When were you let into a swimming pool after your hip, and what could you actually do in there?

#1pbike60(Joined Feb 2025 · 36 posts)October 14, 2025, 6:22 pm

Five weeks post op and the pool is the thing I want back more than the bike, which surprises me.

I've had two different answers already. The physio said "once the wound is completely healed", which is a sentence doing a lot of work, and a chap at the leisure centre reception told me confidently that it's twelve weeks for everyone, which I suspect he made up on the spot.

So what did people actually get told, and by whom? And once you were in, what were you allowed to do? I don't want to turn up, get in, and discover breaststroke is off the menu in front of an audience.

#2gardeninggwen(Joined Jan 2025 · 29 posts)October 14, 2025, 8:05 pm

Six weeks, after they'd looked at the scar at the check and said it was fully closed and dry. Nobody mentioned twelve weeks to me at any point.

First three sessions I didn't swim at all, I walked. Widths of the shallow end, forwards, then sideways, then backwards, which the physio had actually written down for me. It felt ridiculous and it was the best my hip had felt since the operation, because the water takes so much weight off that you can walk properly instead of limping.

#3moira1963(Joined Oct 2025 · 16 posts)October 15, 2025, 7:48 am

The breaststroke question is the real one and you were right to ask. I was told front crawl legs were fine and breaststroke legs were the one to leave alone at first, because that wide frog kick takes the leg out and rotates it, which is exactly the direction they'd spent six weeks telling me not to go.

Came back to it eventually and never had a problem. But I'd have blundered straight into it if a physio hadn't said something.

#4trev_lefthip(Joined Jul 2025 · 13 posts)October 15, 2025, 1:31 pm

Getting in and out was harder than the swimming. Steps with a rail, going down backwards, and I asked the lifeguard first so somebody was watching. No dignity, no problem.

#5Ms Priya RamanSurgical moderator(Joined Oct 2024 · 91 posts)October 16, 2025, 9:12 am

pbike60, the honest answer is that your physiotherapist gave you the correct criterion and the man at reception gave you a number he has no way of knowing.

The gate for swimming is wound healing, not a date on a calendar. A surgical wound that is fully closed, dry, and free of any scab, discharge, or redness can be immersed; one that is not should stay out of pool and sea water, because the concern is introducing infection to a wound with an implant underneath it. Deep infection after a hip replacement is uncommon, in the region of 1 in 100, but it is serious enough that surgeons are conservative about anything that raises the chance. In practice many patients get the go-ahead when the wound is inspected at their review, which is why six weeks is the commonly heard answer, but it is the state of the wound that decides it and some are ready sooner.

On what to do once you are in, the sequencing gardeninggwen describes is the standard progression, and it is deliberate. Water walking comes before swimming because buoyancy unloads the joint and lets people practise a normal gait pattern before they can manage it on land. As for strokes, moira1963 has it right: the breaststroke leg kick combines abduction with rotation, which is why it is often the last thing reintroduced where early restrictions have been given, whereas a straight-legged flutter kick is unproblematic for most. Where swimming sits among the activities people return to long term is in exercise and sport after a hip replacement.

The individual permission, though, is not mine and not this forum's. Ask at your review, and ask the specific question, which is whether your wound is healed enough for immersion, not whether swimming is allowed in general.

#6pbike60(Joined Feb 2025 · 36 posts)November 20, 2025, 4:44 pm

Cleared at my check, wound pronounced boring, in the water the following Tuesday.

Did the walking widths as instructed and felt genuinely emotional about it, which I was not expecting from a shallow end. Crawl legs only for now. Reception man has not been corrected because I am a coward, but he has been quietly ignored.