Rehab

Rehabilitating from hip arthroscopy surgery takes a few months, and everyone’s progression is slightly different. If you’re undergoing surgery, we’re here to work with your physio, osteo, trainer and coach, and we’ve developed a guide to assist you through your recovery.

Rather than following a rigid-time based programme, we’ve found it more useful to suggest that your rehab takes the form of  four different phases, with ‘gateways’ you should pass through to continue along your journey. These ‘gateways’ are check points to ensure you don’t rush on to the next phase, before your body is ready.
For each phase, we have made suggestions of the kinds of exercises your physio or osteo might like to use in your rehabilitation—some of them earlier in that phase, and some of them later. There are also some suggestions about exercises what we feel are less helpful during that phase.

You may be asking yourself, ‘how long will it take for me to recover’? Whilst this varies from person to person, and is dependent on several factors (e.g. how good your muscle conditioning was prior to surgery, and what was carried out at the time of surgery), there are some common journey experiences. In the first couple of weeks post-surgery, some patients go through a kind of ‘honeymoon’, when they may feel that that their hip is less grumpy than it was prior to surgery, and there is a still a sense of novelty to the process. Heading back to work, and thus sitting more at a desk, may mean this ‘holiday comes’ to an end.  It’s not unusual to feel that weeks six to twelve are a little taxing, with many people experiencing a mixture of good days and bad days. This doesn’t mean anything is going wrong, but it tends to occur when starting to push yourself a bit more, and the muscle control around the hip and pelvis hasn’t yet caught up.  It’s important to recognise this for what it is, and try not to feel despondent during this time, as for the majority of patients, this passes and they can see a very big improvement by four months.

Although it can take all the way up to a year for some patients, this is unusual, and most patients will have achieved their post-operative goals and consider themselves rehabilitated by six months.