10 Worst Mistakes That Lead To Chronic Pain After Knee Replacement Surgery

Chronic knee pain in somebody who’s had a knee joint replacement, whether it’s a total knee replacement, or a partial knee replacement is unfortunately something that happens. We treat it here every week in my clinic, let me tell you these 10 mistakes so that you can have a chance at avoiding them so that you can keep your replaced knee healthy, active and mobile.

Number one is avoiding exercise, I see lots of people that after they’re done with physical therapy, after they’re done following up with their surgeon, they just kind of become sedentary, they’re not really doing much in terms of exercise on a consistent basis, they may get the wild hair that makes them go jump on the exercise bike or go to the gym, and do some walking or go out to the park or walk the dog.

But on an everyday or at least weekly basis. Doing some sort of consistent exercise is usually not the case. Whenever I talk to these people, I asked them, What have you been doing consistently for exercise and they look down sheepishly and don’t want to admit that they haven’t been doing much at all.

And I don’t blame them all the way because they’ve been in pain. But doing some sort of exercise, finding the right kind, which I’ll talk more about, is critical for making sure that chronic pain is not taking over your life, if you’ve had a knee replacement.

Number two is having a no cane and no walker mentality. Oftentimes after you’ve had a knee replacement surgery, you have to use especially the walker in the first weeks after and then maybe progress to using the cane. And if you have not used a cane or a walker prior to having a knee replacement surgery, it’s usually the case that people don’t want to be using the cane and walker for the long term.

But being able to be comfortable with coming back to using at least a cane and if you really need it, a walker at times, so that you can make sure that you’re not making your knee worse, that’s a great mentality to have. Be okay with pulling out your walker pulling out your cane so that you can offload your knee joints and allow it to rest while still being able to get around.

Number three is avoiding cardio exercise I’m talking about like jumping on a bike and cycling for 10, 15, 20 minutes or more, or going for a walk or doing some sort of other cardio exercise like using a rower or using an elliptical machine cardiovascular exercise, which is basically just something that you continue to move for a sustained amount of time, it might be that your tolerance is five minutes, you could call that cardio exercise.

But you’re continuously moving with relatively light resistance, you’re not having to strain each time you move to do that exercise. It is super beneficial at keeping your ligaments, tendons, muscles healthy and of course, your heart. That’s why it’s called cardiovascular exercise, because it makes your circulatory system including your heart, work in a good way for your overall health.

But at the knee joint in the parts that are not replaced in your knee, it’s important for you to get some sort of consistent cardio exercise multiple times a week. Number four is avoiding strengthening exercises. Now, when it comes to strengthening, it’s kind of scary for some people to start to lift weights or do something that requires them to strain especially with that leg.

And if it’s painful, it’s especially scary, but finding the right exercises to do that are not painful using the right weights doing the right amounts of sets and reps. And giving yourself the right amount of rest between strength training exercises is critical so that you can continue to gain strength and protect your knees, even your replaced knee, for the long term.

Number five is never strengthening the glute muscles. I’m talking about the muscles that are on the backside of your hip over here, the butt muscles, those glute muscles are key at making sure that your thigh bone is moving properly to put normal pressures through your knee joint so that you’re not causing any problems with the pressures within the ligaments and tendons and muscles, even the nerves.

So you can normalize the forces here. If you’re not tiring out your glute muscles during the strengthening exercise, then you’re likely going to cause bad pressures to develop because when you do exercise or even if you just get up to move around and do your normal daily activities, your glutes aren’t ready to be used, then you’re likely using other muscles that are compensating for the weakness in the glutes. And that’s going to be detrimental for your knee and that could feed into chronic knee pain.

Number six is on the same thread, but down in the foot. If you don’t have good foot muscle strength, specifically toe muscle strength, the ones that curl your toes down here, because those toe muscles they help to support the arch and if your arch is not properly supported, then what can happen is your ankle will likely collapse inwards which shifts this bone right here the shin bone inwards and changes the pressures at the knee very much like the how the glutes affect the knee.

The arch muscles affect the knee position as well and can add some bad forces if you don’t have good strength. down there, strengthening foot muscles is not always straightforward. There’s specific ways to do it. And it needs to involve using the toes. So if you’ve never done that before, you need to learn how to get your toes involved, how to get your foot muscles stronger, it’s going to make a huge difference in keeping your knees healthy.

And number seven is only strengthening the quad muscles. The quad muscles, the quadricep muscles are the ones that are on the front of the thigh. And they attached to the kneecap right here. Those muscles are heavily emphasized right after surgery, because often, they shut down, they don’t work very well.

And you need to get them to work right in order to get your knee to function properly in progress from the aftermath of surgery. But very often, the force in those quad muscles comes back, and people get back to using the quad muscles just fine. Once they’re active again, then the focus needs to shift over to other muscles like the glutes and the foot muscles.

But what tends to happen, is people continue to work on the quad muscles, they think I need to always be strengthening my quad muscles. And that actually feeds into more problems at the knee joint of adds more pressures, and can cause chronic knee pain in somebody who’s had a knee replacement.

Number eight is not doing massage to those quad muscles because those quad muscles tend to be overused, they will get stiff, sometimes painful. And doing some sort of easy massage to the area you could do with your own hands, you could use tools, you can get a professional massage person to rub out your thigh muscles here in the front of your hip too.

That can make a huge difference at relieving pressure in the knee joint. And helping pain instantly improve. And in the long term, it can help you to not overuse your quad muscles. Because if those muscles aren’t as stiff, they aren’t going to be as likely to be used right away.

Number nine is leaning on your good leg, your leg that you did not have replaced. Very often I see people stand up and shift their weight over to the side that they didn’t get replaced. And subconsciously they’re favoring that side, they’re using that side more because it’s the leg that they trust more and the side that they replaced, they just haven’t had good trust in it.

Because it’s been weaker, it’s been painful. So they just don’t go to lean more pressure on that side, because it’s uncomfortable. But as you get stronger in the right ways, as you continue to do some sort of consistent exercise, you should find that you can confidently lean on your replaced knee without it hurting more so that you can use it properly to stay healthy, active and mobile.

And number 10 is never addressing muscle imbalances. Now I’ve kind of been alluding to this, but let me explain it clearly. There’s a specific muscle imbalance that sets people up to have knee arthritis that eventually causes them to have a knee replacement. And if that muscle imbalance is not addressed, then it persists even after the surgery because the surgery doesn’t fix the muscle imbalance.

It just replaces the end of the bones with the arthritis is and rehab after the surgery going to physical therapy also does not address the muscle imbalance that just gets you to bend and move properly so that you can get back to normal activities. But many people carry on with this muscle imbalance afterwards, it’s usually the quad muscles on the front of the thigh are way too strong and dominant. A

nd then the glutes up in the back of the hip are relatively weak, those two muscles oppose each other. So if this gets weak back here, then you’re going to dominate most motions with the quad muscles.

And if you have weak foot muscles as well, then you’ll likely use the quad muscles even more, that extra use of the quad muscles tends to make them bigger, which is kind of a vanity thing people will look down with their thigh and have a false sense of doing the right thing because they’ll have big quad muscles, they’ll be very active in their quad muscles.

But it’s actually not a good thing because it causes extra pressure in the knee joint and can cause tendinitis, bursitis, nerve problems that can wear down the replacements, it can mess with where the replacement attaches to the bone where the surgeon did their work, it can affect that part too.

So it’s important to address this muscle imbalance so that you can preserve your knee replacement for as long as you possibly can for the rest of your life. So that this is the last surgery that you ever have to have. I’ve got more help for people suffering from chronic pain in their knee if they’ve had a knee replacement surgery.

If you suspect you’re having a failed knee replacement surgery, there’s a playlist down in the description below called failed knee replacement help, you can check that out and get all our videos here on YouTube.

And I’ve also got a program called the failed knee replacement recovery program which is a 100% online on demand program that guides you step by step on what to do to make sure you calm the pain down but also treat this muscle imbalance so you can get the most out of your replace knee and you don’t feel like you have to go get a revision surgery or hanging out in the doctor’s office ever again.

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