Top 5 Fridays! 5 Considerations for Post-Op Patients

I don’t think these will come as any surprise to people, but they are often overlooked by clinicians (especially those who work in really busy clinics) and they can play an important role in a session.

Other Factors I Consider

I don’t think these will come as any surprise to people, but they are often overlooked by clinicians (especially those who work in really busy clinics) and they can play an important role in a session.  I’m sure there are other factors that I think about but these are the ones that came to mind:

• Mood - if someone is just having a bad day, you probably don’t want to add more challenging exercises or increase the intensity of exercises
• General health - are they a little under the weather, did they have a bad night’s sleep, etc. - these all get factored into my thoughts
• Stress - is the person always stressed out, then you’ll probably have to progress things slower because their body just won’t be able to adapt as well
• Vacation/special event coming up - you don’t want to add in some new exercises if their daughter is getting married the next day, or they’re leaving for a much-needed vacation soon, etc.  You don’t want to be that guy that made them sore for an event they were looking forward to
• Prior training experience - this can be a good thing (expect and understand DOMS, technique, etc) or a bad thing (have no clue what to expect afterward, set/rep schemes, etc)

Summary

So those are some of the factors/criteria I consider and the thought process that goes through my head when deciding how to progress/regress patients’ programs.  It’s not an exact science or set in stone, but it at least gives me some set of guidelines instead of doing things randomly at will.

Let me know what I missed or what other guidelines you use! Look for other post op considerations in part 2 of this post!

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