alt Hacker NewsAnecdotal but...
Broke my femur neck on a mountain bike. Surgery, plates and screws. Surgeon said no weight on the broken bone for 8 weeks and no walking on it for 12. And then we'll see he said.
In 4 weeks I was on a trainer (fork fixed to the trainer). Started easy with 30min sessions and then increased time and force applied to the pedals.
After 2 weeks of "riding", started putting weight on the bone with short walks around the house.
8 weeks after the surgery rocked up to a road race, still on crutches because walking was still a bit uncomfy but being on the bike was fine. Raced to a 3rd place (Masters A) with hard breakaways and all.
12 weeks after the surgery go to see the surgeon to check if I can start walking (already walking by this stage as normal). He X-rays me and says your bone is fully healed. Strange but good he said.
I told him the story. Still don't know if he believed me.
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I definitely believe you. I know from a few injuries that with tendons you want to be moving and applying resistance as soon as you are able to prevent the formation of scar tissue and encourage blood flow. It's not a huge leap of logic that bones, too, benefit from movement and resistance when healing.
Honest question, how did you know to disregard the doctor 's instructions and start home exercises on the bone at 4 weeks? How did you limit yourself during your riding and other resistance work? How long was the recovery period after every session?
That is awesome! Thanks for sharing. Reminds me of a similar story from a friend. He, too, broke his leg and healed it quickly enough to surprise his orthopedist by riding a stationary bike. He said that initially the broken one was kinda just all by for the ride, but he thinks the circulation helped.
He too was an elite athlete (baseball).
Another friend was a bodybuilder. He said that bodybuilders do so many experiments that they sometimes know better than their own physicians. They are biohackers.
"Power users" of a product sometimes end up schooling the customer support team.
Another thing – the surgeon told me I'll need a hip replacement in 10 years' time. This was 16 years ago and I don't feel I need a new hip although it's not perfect the way it works sometimes but nothing even remotely serious.
On the other hand, I'm 6 weeks on from 3 fractured ribs, and still no exercise. I'm sure there are a few medical people on here that will tell you that ribs are a special case.
If I were to breathe too deeply during the first few weeks, there was a good chance that I'd re-fracture them; sneezing is known to do this. And for what it's worth, despite what you might see on the TV, broken ribs are no joke.
Recovery time is, apparently anything between 6 and 12 weeks. The first 3 weeks were the absolute worst. I'm finally at the 'it feels like a bruise' stage. As a sporty person I know that if I 'feel fine', I need to add at least 2 weeks on that before I actually start any sports again.
This has been knowledge for the top orthopedic surgeons for decades (at least 20 years). But for your local orthopedic surgeon, it depends on when they graduated whether they know this or not.
I guess worth mentioning another story..
Some years after my fuck up, Chris Froome, multiple Tour winner, crashed badly. Much worse than me, broke a lot of bones.
One of them was the femur neck. This one (and maybe in combination with other broken bones) took him a long time to recover from. By the time he did, he was finished as the Chris Froome, no more wins.
Not saying he did anything wrong, the fuck do I know, but I wondered for a while if he tried, how shall I say it, a more head on approach to the fractured bones recovery and if that made any difference.
The cost of this increased healing rate would be the tail risk of compounding injury though. It's not something a doctor could recommend even if it were true for everyone consistently.
Sounds like you basically tricked your body into healing faster by gradually loading it
Doctors are good at doing the "fixing" work, but the recovery work is something else
Good physios will insist on working as soon as possible, even if it's very light work.
I had shoulder surgery last May. My surgeon told me no combat sports (BJJ, judo) for six months minimum. I was 40 at the time.
I went back on the mats a week later. Started with only doing warmups and movement drills, worked up to gentle flow rolling (with my arm tied into my belt) at a month, then drilling techniques with well-chosen partners and conservatively rolling with those same partners at two months.
This was, of course, on top of rigorously following my PT schedule. And being very conservative with the situations I’d put myself in.
By three months I had regained full flexibility in the arm, and by six months I was back to full-contact training five days a week.
I definitely think there’s a fine line to walk here. I explicitly didn’t do judo for six months because that involves direct and unavoidable impact. And I also made sure to choose training partners who would be very cognizant of my arm and limited range of motion and who wouldn’t just grab a submission and crank it. I also would preemptively tap any time that arm got isolated or in a position where it could be attacked. But there was definitely risk that a training partner would make a mistake or I would land on it badly and tear something.
Still, I would do it all over the same way. I definitely think pushing things helped it heal dramatically more quickly and completely than otherwise. But you do have to be careful with the level of risk you’re exposing yourself to.