-stands, push-ups, and pull-ups. By the way, every pull-up I do is assisted. I might do relatively high repetitions, but I never go to failure.
There's a concept in strength training called
reps in reserve. Suppose I could do 11 or 12 repetitions of something. I'll stop at seven. I've stimulated the muscles, practiced the movement, and left plenty in the tank.
Sometimes I'll walk upstairs taking every other step four or five times. That's it. That's my exercise session.
And here's the funny thing. I've actually gained muscle and strength doing this.
But I think the bigger breakthrough involves my nervous system.
When you've lived with pain and dysfunction for years, I believe your body can learn to protect itself in ways that eventually become part of the problem.
Muscles tighten. Guarding becomes habitual. You unconsciously avoid certain movements. Eventually, it even changes how you think about your own body. You start anticipating pain, questioning what you can do, and treating your body as something fragile.
Then you go to PT or the gym, push yourself through a demanding workout, and end up sore, tight, or hurting. For someone like me, that can reinforce the very cycle I'm trying to escape.
My theory is that much of my improvement has come from gradually reversing that process.
Instead of constantly challenging my body to do more, I give it repeated, positive experiences with movement. Small challenges that don't provoke a significant pain response. Over time, movements that once felt threatening begin to feel normal.
I'm essentially trying to teach my nervous system that it's okay to move again.
I'm not suggesting this explains everybody's pain. It is simply the framework that has helped me understand my own recovery.
I now have two role models for fitness. Neither goes to the gym.
The first is a kid on a playground.
Watch a child on a jungle gym. They're climbing, crawling, squatting, twisting, hanging, reaching, pulling themselves up, getting down, and doing it all again.
They don't think about repetitions, sets, or muscle groups. They're simply exploring what their bodies can do.
That's increasingly how I think about mobility. Not exercising for the sake of exercising. Just rediscovering natural human movement.
My second role model is my 78-year-old mother-in-law.
She doesn't exercise. Doesn't lift weights. Doesn't have a fitness program.
But she can bend down and pick up a case of water. Reach into the oven and lift out a roast. Get down into a low position and stand back up. Move around her house doing whatever needs to be done.
And for years, she had better functional mobility than I did.
Think about that. I was the guy who played hockey, went to the gym, and took fitness seriously. Yet this 78-year-old woman who never thinks about exercise could comfortably perform everyday movements that I struggled with.
That really changed my perspective.
I've also noticed something reading this forum over the years. There are people who have their hip replacements, return to cleaning their homes, shopping, gardening, and everyday life, and gradually seem to do quite well.
Then there are people like me who approach recovery as another athletic challenge. More exercises, more stretching, more strengthening, always looking for the next thing that will finally fix the problem.
And sometimes we just go around in circles.
Obviously, some people here have legitimate surgical complications and structural problems that require medical attention. I'm not suggesting movement alone solves those issues.
I also recognize that my own history is different from many people's. I've had muscle, tendon, and ligament problems dating back to my twenties. My body has had decades to develop compensations and protective movement patterns. A successful hip replacement wasn't necessarily going to undo all of that.
But I do wonder whether some of us make recovery harder by turning it into another athletic competition.
I certainly did.
Here's what exercise looks like for me today.
I actually exercise seven days a week.
Every morning I get on the elliptical or an exercise bike. Not to exhaust myself. Not to hit a particular heart rate. Just to move.
And I move throughout the day. Some days I feel great and do more. Some days I'm tight, so I do less. I don't have a rigid program. I do what my body seems comfortable doing that day.
I also love biking. I have an electric bike, which is fantastic. I'll go out for eight or ten miles, enjoy being outside, use the assistance when I want, and come home feeling good.
Could I do 20 or 25 miles? Maybe. But why? What am I trying to prove?
I think those of us with Type A personalities can turn everything into a competition. More miles, more repetitions, more intensity, better numbers. I'm 57 now. I loved playing hockey, but I've accepted that hockey isn't particularly good for my body anymore.
I don't recover the way I did at 25, and I don't need to pretend otherwise.
One interesting result of this approach is that I virtually never get delayed-onset muscle soreness anymore. Sure, I might feel a little tired or stiff at the end of a busy day. But I no longer wake up a day or two after exercising with sore muscles because I pushed too hard.
I don't miss that at all.
And here's the part of this story that really surprised me.
Earlier this year, doctors discovered coronary calcium, so I underwent a treadmill cardiac stress test.
I achieved
17.2 METs.
For perspective, a 2018 study published in
JAMA Network Open examined more than 122,000 patients undergoing treadmill stress tests. For men aged 50–59, the researchers classified 14 METs or higher as "elite," beginning at the 97.7th percentile of their study population.
My result was 17.2 METs, comfortably above that threshold.
And here's the punchline.
I didn't stop the test because I was exhausted or couldn't keep going. I stopped because of my ankle.
As the treadmill incline became increasingly steep, my left ankle simply didn't have the mobility it once had. I felt I could continue from a cardiovascular standpoint, but I didn't want to force my ankle into a position that might cause an injury.
I asked the staff whether they had everything they needed from the test. They said yes, so I stopped.
Think about the irony. After years of orthopedic problems, I demonstrated an exceptionally high level of exercise capacity for my age. Yet the reason I ended the test was a mechanical mobility limitation, not a lack of stamina.
For me, that really brought the entire experience into focus.
I hadn't been doing punishing cardiovascular workouts. I wasn't training for races or spending hours trying to push my heart rate higher.
I was simply moving every day. A little elliptical in the morning, some biking, and frequent movement throughout the day.
I'm not claiming my exercise approach caused that result. But it certainly challenged my old assumption that you need to constantly push yourself to maintain a high level of fitness.
I'd stopped training so hard, but I hadn't stopped being fit.
And perhaps more importantly, I was finally moving better and feeling better.
So what are my goals now?
They're actually pretty simple.
I want to go on vacation with my wife and comfortably walk 25,000 or 30,000 steps over the course of a day without constantly thinking about my hip.
I want to get down on the floor, play with my grandchildren, pick them up, carry things, bend, reach, and move through everyday life naturally.
And here's what's interesting: I never set deadlines for any of this.
No six-week programs. No prescribed progression. No expectation that I had to achieve a particular milestone by a certain date.
I simply started moving more frequently, using whatever range of motion was comfortably available, and gradually exploring a little further.
Over time, my range of motion expanded. My muscles became less guarded. My confidence increased. Movements that once felt difficult began feeling normal.
I still believe strength matters. I still exercise. But exercise is now a means of improving how I move, rather than an accomplishment in itself.
That's also why I don't think listing all my particular exercises would be especially helpful. Everyone's body and limitations are different. The specific exercises aren't really the point.
The point is changing your relationship with movement.
For me, that meant doing less at any one time, but moving more frequently and in more varied ways. Leaving plenty in reserve. Not pushing through significant pain. Using my available range of motion every day and gradually expanding it.
And just as importantly, letting go of the idea that I needed to get back to being the athlete I was 30 years ago.
I know there are people on this forum who are struggling, sometimes years after surgery, despite doing everything their therapists recommended. I understand that frustration because I've lived it. I don't pretend my approach is a universal solution, and I know some problems need more than changes in exercise.
But I wanted to share this because it represents a completely different way of thinking about recovery, one that has made an enormous difference in my life.
After years of trying to exercise my way back to normal, I've started thinking about something much simpler.
My two role models are now a kid climbing around a playground and a 78-year-old woman who can do whatever she needs to do around the house.
Neither thinks about how many repetitions they can do, how far they can ride, or what their fitness score might be.
They're just moving. And that's what I've been trying to get back to all along.
United Kingdom
How It’s Changed My Life
