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Follow your surgical team's exercise plan and precautions. Before returning to a saved stretching routine, compare its full instructions with your discharge advice and ask your surgeon or physiotherapist about anything unclear. Precautions and their duration can vary with the surgical technique. A familiar movement, beginner label or elapsed number of weeks does not establish clearance.
When to get medical help
Get urgent medical advice
After recent surgery, worsening hip, leg or wound symptoms, or fever need urgent medical advice. See the full linked warning list.
Get emergency help
Hip or leg pain and swelling with breathing difficulty or chest pain needs immediate emergency care. Use local emergency services.
Use your local emergency service when emergency care is needed. These examples are not a complete symptom checklist.
1. Put the discharge plan beside the routine
Find your written exercise programme, precautions and contact details. Keep the date and any later changes together. NHS recovery guidance prioritises the exercises recommended by your physiotherapist. Do not replace that programme with a similarly named app sequence.
Sources: NHS: recovering from hip replacement
2. Inspect the way in and out
For each movement, write down the starting position, what the hip does, support needed and how you enter and leave it. Include reaching for the phone and moving between a chair, bed and floor. If an illustration leaves a transition unclear, record a question rather than trying it to find out.
3. Use three fictional entries as questions
Example review sheet: a seated reach towards the feet; a position with one leg crossed; and a floor exercise reached from standing. Next to each, copy the relevant instruction from your own discharge plan and write the unresolved question. This is a discussion example, not three movements to perform or an approved substitute routine.
4. Ask which precautions apply to you
AAOS explains that precautions and how long they apply vary with the surgical technique. Ask about the exact position, support and transition you noted, and when the advice should be reviewed. If a general webpage differs from your discharge sheet, ask the team to resolve it. Do not choose the least restrictive version yourself.
Sources: AAOS OrthoInfo: activities and individual hip precautions
5. Keep app features in their proper role
Unknot on iPhone offers movement previews, numbered instructions and pause controls, which can help you inspect a sequence. Those features do not provide surgical clearance or a postoperative rehabilitation programme. A short timer does not answer whether a position is permitted.
Sources: Unknot: official iPhone listing
6. Record the answer without changing it
After the conversation, note the exact movement discussed, the agreed setup, any individual limits and the next review point. Keep the clinician's wording available. If you cannot reproduce the instruction accurately, ask for clarification before treating your note as a plan.
Bring the sequence, not just its name
Show the actual instructions and your unanswered questions to the team. You do not need to demonstrate maximum range or finish the routine to prepare that conversation.
Questions before you start
Can I restart automatically after six weeks?
Do not use a calendar milestone as personal clearance. Ask your surgical team when the actual movements and transitions in your routine fit your recovery advice.
Sources: AAOS OrthoInfo: activities and individual hip precautions
Does pausing the app make any position suitable?
No. Pause gives you time to read or stop; it cannot change a hip precaution. Keep using the rehabilitation instructions you were given and resolve uncertainty with the team.
An app for your everyday movement habit.
Unknot is available on the App Store for iPhone.
