Missing gym for a week won’t really matter in the grander scheme of things. You’ll be fjne
Do you have access to cables and bands?
Any other limitations?
errr, heavy barbell lifts 5x5 is not ‘easing’ into it.
I strongly recommend just doing leg press/machines for high reps and bodyweight stuff like bulgarian lunges etc for few weeks
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Really, I’d pay more attention to the abdominal pressure issue rather than overfocusing on the hip hinging. Every exercise can potentially increase intra-abdominal pressure - overhead work, unilateral training, and (obviously) direct core work in particular. Heavy sets of 5 front squats were a bad call.
Paying strict attention to breathe out during every concentric can help. Consciously avoiding the valsalva maneuver (holding breath to brace) will also be extremely important.
Why?
Flat-out, why did you feel it necessary to pressure the doctor to change anything that de-prioritizes optimal long-term recovery?
From what I’ve seen in several threads, your instinct is to go-go-go instead of pacing yourself. When we’re talking about coming back from invasive surgery, that’s a really short-sighted approach.
In your current condition, you should be stopping before technique breaks down.
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That’s the thing right here, if you can’t brace properly you shouldn’t even be squatting. Better to heal now and train later rather than mess yourself up permanently.
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I’m glad someone got around and saying it! Wish the medical issue was brought up at the start of the original post.
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The doctor is Chinese and doesn’t really understand lifting, so I had to ask him what was okay or otherwise he wouldn’t allow me to do anything. He agreed to let me squat and said I could do any movement (except hip hinging) as long as it didn’t hurt. Squatting actually felt great
That’s only in the initial stages, which is why I had to avoid squatting for 3 months.
If you had the surgery in April, it hasn’t even been 3 months. So that’s another issue that’s been glossed over so far. And that still doesn’t rationalize diving right in with heavy front squats.
Is it fair to say he knows as much about lifting as you know about recovering from surgical procedures?
You were able to persuade/negotiate/convince him to start training sooner than he originally recommended, but that doesn’t mean it’s the smartest decision.
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Read this. It’s not abdominal surgery but the point remains.
I think I speak for every one thought, we understand your desire to get going. But it’s not worth it.
I bet 9/10 people in here have a nagging injury that they’ve made worse buy getting back to training to quickly. I have a few. Cuz I’m stupid and impatient.
But seriously ask around for people’s horror stories, see how we feel now. See if those extra weeks off would have been so bad.
In the mean time I hope you have a speedy recovery. And find a good physio therapist. Once that’s worked with sports people before do they are used to working out close after surgical procedures.
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I’ve had a lot of surgeries. I’ve came back too early from some of them because I was eager to train. I got no benefit from it and believe it hurt my long term recovery and function in one case. It’s NOT worth it. Wait the extra couple months, and ease yourself back into it. 2-3 months is literally nothing and even if the odds are low that you could mess something up, how unhappy are you going to be if you do mess something up and this short term limitation becomes a long term problem?
I’d you aren’t a professional athlete, err on the side of recovering too long. At worst you’ll have healed an extra bit of time. It doesn’t matter if your doctor doesn’t know lifting, 2-3 months of recovery for any major surgery is super quick to resume full athletic activity.