Part of Total hip replacement rehab
Hip replacement exercises after 6 weeks: the handover
Warning signs, and when to get help
What exercises can you do after 6 weeks following a hip replacement?
The loaded ones. What decides it is your surgical team, not the calendar. Everything before this point was asking the hip to move and asking the leg to carry you; from here the work is asking the muscles to get strong enough that you stop planning your day around the hip.
On this site they are stage 3 of total hip replacement rehab: standing hip flexion with a band, mini squats, sit to stand without pushing on the chair arms, step ups on a low step, stair climbing with a rail, the balance holds at feet together and in semi-tandem, and brisk walking as your distance comes back.
No repetition count on this page is ours. The program holds the framework those exercises sit in: the seat height for standing up, the step height for step ups, and what has to stay within arm's reach for the balance work. Each exercise page gives a typical starting dose, and your physio or physical therapist will adjust it to your hip and to what you are trying to get back to.
One height does come from a published source rather than from us. OrthoInfo asks you not to climb steps higher than the standard height, which it gives as 7 inches, about 18 cm, and to always use a handrail for balance. That is a ceiling for stairs and a sensible one for a step up, and your physio may well set you lower than it to begin with. Treat it as a ceiling rather than a target. The height that suits you is the one that keeps your knee below your hip when your foot is on the step, which ties the step to your own bending limit instead of to a number, so start lower than the ceiling and ask before you go anywhere near it.
One thing on that list is a precautions question rather than a strength question. Standing up without pushing on the chair arms means leaning further forward over the hip, and the lean bends the hip more than the seat height alone decides, so if you were given a limit on how far the hip may bend, ask about it before you drop the armrests. Keep both feet pointing forward through the rise, and turn with small steps once you are upright rather than pivoting on the operated leg while you are still bent over it.
Keep the mini squat shallow for the same reason. It is the depth and not the name of the exercise that decides whether the hip stays inside a bending limit, and the depth its own page describes, 30 to 40 degrees of knee bend with the hips pushed back only a little, is the version that keeps the hip above a right angle. Going deeper than that is what takes it past.
Two kinds of work do not become available just because six weeks have passed, and the reason lies in the operation and not the exercise. Which exercises depend on how your hip was operated on, further down this page, deals with both, and it is worth reading before you add anything.
A hip replaced after a broken hip, a partial replacement or a second operation on the same hip comes with its own plan, and that plan beats every general account including this one.
What actually changes at six weeks
Permission changes. The hip does not, at least not overnight, and that gap is the source of most of the confusion in this window.
Healing runs on its own clock, and nothing in a joint flips over on a Tuesday morning. What tends to happen around six weeks is administrative: restrictions get looked at again, a follow-up lands, and someone finally answers the questions you have been saving up. OrthoInfo puts precautions, in the teams that use them, at usually the first 6 weeks after surgery, and the NHS puts the follow-up appointment at around 6 to 12 weeks, so your restrictions and your appointment may not arrive together.
There is a published reason to read six weeks as a review and not a release. One hospital looked back at 797 hips replaced from the back: eight dislocated within the first year, the average time to dislocation was 7.5 weeks, and five of the eight needed further surgery for instability that would not settle (Jungwirth-Weinberger and colleagues, 2022). None of the 690 hips it did from the front dislocated, but those were selected cases from later years, so the comparison between the routes proves little. The timing is the part that belongs on this page: the average landed after the six week mark rather than before it. A restriction nobody has reviewed is still a restriction, and the week you feel well enough to forget it is the week it is doing the most work.
The real gate is readiness. The Cambridge University Hospitals leaflet asks people to start its more advanced exercises when they feel able to. That is a judgement call and not a date, and it is the right shape for this stage even where your own hospital words it differently.
Progression here also looks duller than people expect. It is often not a new exercise at all but more of the same one: the Cambridge leaflet sets most of its advanced exercises at 5 to 10 repetitions, and for the earlier circulation and strength set it asks patients to start at five repetitions of each and build up until they can manage twenty. Those are that hospital's numbers for its own program, and yours come from your own sheet and from the exercise pages here.
The hip replacement recovery timeline covers the whole arc, including what the sources leave unsaid.
What the six week appointment is for, and what to ask at it
It is a review, which means it is the one appointment where the answers you need are free. Go in with the questions written down, because the appointment is short and the thing people forget to ask is always the thing that stops them for the next month.
The questions worth having on paper are these. Have my precautions changed, and if so, what exactly is different? Is there still any limit on how much weight goes through the leg? May I load the side of the hip, and may the leg travel backward or turn outward? Am I ready to come down a level on walking aids, or off them? May I start step ups, and from what height? What about the bike, the pool, the gym and driving?
NICE gives you a specific thing to ask for if you are working on your own: anyone doing self-directed rehabilitation should know what they are aiming for and have a point of contact for advice and support (NICE NG157). If nobody has given you one, that is a reasonable request at this appointment, not a favor.
Nothing on this page releases you from a restriction. If your team has not reviewed yours, the restrictions stand, and the way to change that is a phone call, not a reading of an article.
Which exercises depend on how your hip was operated on
Two of them depend on it, and this is where the generic exercise lists go wrong. A hip can be reached from the back, the front or the side. What the new joint is least settled against afterward changes with the route, so a list written for one approach can point in the wrong direction for another.
Loaded or resisted work on the side of the hip is the question after an operation done from the side, where the front part of the muscles on the side of the hip is lifted off the bone at the top of the thigh and stitched back through it at the end. Six weeks does not settle that one. The tissue holding your leg out to the side is a repair, not an untouched muscle, and we found no published date for when it may be loaded, which is the honest reason it is a question for your team and not a rule on a page. Side-lying hip abduction asks it most plainly, and its page already tells you to get the go-ahead first. The same question follows a banded side leg lift, an ankle weight or repeated leg lifts out to the side if your physio adds one. Until you have been told which route was used, treat loaded work for the side of the hip as something to get a yes on rather than as the default at six weeks.
Taking the leg behind you, or turning it outward, is the question after an operation done from the front, and it is the first question after one done from the side too, because that route opens the front of the joint capsule as well as lifting the muscles off the side of the bone. A side approach is not a back approach, and the familiar posterior list is not automatically the one that belongs to it. Standing hip extension, carried forward from stage 2, is where that question turns up, and leg behind you with the foot turned out is one position rather than two, so it is worth more care than either part alone. Standing hip flexion with a band belongs in the same conversation for a different reason: the band loads the muscles at the front of the hip, which some teams ask you to leave alone for the first months after a front approach, so that page carries its own check too.
So the move at this stage is not to pick a strengthening list and start. It is to take the two or three things you want to add and get a yes or a no on each from the team who knows which route they used. Hip precautions after a hip replacement covers the lists in detail, why your leaflet and your neighbor's disagree, and how to find out which approach you had if nobody has told you.
Most people cannot say which approach they had. It takes one question to find out, and the answer changes what you should be doing. While you are waiting for the answer, the covered position is to keep to every list at once rather than the famous one, which means the deep bending, crossing and turning-in restrictions, plus the back of the range and turning out, plus no loaded work for the side of the hip. The precautions page sets out all six and why they go together.
Should you stop the early exercises?
No. Dropping them is the most common self-inflicted setback of this window: the early exercises go the moment something harder arrives, and that quietly removes the base the harder work stands on.
OrthoInfo asks for ankle pumps to start immediately after surgery and carry on until you are fully recovered, which is a far longer run than anyone expects of a movement that feels like nothing. In practice the early set turns into the warm-up and the fallback: the thing you do on a sore day, and the thing you go back to after a cold or a holiday.
The ones to hold on to longest are the ones that are still hard. If the first exercises after a hip replacement have become genuinely easy, they have done their job and can thin out. If one of them is still a struggle, that is information, and it belongs at your review rather than in a decision you make alone at the kitchen table.
Deciding what comes out of the program is your team's call, not a question of taste. The same applies to anything you were prescribed, and this is the point in the recovery where feeling better tempts people to thin out the clot prevention or the pain relief as well as the exercises. Never stop or change a prescribed medicine on your own.
Why are you still limping, and what can you do about it?
Most of the time it is because the muscles around the hip are still weak, and because walking badly is a habit that outlives the pain that caused it. A limp at six or eight weeks is common and it is not a verdict, but it is also not something to wait out.
Years of a painful hip teach a very efficient set of workarounds: a short step, a quick transfer of weight, a lean toward the good side. The operation removes the reason for all of it and none of the training. That is why a limp often improves faster with somebody watching you walk for twenty minutes than with another month of the same exercises.
Walking aids are part of the picture and come down in their own order. A stick or cane is often what is left at this stage, and walking without a stick after a hip replacement sets out what to check before you put it down. The Cambridge leaflet reports that most of its patients walk without aids by 12 weeks, which describes its own patients and is not a target to hit.
Two kinds of limp need a call and not patience: one that is getting worse, and one with pain that builds instead of settling. Both are in the warning signs on this page, with how fast each needs attention.
Three months, six months and after: what keeps going
Strength work, in some form, indefinitely. That is not a sentence passed on new hips: muscle responds to being loaded at every age, and it stops being loaded the moment a program ends, which is as true at 75 as at 40.
The sources that follow people this far say the same thing in different words. The Cambridge leaflet asks you to keep its own exercises going for strength and to add lifestyle exercise for general health and fitness, naming yoga, pilates and swimming, and it allows bone and muscle up to six months to finish healing and strengthening. By that six month point, it reports, nearly all of its patients are much better off, although stamina can still be short. The next sentence of that same paragraph belongs with the first: it asks you to discuss specific sports with your surgeon and says high impact activities such as running, jumping or lifting heavy weights should be avoided. Yoga in particular is not one activity, and some of the positions it uses take the hip into deep bending, crossing and turning, which is exactly what the precaution lists are about, so returning to sport after a hip replacement goes through it properly. OrthoInfo's long term suggestion, once recovery is complete, is a walk of 20 to 30 minutes on 3 to 4 days a week.
What works in practice is a change in how you hold it, not a longer course. Two or three things kept at a level that is actually hard, inside an ordinary week, beats a full program done devotedly for two more months and then dropped. How to progress an exercise is the mechanics of keeping it hard without guessing.
Where to go next depends on what you are short of. Strength for older adults is the wider program to move into, and balance and falls prevention is the one to pick up if you are unsteady or have fallen before, since it is built to follow on from stage 3.
When to ask for more physiotherapy rather than carrying on alone
NICE gives three situations that should prompt supervised rehabilitation rather than self-directed work, and they read as a checklist: difficulty with activities of daily living, ongoing problems with how the joint works along with specific rehabilitation needs, and not meeting your goals on your own (NICE NG157). If one of those describes you, ask, in a group or one to one.
Being discharged earlier, or a block of sessions running out, is not a ruling that you no longer need physiotherapy. In most systems a review is arranged by asking for one. In the UK that may not need a doctor at all, and how to refer yourself to NHS physiotherapy covers how.
It is worth being straight about what the evidence says more physiotherapy buys, because the answer is less than most people assume. A systematic review of exercise after hip replacement, 32 trials and 1,753 patients with 26 trials and 1,004 patients in the meta-analysis, found that exercise training after the operation was not associated with better self-reported physical function than usual care or no or minimal intervention at 4, 12 or 26 weeks, which the authors graded as moderate certainty evidence (Saueressig and colleagues, 2021).
Read that as it is meant. It is not a reason to skip rehabilitation, and it is not a finding that exercise does nothing; it is a finding that adding a structured program on top of what those hospitals already did was not the deciding ingredient, and what they already did was not nothing. What supervision reliably gives one person is a diagnosis of why they are stuck, and that is what a plateau, a limp, or a program that has not got any harder in a month actually needs.
What should you be careful with for good?
Impact, mainly, and your surgeon settles that question, not this page. OrthoInfo's long-term position is that most surgeons advise against high-impact activity, and it names running, jogging and jumping as the examples. The activities it describes people getting back to are the low-impact ones, among them walking without a limit on distance, swimming, golf, hiking, biking and dancing.
If you have had a hip or knee replacement, get the go-ahead from your surgeon before you try jumping or hopping. Many surgeons advise against jumping and hopping after a joint replacement for good, not just for the first months, because each landing sends high impact through the new joint.
Two other kinds of exercise sit under a restriction for as long as the hip is still recovering, and the NHS names them in the same breath as jumping: sudden turns, and anything carrying a high risk of falling. That rules out more than it sounds like. A game with a change of direction in it, a class on a mat you have to get up from, a bike outdoors and balance work with nothing in reach are all on the wrong side of that line until somebody who has watched you move says otherwise. It is also why the balance holds at this stage are done next to a counter.
Lifting has its own rule and no date attached: the NHS asks you not to lift or move heavy objects until you are told it is safe. So you ask, instead of judging it by how the hip feels on the day, and the answer may be specific to your job or your garden.
Falls stay on the list longer than people think. OrthoInfo warns that a fall in the first few weeks after surgery can damage the new hip and may result in a need for more surgery, and calls stairs a particular hazard until the hip is strong and mobile. It asks you to use a cane, crutches, a walker or handrails, or to have someone help you, until your balance, flexibility and strength have improved. That is the argument for the balance holds and the rail, not a reason to avoid the stairs.
Getting back to a particular sport is a bigger question than impact alone, and it depends on the sport, the operation and the surgeon. Returning to sport after a hip replacement takes it apart.
When to stop and get advice
Some problems in this window need to be seen rather than trained through, and the slow ones are the easiest to miss once you are managing alone.
Stop the exercises and get medical advice the same day if your hip clunks and feels as though it slipped and went back, if you felt a pop or a snap over the side or the back of the hip and the leg will not lift out to the side or hold you up when you stand on it, if your calf or thigh becomes newly swollen, warm or tender, if your wound is not settling, if you have a temperature or feel hot, cold or shivery, or if the pain, redness or swelling in the hip or leg is building instead of easing. One of the reasons that last trigger stands on its own is an infection around the new joint. A normal temperature does not rule it out, because OrthoInfo says fever is no longer considered a sign of an infection after a joint replacement. Sudden severe hip or groin pain with a leg that will not take weight, a leg that suddenly looks shorter or turned, and sudden breathlessness or chest pain are emergencies.
Ask your physio or surgical team for a review within a week or two if your walking has stopped improving, you still limp badly, or you cannot manage the exercises you were given, while the pain and swelling are not getting worse. The warning signs below set out each of these with how quickly it needs attention.
Related exercise programs
Warning signs
Get emergency help now
- Emergency: sudden severe pain in your hip or groin, sometimes with a clunk or pop, and you cannot move the leg or put weight on it, or the leg suddenly looks shorter or turned in or out. Do not try to walk on it or push it back into place. Keep still and call emergency services or go to an emergency department, and do not drive yourself. Your new hip may have come out of its socket (dislocated), and a medical team needs to put it back.
- Emergency: your operated leg looks shorter than it did, or its foot turns in or out more than before, or the hip moves in an unusual way, even if the pain is not severe. Keep your weight off it and go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself. If you are in severe pain or cannot move the leg, call emergency services.
- Emergency: you have just fallen and cannot get up, or you think you may have hurt your head, neck, back or hip. Stay where you are, keep warm and call emergency services, or get someone to call for you. If you got up and walked without trouble and only notice pain later, use the same-day lines in this list instead.
- Emergency: you have had a fall or an injury and now have severe hip pain, or you cannot walk or put weight on the leg. Call emergency services or go to an emergency department. This can be a sign of a broken hip (hip fracture).
- Emergency: since your operation, you suddenly become short of breath, you get chest pain or pain in your upper back that may be worse when you breathe in, you cough up blood, your heart is beating very fast, or you faint. Call emergency services straight away, even if your leg looks normal. These can be signs of a blood clot in the lungs (pulmonary embolism).
Get help today
- Same day: after a fall or a knock, even a small one, your hip, groin or thigh is newly painful, bruised or swollen, even if you can still walk and your leg looks normal. Stop the exercises, go back to your crutches or frame and keep your full weight off that leg, and contact your surgical team or get medical advice the same day. A break in the bone around a new hip is not always obvious at first, and walking normally on one can move the broken ends apart.
- Same day: a calf or thigh that is newly swollen or getting more swollen, warm, tender, red or darker than usual, has swollen veins that are sore to touch, or has a throbbing or cramping pain that does not fit your injury or condition, or that feels different from normal muscle soreness after exercise. This can be a sign of a blood clot (deep vein thrombosis), especially after surgery, an injury, time in a cast or boot, a long trip or a spell of being much less mobile than usual. Get medical advice the same day. If you are also short of breath or have chest pain, call emergency services.
- Same day: you are taking tablets or having injections to lower your risk of a blood clot and you notice blood in your urine, black or bloody stools, bleeding gums, a nosebleed that goes on and on, bruising far beyond what the knock would explain, or you are being sick or coughing up blood. Get medical advice the same day, and do not stop the medicine on your own. Bleeding more easily is the known trade-off of these medicines (NHS), and the dose or the type may need looking at. Go to an emergency department if the bleeding will not stop, you feel faint, or you bang your head while you are taking it, even if you feel fine, because the NHS advises getting urgent advice after a head injury on medicine that thins your blood and only a hospital can scan for a bleed inside the head.
- Same day: your wound becomes more red, hot, swollen or painful, starts to leak or ooze, is still leaking in the second week or has never stopped, has pus coming out of it or its edges start to come apart, or you have a high temperature or feel hot, cold or shivery. Contact your surgical team or get medical advice the same day. Redness can be harder to see on brown or black skin. If you feel very unwell, go to an emergency department. If you have a very high or very low temperature, shivering you cannot control, you are breathing very fast or finding it hard to breathe, you are confused or your speech is slurred, your skin, lips or tongue look blue, gray, pale or blotchy (on brown or black skin this can be easier to see on the palms of the hands or soles of the feet), or you have a rash that does not fade when you press it, call emergency services, as this can be sepsis.
- Same day: in the days or weeks after your operation you are getting more and more tired, breathless doing everyday things such as walking to the toilet or getting dressed, dizzy or lightheaded, your heart is racing, or your skin looks paler than usual. Contact your surgical team or get medical advice the same day. Tiredness and breathlessness that build up like this are not part of the usual recovery. Blood loss during and after a hip replacement can leave you short of red blood cells (anemia), which is treatable, and a slow bleed or an infection can show up the same way. If breathlessness comes on suddenly, or you get chest pain, call emergency services, as the emergency line above explains.
- Same day: dizziness, lightheadedness, blurred vision or feeling faint when you stand up that is new for you, does not pass within a minute or two, keeps happening, or has made you fall. Sit or lie down, and get medical advice the same day. This can be a drop in blood pressure on standing (postural hypotension), a type of low blood pressure, which the NHS lists among the causes of falls, and your doctor can check it. Tell them about your medicines, because some can cause it. If it does not settle within a few minutes of sitting or lying still, call emergency services. If you faint, call emergency services, even if you come round quickly, because the NHS says to call them when someone faints while exercising or is badly hurt, and a faint onto a new hip can dislocate it or break the bone around it.
- Same day: dizziness or feeling faint during or after exercise, other than the brief lightheadedness as you stand up covered in the line above, without any of the emergency signs above. Stop the exercises and get medical advice the same day. If you faint, it does not settle within a few minutes of sitting still, or you cannot stand or walk steadily, call emergency services.
- Same day: since your operation, the pain, redness, warmth, tenderness or swelling in your hip or leg is not getting better or is getting worse, for example the hip pain keeps building both when you move and when you rest, or you have a new throbbing or cramping pain in your hip or leg. Contact your surgical team or get medical advice the same day, as this can be a sign of infection around the new joint or a blood clot. If you feel very unwell, go to an emergency department.
- Same day: at any time after your operation, even years later, new pain in your new hip along with a high temperature or feeling hot, cold or shivery, or a hip that becomes hot, red or swollen, which counts on its own, with or without pain and with or without a temperature. Contact your surgical team or get medical advice the same day. A new joint can become infected long after the operation, and that needs treating quickly. A normal temperature is not an all clear: OrthoInfo says fever is no longer considered a sign of an infection after a joint replacement, that the signs can be as little as mild redness and swelling and sometimes there are none at all, and that increased pain or stiffness in a joint that had been working well is one of them. So do not wait for a temperature before you report new or increasing pain in your new hip to your surgical team.
- Same day: your hip clunks and feels as if it partly slipped out of place and went back, even if it settles straight away and your leg looks normal. Stop the exercises, avoid the movement that brought it on, go back to your crutches or frame, and keep away from deep bending, crossing your legs and twisting on that leg until you have been seen. Contact your surgical team or get medical advice the same day. If the leg then looks shorter or turned, or you cannot move it or put weight on it, call emergency services.
- Same day: you felt a pop, a snap or a sudden tearing pain over the side or the back of your hip, or your hip will not lift the leg out to the side any more, or it will not hold you up when you stand on that leg, so your hip drops or you lurch to one side. Stop the exercises, go back to your crutches or frame, and contact your surgical team or get medical advice the same day. Muscle and tendon are cut and stitched back during a hip replacement, and a repair that has given way needs assessing rather than exercising. If you cannot put weight on the leg at all, or the leg looks shorter or turned, call emergency services.
- Same day: a leg or foot that is getting weaker, for example your foot drags, catches on the ground or slaps down when you walk (foot drop). Get medical advice the same day. If the weakness is getting worse by the hour, go to an emergency department.
- Same day: new numbness, tingling or burning in your operated leg or foot, beyond the numb patch of skin around your scar. Contact your surgical team or get medical advice the same day. If it started after a fall or an injury, or your foot or toes turn cold, pale, blue or gray, call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself.
Book an appointment
- Within a few days: you have had a fall, even if you were not hurt, or you keep tripping, stumbling or feeling that your legs might give way. Book an appointment with your doctor within a few days and ask about a falls assessment. Tell them about every fall, even the ones where you were not hurt.
- Routine: since the operation your leg has felt a little longer or shorter than the other one, with no sudden change and no new pain. This is not unusual after a hip replacement. Mention it to your physio or at your follow-up appointment, as some people are more comfortable with a shoe raise.
- Routine: pain in your new hip that had settled and has come back, or pain that is getting worse month by month, for example in the groin or thigh when you first stand up and start to walk. This is not an emergency, but ask your surgical team for a review, as the parts of a new joint can loosen or wear over the years. Get medical advice the same day instead, not a routine appointment, if the hip also becomes hot, red or swollen, or you have a high temperature or feel hot, cold or shivery, or the pain is building week by week rather than month by month. A new joint can become infected years after the operation, and the two can feel similar at first.
- Routine: your walking or movement has stopped improving over a week or two, you still limp badly, or you cannot manage the exercises your team gave you, but your pain, redness and swelling are not getting worse. This is not an emergency, but ask your physio or surgical team for a review in the next week or two.
Common questions
What exercises can you do after 6 weeks following a hip replacement?
The loaded ones, once your team has cleared them. On this site that is stage 3 of the total hip replacement rehab program: band work for lifting the leg in front, mini squats, standing up from a chair without pushing on the arms, step ups on a low step, stairs with a rail, the balance holds at feet together and semi-tandem, and longer or brisker walks. The program sets the seat height, the step height and what to keep within reach, each exercise page gives its own starting dose, and your physio or physical therapist will adjust them. OrthoInfo's ceiling for a step is the standard stair height, which it puts at 7 inches, about 18 cm, and it asks you to always use a handrail for balance. Standing up without the armrests is a question for anyone still on a bending limit, because the lean forward bends the hip more than the seat height alone decides. Two other things you may be offered at this point are decided by how your hip was operated on and not by how it feels, so they go to your surgical team first.
What changes at six weeks?
Permission, mostly, and not the hip itself. Nothing in a healing hip switches over on a particular morning, but six weeks is where a lot of teams review the restrictions they set, and OrthoInfo puts precautions, where they are used, at usually the first 6 weeks after surgery. The work also changes job around now, from getting the hip moving and getting you walking to rebuilding strength that a painful hip had been shedding for years before the operation. The Cambridge University Hospitals leaflet is a good example of a readiness gate instead of a date: it asks you to start its more advanced exercises when you feel able to.
Can I stop the early exercises now?
Not on your own say-so, and usually not yet. OrthoInfo asks for ankle pumps to begin immediately after surgery and to carry on until you are fully recovered, which is a longer run than most people expect of an exercise that feels like nothing. The early exercises become the warm-up and the floor you work from, and the ones to keep longest are the ones that are still hard. Your team decides what comes out of the program, so take the list to your follow-up instead of editing it at home.
What exercises should I be doing at 3 months, and at 6 months?
The same kinds of work, harder, and increasingly inside ordinary life instead of as a set of exercises. The Cambridge leaflet asks you to keep its exercises going for strength, to add lifestyle exercise for general health and fitness, naming yoga, pilates and swimming, and in the same breath to discuss specific sports with your surgeon and avoid high impact activities such as running, jumping or lifting heavy weights. Yoga is worth a question of its own, because some of its positions take the hip into deep bending, crossing and turning. It allows bone and muscle up to six months to finish healing and strengthening. OrthoInfo suggests keeping the walking up once you are fully recovered: 20 to 30 minutes at a time, 3 to 4 times a week. Those are two bodies' recommendations and not our figures, and what suits your hip at that point is a reasonable thing to take back to a physio for an hour.
Why am I still limping?
Most often because the muscles around the hip are still weak, and because walking badly for years is a habit the body keeps after the reason for it has gone. Stiffness, swelling and the feeling that one leg is a different length all contribute too. A limp is worth taking to a physio or physical therapist instead of waiting out, because the correction is usually specific and someone has to watch you walk to find it. A limp that is getting worse, or that comes with pain that is building rather than settling, is a different matter and is in the warning signs on this page.
Do I need more physiotherapy, or can I carry on alone?
Many people finish this at home, and NICE is clear that anyone doing their rehabilitation themselves should know what they are aiming for and have somebody to contact for advice (NICE NG157). The same guideline asks that supervised rehabilitation be offered, whether as a group or individually, to people having trouble with everyday activities, to those left with problems in how the hip works along with specific needs to address, and to anyone not reaching their goals working alone. Read that as three criteria to check yourself against, not a verdict on your effort. Being discharged is not a ruling that you can never be seen again, and asking is how a review gets arranged in most systems.
References
- National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. Joint replacement (primary): hip, knee and shoulder. NICE guideline NG157. Published 4 June 2020. https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng157
- NHS. Recovering from a hip replacement. Page last reviewed 6 March 2024. https://www.nhs.uk/tests-and-treatments/hip-replacement/recovering-from-a-hip-replacement/
- American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. Total hip replacement. OrthoInfo. https://www.orthoinfo.org/en/treatment/total-hip-replacement/
- American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. Total hip replacement exercise guide. OrthoInfo. https://www.orthoinfo.org/en/recovery/total-hip-replacement-exercise-guide/
- American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. Infection after joint replacement. OrthoInfo. https://www.orthoinfo.org/en/diseases--conditions/joint-replacement-infection/
- Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Hip replacement, total: advice and exercises following. Patient information. https://www.cuh.nhs.uk/patient-information/hip-replacement-total-advice-and-exercises-following/
- Jungwirth-Weinberger A, Schmidt-Braekling T, Rueckl K, Springer B, Boettner F. Anterior hip replacement: lower dislocation rates despite less restrictions? Archives of Orthopaedic and Trauma Surgery. 2022;142(10):2413-2417. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00402-021-03849-5
- Saueressig T, Owen PJ, Zebisch J, Herbst M, Belavy DL. Evaluation of exercise interventions and outcomes after hip arthroplasty: a systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA Network Open. 2021;4(2):e210254. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.0254
- NHS. Sepsis. Page last reviewed 14 May 2026. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/sepsis/
- NHS. Anticoagulant medicines. Page last reviewed 9 September 2024. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/anticoagulant-medicines/
- NHS. Head injury and concussion. Page last reviewed 29 May 2025. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/head-injury-and-concussion/
- NHS. Falls. Page last reviewed 6 March 2025. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/falls/
- NHS. Low blood pressure (hypotension). Page last reviewed 11 July 2023. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/low-blood-pressure-hypotension/
- NHS. Fainting. https://www.nhs.uk/symptoms/fainting/
- NHS. Iron deficiency anaemia. Page last reviewed 26 January 2024. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/iron-deficiency-anaemia/
- Royal Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. Orthopaedic surgery and anaemia. https://roh.nhs.uk/news-events/orthopaedic-surgery-and-anaemia
Written and checked by the PocketPhysio editorial team. Last updated 2026-10-17.
This page is general education, not a diagnosis or a personal treatment plan. See a physiotherapist or doctor for advice about your own situation.