Twenty sessions.
Twelve minutes each.
A joint that works again.
Five phases, 120 different movements, no repeats — from ankle pumps and quad sets in the first weeks to loaded carries, stairs and getting up off the floor. For total hip and total knee replacement, and for the year afterwards when most people stop training and lose what the surgery gave them.
Before you start
Your surgeon and physiotherapist come first. Approaches, implants and instructions differ. Where their advice differs from this card, follow theirs — this programme is written to sit alongside their plan, not to replace it.
CONTACT YOUR TEAM THE SAME DAY with increasing pain and spreading redness, heat, wound discharge or fever; calf pain, swelling, warmth or redness in one leg; sudden severe hip pain with the leg looking shorter or turned outward and no weight-bearing; inability to bear weight after a fall; or new numbness, weakness or a dragging foot. CALL EMERGENCY SERVICES for sudden breathlessness or chest pain.
Hip replacement: if you were given movement precautions, keep to them until you are told otherwise — usually no deep bending, no crossing the legs past the midline and no turning the leg inward. Some approaches have no restrictions at all. Follow what you were told.
Knee replacement: getting the knee fully straight is the priority, ahead of bending. Never put a pillow under the knee to rest it — that is how a permanent bend is trained in.
Swelling is the referee. Warmth and swelling for three to six months is expected. A joint that is hotter and more swollen the day after a session did too much — drop a level and repeat it.
Why twenty sessions and not thirty: the muscle around a replaced joint stays measurably weaker for years unless it is trained deliberately. This takes you from the first weeks to a standard worth maintaining twice a week for life.
Kit: a sturdy chair, a kitchen counter or wall, a step, a cushion, a towel and a loaded bag or two water jugs.