Hey all, just had my one week follow up appointment after my right inguinal hernia repair (robotic surgery). :(((. It was a sad day, but its over with now and im feeling pretty good and on the way to recovery. The dr has been pretty good about supporting me continuing to lift. He gave me a timeline of around 6 weeks to slow ramp up my activity levels and allowed me to throw in some weight training isloated, lightweights and working up starting in a few days. It’ll be a long road as i don’t want to damage the mesh repair. And it’ll be tough because im already missing the gym and deadlifting ;).
I searched the forums some and found a couple things on hernias, but nothing specific to what i wanted to ask. I am curious about any insight/knowledge you guys could give me in how i slowly ramp back into training (powerlifting-ish style) over the next 6 weeks or so. I think my Dr. isn’t all that educated on lifting, but he was at least supportive and knew i wanted to get back to being active. Is there anything in your knowledge base on ramping up training specific to a hernia, or is it similar to any injury recovery plan? Is there any reason i shouldn’t be back to better than ever given enough time?
I don’t know how the hernia happened. I never noticed anything specific, and hadn’t been lifting above 80% of max the weeks before i noticed it.
Hey, so typically return to training after hernia repair is a relatively straightforward process if you are familiar with RPE based training. Most often I will let athletes resume normal training around week 6 with a cap at 7 for RPE. The format typically is weeks 6-8 RPE capped at 6, weeks 8-12 RPE capped at 7, weeks 12+ caps are removed and resume normal training (with a caveat here that normal training should not involve a ton of max efforts). The goal is to keep training while leaving enough space for healing and tolerance for activity. There isn’t a magic weight cap as much of this is contingent upon how trained you were prior to surgery. Worst case scenario if you feel like you are having trouble programming reach out to us on the rehab team and we can walk you through it.
Thank you for the reply! Much appreciated. This makes sense to me for the most part. I don’t train max effore most of the time anyway, so im assuming that after 12 weeks im pretty much in the clear as long as everything feels good? I usually stay in that 65%-85% range, with some testing every 8 weeks ish. Id consider myself in intermediate lifter, ive been deadlifting and benching for over 8 years, squatting for 5 years. But specifically training more focused on powerlifing for the last 2-3 years.
Also, what should be my plan from week 1 to week 6? No squatting or deadlifting? Just bar? Start with bar on week 4 and work up?
Thanks again. I know Im gonna be itching to get back, so if i have a good plan and guidance it’ll help keep me in line once i get in the gym… 