Knee surgery is a broad term that covers a variety of procedures designed to identify or repair damage to various parts of your knee joint. Depending on your circumstances, these procedures can have either major or minor effects on your knee health. While you can resume working out after some surgical repairs, in certain cases, the damage to your knee may be too severe to allow you to resume your normal workout.
Knee Surgery Basics
The basic forms of knee surgery include traditional open surgery, which requires fairly large incisions in your knee, and a more modern procedure called arthroscopy, which requires smaller incisions to insert a tiny camera and specialized surgical instruments into your knee joint. In some cases, doctors perform surgery to address known problems in your knee; in other cases, they perform exploratory surgeries to uncover suspected problems. Problems that commonly require surgery include fractures, tears in your cartilage or ligaments and a particular form of damage to your knee cartilage called a microfracture.
Post-Surgical Recovery
If you undergo knee surgery, your doctor or physical therapist will likely ask you to perform strengthening and flexibility exercises for several weeks following your procedure. The purpose of these exercises is to restore normal function to your recuperating knee as soon as possible. Depending on the type of damage your knee sustained, you may return to your normal everyday routine in anywhere from weeks to months, or a year or longer. However, before you can safely return to your workout routine or any other form of heavy labor or exercise, your doctor will usually need to give his specific approval.
Workout Limitations
In some cases, the damage that makes knee surgery necessary can also make it impossible for you to return to your normal workout, even after you recover from the surgery itself. Possible causes of a permanent physical disability following knee surgery include structural instability, arthritis and a loss of the cartilage that normally cushions the surfaces of your knee joint. If you have these post-recovery problems, you may need to modify the workout routine you performed in the past or adopt a different workout routine altogether.
Post-Surgical Complications
Depending on your particular circumstances, you may also develop post-surgical complications that decrease or delay your ability to work out. Potential complications include blood clots, infections and blood buildup inside your knee. These problems can produce symptoms that include ongoing or increasing pain, noticeable swelling in your knee joint and the onset of increasing pain in the calf muscles below your knee. If you develop any of these symptoms, or a fever or chills, contact the doctor who performed your surgery as soon as possible.
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