A year after my hip, can I use the leg press and cross trainer at the gym or are some machines off limits with a new hip?

#1trev_lefthip(Joined Jul 2025 · 19 posts)October 15, 2026, 7:26 pm

Twelve months this week since the left hip. Sit-to-stands off the bottom stair are still going strong, my grandson still keeps count.

My daughter has bought me a gym membership for my birthday, which is either very kind or a hint. I went for the induction and the young lad showing me round got visibly nervous when I said "hip replacement" and steered me to the exercise bike and nothing else. Which is fine, but there's a whole room of machines in there. Leg press, the cross trainer, rowing machine, the one where you push your legs outwards against pads.

Are any of these off limits forever with a new hip? Or was he just covering himself?

#2pbike60(Joined Feb 2025 · 36 posts)October 15, 2026, 9:10 pm

Cross trainer has been my winter friend since about six months, it's low impact and my physio liked it. Leg press I do, but I keep the seat back so my knees don't come right up to my chest. That deep bottom position felt wrong to me even after the precautions were lifted.

#3moira1963(Joined Oct 2025 · 19 posts)October 16, 2026, 1:42 pm

The rowing machine was the one my physio told me to leave for a while, because of how far forward you fold at the catch. She said build up to it, short strokes first. The outer thigh pad machine she loved, said it was basically my side lying exercise sitting down.

#4Haidee MarshAdmin(Joined Aug 2024 · 268 posts)October 18, 2026, 10:05 am

Trev, happy birthday, and I'd say the lad was covering himself, which is understandable but leaves you with a very small gym.

At a year out from a straightforward hip replacement, most gym equipment is back on the table for most people, and staying strong is one of the best things you can do for the new joint. The broad pattern I was given, and that Ms Raman checked when I wrote it up, is that low impact work is the sweet spot: bike, cross trainer, rowing, swimming, and strength machines are all common and sensible. What surgeons tend to urge caution with over the long term is repeated high impact and pounding, running on hard surfaces, jumping, and sudden twisting, because that adds to wear on the bearing over the decades you need it to last.

Within that, pbike and Moira have already put their finger on the two details that matter. On the leg press, deep bending of the hip under load is the position worth being careful with, so a seat setting that stops the knees coming right to the chest is sensible. On the rower, build up from short strokes. The outward push machine works the hip abductors, the muscles that keep the pelvis level, and is often a favourite of physios for that reason.

Start light, add weight slowly, and if something produces sharp pain or a feeling of instability rather than ordinary effort, stop and ask. The best person to set your programme is a physiotherapist who knows your hip, and plenty of them will happily look over a gym plan. What I went back to and what I let go is in exercise and sport after a hip replacement, and the strengthening moves that carry over into gym work are in the hip replacement exercise guide.

#5Helen W.(Joined Apr 2026 · 14 posts)October 19, 2026, 8:50 am

I asked a physio at my gym to write me a programme and she did it for the price of one session. Worth every penny because I'd have done the leg press exactly wrong otherwise. Also she was not nervous of the word hip at all.

#6trev_lefthip(Joined Jul 2025 · 19 posts)October 29, 2026, 8:15 pm

Update. Two weeks in. Cross trainer three times a week, leg press with the seat right back and light weight, the outer thigh machine because Moira's physio is clearly a genius. Rower I'm doing short strokes as advised.

Went back to the induction lad with a printout from my own physio. He's much more relaxed now. My grandson wants to come and count reps, which the gym does not allow, so I'm back to the stairs at home for him.