Top 7 WORST Mistakes People Make After A Knee Replacement

In this video, I’m going to tell you the top seven worst mistakes that people make after getting a knee replacements. Now this includes getting a total knee replacement where both sides, both compartments of the knee are replaced, as well as a partial knee replacement, where just half the knee is replaced, usually the inside part, but it could also be the outside part, let me get right into it.

Mistake number one is endlessly focusing on working on the quad muscles, those would be the muscles on the front of your thigh. Now in the beginning, if you’ve had a knee replacement, you’ve probably realized that your quad muscles don’t want to work, they don’t want to turn on. In that moment.

In those days and weeks, you do need to work on your quad muscles, you need to get them to activate and specifically the quad muscles are called quad because there’s four muscles in the area, you need to get all of them to fire. So just to show you real quick on my quad, there’s one in the middle on the top one on the outside, one on the inside, and there’s one in the middle deep to the one that’s on the top.

Usually the ones on the outsides don’t fire as well. So when you get your quads to work, you want to make sure that you can see your muscle working on the sides, what sometimes happens is just the top middle works. And then the rest of it is kind of forgotten.

Now, once you’ve achieved that, you don’t need to pay attention to the quads anymore. Some people get super focused on continuing to strengthen the quads, even though they’re already working, they’re already turned on, they’re already doing their job. Now we need to work on other muscle groups, usually the glutes.

The problem with endlessly focusing on the quads is it’s usually quad muscle over dominance, that sets up the knee osteoarthritis, that led to having the knee replacements in the first place. So we don’t want to get super strong quads again and potentially mess up the knee replacements. Once the quads are working, then you’re fine. Move on to the next muscles, usually the glute muscles.

Mistake number two is not taking enough pain medication. Right after surgery, your surgeon is going to recommend to you a variety of medications, maybe just one medication or two medications, it depends on your specific situation and your surgeon, the approach that they have on your knee, the type of knee replacement that you get, there’s a lot of different factors, what you need to be doing is take the medications as they’re prescribed, follow the schedule, if they give you a schedule.

The reason being is that having a knee replacement is painful. And the rehabilitation afterwards is very painful. And they don’t always tell you this. And when you hear about the people that say oh my knee replacement was a piece of cake. It’s probably because they were on their pain medication on the schedule the way they were supposed to.

What some people like to do is toughed it out, avoid taking the pain medications, because they don’t want to be on medications, which is understandable, but you just had a major joint replaced, you need to take the pain medications, otherwise, you’re not going to be a happy person. And rehabilitating afterwards is not going to come very easy. So take your pain medications, the way you’re supposed to.

Mistake number three is not drinking enough water, you are healing tremendously after having knee replacements for months after even a year afterwards. And so having enough water is a big deal. Because all the processes that happen inside our cells inside of our body in order for healing to occur happen within water cells are filled with water and other molecules, all the different parts of the cells, all the blood, everything is composed of water to some degree.

And if you don’t have enough water, because you’re chronically dehydrated, you’re just not going to heal as fast as you could, you might experience more pain than you should. And you know what he’s got to be okay with having run to the bathroom every now and then you can always fine tune and adjust. If you are going to the bathroom quite a bit, then you’re probably drinking a little bit too much water.

But it also might be that you’re not used to going to the bathroom as much you’re drinking more water than your than you’re used to. So it could be an adjustment period. There’s all kinds of recommendations for exactly how much water you should be drinking, the best recommendation that I can give you is that you should be drinking somewhere in the range of two to three liters of water, depending on your size every day.

This could vary if you have some kidney problem. Or if your doctor is giving you limits on how much water you should be drinking for some other health concern. Mistake number four is comparing your progress with others. I alluded to this already some you hear about some people having a very easy recovery from the knee replacement. And you rarely hear the bad stories that people that tell you that they had a really hard time.

The ones that told you that it took them four or five, six months before they could walk decently. Find the ones that are too afraid to admit that they’re still on the walker close to a year out after the knee replacement, you just don’t hear about those stories, you’ve got to realize that everyone heals a little bit differently. And everyone’s got a different strength and health coming into having the knee replacement.

So that’s going to affect recovery rates tremendously. Which leads me to just a little bit of a detour. If you’re looking at having a knee replacement, and you haven’t had one yet, you really should be doing prehab. Or in other words, start getting strong and healthy and your knee as best as you can, leading up to your knee replacement.

So that your recovery after the knee replacement is not so bad, you truly can improve the recovery time and the discomfort the trouble you’re going to have after surgery, that’s just naturally part of having the surgery if you can pre rehabilitate or prepare before having your surgery, by improving your range of motion and your strength. Now coming back to not comparing yourself with others.

A sneaky way that this happens is if you go to your doctor’s office, and you’re going in for your checkup after having your knee replacement done, they have a general guideline of where you should be at based on how far you are from your surgery. And you need to take that with a massive grain of salt. If they tell you that you should be doing this at four weeks and this at eight weeks. And therapy isn’t going 100% The way that it’s supposed to.

What you need to always rely on is are you improving week to week, because if you are if your motions getting better, if your strength is getting better, if your ability to stand and walk around is getting better, then you’re improving, it may just not be as fast as the guidelines recommend that your surgeon has, or as what the physical therapist said, and you still need to listen to them to a big degree.

Because they may see something that you don’t, they may see that you’re missing something in your rehabilitation plan or, or maybe you’re not keeping up with exercises exactly the way that you should maybe not on purpose, you just misunderstood.

You need to go and clarify with everyone that’s helping you out to be 100% sure that you’re doing everything you need to be in the right amounts, the right frequencies, so that you can recover at the fastest pace possible for you, which may not be as fast as other people. And you got to be okay with that.

Mistake number five is having a no pain, no gain mentality. Now this is connected to the last one and that if you’re behind schedule, according to what your surgeons telling you, or what you’re seeing with other people, you might push yourself a little harder than you should, you might stretch yourself harder to exercise harder. Even though your knee is hurting you more and your swelling, you’re not able to stand as much you’re kind of regressing in your overall health, that is not a good thing.

Now think of it in just an instance, let’s say you’re stretching your knee, because that’s going to be a big part of the beginning of your rehabilitation afterwards, you just had a knee replacement, your knee doesn’t bend or straighten very good, it’s kind of stiff, and you have to begin to bend and straighten it and it is a little bit painful to do that there is a tolerable amount of pain that you should be undergoing. It should not be intolerable.

Now everybody’s got a different perception of pain, a different tolerance of pain. A good way to measure this is after you do some stretching, exercise or any exercise for your knee replacement your brand new knee that you have, you should not have lingering effects of pain that lasts more than a few minutes after you stop.

If you do have lingering effects of pain, you’re restarting an inflammation process inside your knee, which could lead to excessive swelling, which might set up a loss of motion and could just delay your progress. In general, a lot of people run into this problem and they end up going slower than they should thinking that if they stretch harder, they strengthen harder, they’ll improve faster. But that’s just not the case, you need to pay close attention to your knee and make sure you’re not overdoing it.

Mistake number six is getting off the walker too soon. And this is in line with the last one. If you’ve been using a walker as he probably should be right after having a knee replacement. That’s really helpful for offloading your leg that you had the knee replaced on so that you can get around and use your leg walk but not put 100% of your body weight through it every time you step on it. You put some of the weight through your hands, so that you’re only putting say 30% 50%

Or maybe you’re working your way up to 70, 80 90% pressure through your leg but you’re still putting some pressure through your arms. You need to find the right amount of offloading that you should be doing using your hands with the walker so that you can tolerate your normal activity during the day. After the first few weeks of having a knee replacement life changes tremendously.

You’re going to slow down you’re going to rest but then you start to gradually get more energy back more flexibility, more tolerance and standing and you might go to the store you might start to pick up around the house, do some chores, cook meals things that you normally would do start to return, which requires you using your leg, but you still have to be offloading it for a while it’s healing.

So make sure you use the cane appropriately, and progress to the next best device for you. Maybe it’s a rolling Walker, the one that has wheels on every single leg so that you can move a little easier, a cane might be appropriate for you as well, maybe you’re actually pretty strong. And just using a cane in your opposite hand, gets you by gets you enough offloading so that you can get through all the activity that you have to do throughout the day.

Now, if you are swollen at the end of the day, if you’re feeling worse, and you wake up feeling worse, especially in that situation, than you’re not offloading your leg enough, and you need to be leaning on that Walker cane, or whatever you’re using more or maybe regressed to what you were using before you’re using a cane for instance, go back to the walker for a bit, just give your need more time to heal.

Continue to exercise in a way that doesn’t aggravate it, and you’ll be off the walker or the cane depending on where you’re at so that you can progress to the next level. Mistake number seven is avoiding strength training. Now this is specifically for people that have had an ear placement. And it’s been months now it’s been more than three months, usually, probably even closer to six months, depending on how you’re progressing. And you’re getting more active, you’re probably not using the walker anymore.

If that maybe just a cane or nothing. And you’re starting to even think about going to go do exercise you’ve probably already been doing exercise, doing physical therapy treatment, you’ve been using a bike, maybe a treadmill and elliptical and maybe doing some light weights. As you’re able to you should begin to progress into weightlifting of course with the permission of your surgeon.

After all the digits surgery, you need to just check with them, I’d ask Hey, can I start lifting some light weights. And as best as possible, get guidance from an expert, a physical therapist is a great person to start with as long as they’re comfortable taking you into weights, because not all of them are. And you might even work with a personal trainer who’s ready to guide you through the gym. If you’ve never had a trainer.

This is a fantastic time to go to the your local gym and find the personal trainer to help guide you through the exercises in the gym. Because you got a brand-new knee, you got to figure out how it’s going to work now that you’re returning to the gym. Now the reason why strength training is so important is because you probably had a muscle imbalance that got you into the knee arthritis situation.

Like I mentioned earlier in this video, having quads that are too strong, usually sets up arthritis. Now that you have a brand-new knee, you need to make sure that that’s not going to happen again that your quads are going to continue to be over dominant. You need to go work out your glutes, you need to make sure your calf muscles are strong, you need to get your overall strength up but also fix the imbalance so that you’re not ruining your new your new knee replacements and so that you give yourself the best chance that this is the last surgery that you’ll ever need in your life.

Now, if you don’t have access to a gym, or you don’t have a personal trainer, I’ve got a program for you called the 28 Day Knee Health And Wellness Boost Program. There’s more information about it in the details below. This program is great for people that have already finished going to physical therapy for their knee replacement and they’re still having some problems or looking to get stronger there.

You don’t have to have any equipment you can do this at home. As long as you have an internet connection and a mobile device or a computer, you could go through this program. The program is designed so that you can modify things and if you can’t bend your knee all the way for instance or straighten it, you can leave that part out or modify it to where you just go to where your knee bends.

This program is guidance from me it’s coaching, it’s teaching you how to fix that root muscle imbalance that sets up knee arthritis and oftentimes continues afterwards. Unless it’s addressed in people that have had knee replacements. Go check that out in the description below. I hope this video was helpful for you. Comment below if you have any great tips or do you have any questions? I’ll see in the next video. Bye