After their surgical procedure, many patients with joint replacement surgery are curious about which activities are safe to perform. While an orthopaedic surgeon often recommend specific sports that should be safe and those that should be avoided, there is a remarkably small amount of safe scientific information.

Sports and Exercise Following Knee Replacement Surgery

For patients with total knee replacement, the Knee Society recommends specific activities, such as:

Cycling – An excellent way to strengthen your new knee is to ride a bicycle outdoors or use a stationary bike indoors. The best way is to start riding on the flat or using a lower tension for an indoor ride.

Swimming – It won’t put any weight on your knees to enjoy the pool and you can get an aerobic workout. As soon as your stitches have been removed and the wound has healed, you can begin swimming.

Walking – For your recovery, walking is highly recommended. If you’re a runner, after a knee replacement, you may want to appreciate the lower impact of walking.

Low-Resistance Weightlifting – An important component of fitness is keeping the muscles toned.

Low-Resistance Rowing – You’re going to get a decent upper body workout, but you’re going to have to adjust the system so that the angle of your knee is greater than 90 degrees.

Gentle Aerobics-Style Exercises – It is essential to keep the body in shape with low-impact strength and flexibility exercises. You’ll need to stick with lower impact moves though you can love Zumba you just have to avoid spinning movements.

Skiing and Elliptical Machines – Just like cycling, there is no significant impact so you can get a good aerobic workout.

Sports and Fitness Activities to Avoid

Here are the activities that should be avoided after a knee replacement surgery:

• High-impact aerobics
• Baseball
• Hockey
• Basketball
• Soccer
• Jogging
• Gymnastics
• Powerlifting
• Football

Golfing After Surgery

One research on golf after replacement of the knee showed that the golf swing puts higher forces on the knee implant than jogging. Specifically, during the golf swing, the golfer’s forward knee is strained greatly. Therefore, following a knee replacement, patients should be careful of playing golf.

Take away

The findings of a study published at the 2010 annual meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons are very promising when you choose to return to a higher-impact sport or fitness practice.The findings of a study published at the 2010 annual meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons are very promising when you choose to return to a higher-impact sport or fitness practice.

They found that patients who returned to a high-impact activity or hard manual labor had the same discrepancies in the reliability of the implants as those who followed guidelines to avoid those tasks.

The researchers noted that prostheses are better and stronger than previously produced ones. They did notice, however, that powerlifting was terrible for the knees. After 7 1/2 years, this follow-up was completed and some experts would like to see what a longer follow-up would discover.