My year had a slower start than hoped for. I ended up needing four weeks rest before I could face the idea of returning to my full routine, and when easing back into morning walks during the fourth week my orthosis broke. The 2.3km I walked in 29 minutes the previous week may have contributed to this. I could have managed a lot of my routine without it, but, lacking a morning walk pick-me-up, the remaining grind was hard to face. By the fourth week of my break I had finally become energetic enough to be productive, so, given the circumstances, I decided to spend two more weeks working intensely on this website. This enabled me to finish some things I started writing while recovering from my hip replacement, which I would not have found time for this year had I resumed training as planned.

Having a new orthosis made was a quicker process than I feared, so fortunately I had it back by the time my break extension was over. My orthotist had tried to make the first one as light as possible, and I do not think she was expecting me to actually walk so much. The new one is the same design but thicker, so with any luck there will be no further issues, and I should be getting a spare one made just in case. In the end it was nice to have an extended period of productivity for the first time in ages, although it was hard to resume training after such a long break.

I did some lower body flexibility work sporadically during the first few weeks of rest, but I let it slip completely during the last two, and when I resumed training I was noticeably less flexible around my hips. No doubt I will always have to actively work towards keeping them limber. On the other hand, my upper body flexibility improved significantly, thanks to the dumbbell-assisted stretching (DAS) I did nearly every day from my recliner chair.

I have done DAS to some degree for a while now, and become increasingly impressed by how powerful a technique it is for improving upper body flexibility. The grip training I did in the last half of 2016 made it possible to hold dumbbells in weird positions for extended periods, and most days I ended up spending multiple hours stretching. At first I was too brain-dead to do much other than watch television, so naturally I had a dumbbell in hand the entire time. Later, while writing, it was easy to integrate during periods of proofreading, so I still did enough to make noticeable progress. Going into the future, I suspect it might be possible to maintain all of the flexibility and strength I have gained in my upper body, simply by dangling a dumbbell above my head absent-mindedly while focusing on more stimulating activities.

I had a physio session during the fourth week of my break, although without my orthosis there was no point doing a walk test. I went through all of my hip exercises, but being so out of routine, more than anything I just felt lazy and unfit. My next appointment was made for three months later, so I decided to attempt two five-week cycles with an easier week in between, like I did in the last quarter of 2016.

After six weeks of minimal activity, jumping back to doing six hours of exercise in a day might not have been entirely sensible. Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) is magnified when crippled, and instead of the renewed vigour I was hoping to feel, I had to put up with my muscles being very sore for the better part of a week. It was not quite as bad as what resulted from my first workout post hip replacement, but it was still a significant dampener. With that to deal with, and the recent reminder of what it is like to have space mentally for things besides rehab, I could only look to the year ahead with feelings of strong discontent.

Given how useful I had found DAS to be during my break, I decided to see if I could keep doing it six days a week on top of the rest of my routine. Forearm muscles are fairly resistant to fatigue, and I thought maybe mine were now conditioned enough to withstand the extra load without injury. Fortunately, that has been the case, and I have spent at least an hour on DAS most days since then. I also increased the amount of dumbbell exercises done during my upper body sessions, and spent more time stretching during my recovery workouts. I tried to increase the distance of my morning walks, but it seemed like too much on top of everything else, so I reverted to always doing the same 500m course.

I was unable to stick to my routine perfectly during the first five weeks. Between the increase in activity and effects of a long break, as the end of the second week drew near, I thought there was no way I could keep things up for another three, so I gave myself a long weekend, then resumed things as normal on Monday. I decided DAS was worth prioritising, and that if I kept it up, then it was okay to skip some upper body exercises. I also had to leave the house for appointments more than usual, so I ended up skipping one other day entirely, and did a reduced upper body workout two or three times.

By the end of my third week back training, I was performing at a slightly better level than at the end of 2016. Now well and truly back into the swing of things, the benefits of an extended break became apparent. In contrast to the previous two five-week cycles, when I became increasingly fatigued as the weeks rolled by, each day brought more pep to my step as an easier week edged closer. At the end of the fifth week, I finished my 500m walk in under six minutes for the first time.

Although I had been feeling somewhat better as my break drew nearer, I was questioning whether it would be sensible — or even possible — to keep doing nothing but rehab for the rest of the year as planned. I worried attempting to might lead to some sort of breakdown. As a precaution, I spent my week off trying to get my head around some computer programming I had undertaken in the last half of 2015, hoping that if I could work on it for an hour or so in the morning, then, during the long workouts, my mind might be able to occupy itself with something besides dissatisfied rumination. Because of this, I was less active during my rest week than usual. A moderate amount of DAS was still managed, but I hardly did any lower body exercise at all, which was all it took to leave me with bad DOMS again when I resumed training the next week. Ugh. That was not meant to happen! The DOMS only lasted a few days this time, but it still sapped any enthusiasm my rest might have delivered.

I had not achieved as much as I hoped to during my break, but it at least gave me something interesting to think about. Unfortunately, however, I struggled to get to sleep as a result. (The lateness of my DAS sessions probably did not help, nor the gradual reduction to my evening dose of Lyrica.) After a couple of really bad quality sleeps, I gave up trying to be mentally stimulated, and just focused on rehab for two weeks. I did still occasionally think about programming, though, and on my second Sunday off I had a good session. By that point, I was far enough into the cycle to sleep okay regardless of mental activity, and so ensued a nice equilibrium of worn-out productivity. I still was not sleeping an ideal amount, but I managed just enough to get by. Most days I spent at least an hour or two coding, and felt noticeably better as a result.

I stuck to my routine perfectly for four weeks and two days. I was very burnt-out at that point, although if I really wanted to, I probably still could have finished the fifth week. However, I had an engagement party to attend the following Monday, which I could not have managed cheerfully without adequate recovery, so I started my rest period early, and planned to be moderately active the next week, when I also had my next physio session.

The engagement party was the first time this year I left the house well-rested with my orthosis, so it was a good test. It was also the first time I have been able to present an illusion of normalcy socially, which was very nice. When standing, if I am wearing long pants, a person might not immediately notice something wrong with me at a glance. The illusion does not hold up to much scrutiny at the moment, but by the end of the year it should be more deceptive. It turns out I can now stand for fairly long periods when my legs are not trashed, too. I stayed out for over six hours, alternating between standing and sitting in normal chairs. Back pain was an issue towards the end, but it was no worse than it used to get when sitting in my wheelchair for a few hours, and I managed without any medication. My hip was not a problem in the slightest.

Physio the following Thursday went really well. It was the first walk test in five months, and I managed 520m in six minutes (up 45m from last time). More importantly, I felt much more confident and walked with far greater stability. It was very satisfying to weave fluidly around old ladies and see the expression on the physios’ faces. I have struggled to appreciate my progress this year, having spent most of it with my body in a very sub-optimal state. It has just been an incremental grind, with no significant milestones since my 2.3km walk. However, after a successful physio session, and a taste of what my practical capabilities will be once all this is over, my efforts this year now seem unequivocally worthwhile. (I am still really looking forward to not working out for thirty hours a week, though.)

As for the specifics of my routine, during the last training cycle, it was as follows:

It has been exhausting, to say the least, and I think I have finally reached the limit of what is sensible. I should probably stop immediately increasing the amount of exercise I do as soon as I feel remotely capable. There are still some new avenues to be explored, but I will try to avoid adding any further to my total time spent on rehab. How is it possible for me to spend so much time working out? Well, I have been doing lots of hip isolation exercises and high-rep dumbbell work, which is all very time-consuming, but not as taxing as heavy strength training. My primary focus with the dumbbell exercises has to been to fix the muscle imbalances in my upper body, and I have seen improvements in that regard outstripping anything to date. DAS is just as much to thank for for those improvements, and doing it in the evening after my upper body workout has been a very potent combination.

I have been continuously surprised by how much it has been possible — and in fact necessary — to peel strips and strips of muscle off my ribcage. (That is what it feels like, anyway.) In retrospect, when I first got home from hospital, the state of my ribcage and attached muscles was laughably horrendous. At the time, I understood their condition was far less than ideal, but I never could have imagined the amount of improvement required. DAS has helped mobilise my ribcage like nothing else I have tried. Since it also lets me stretch every major muscle in my upper body from a recliner chair, I now rate DAS as the single most effective technique I have discovered (for someone in my situation). My upper body would be in a much better state if I had been prioritising it for my entire recovery.

Most recently, my main workouts have consisted of this:

Lower Body Workout

1 x 10-15 prone hamstring curl (right leg, barefoot, done during limbering session)

2 x 10 bodyweight lunge (left leg)

1 x 10 bodyweight squat (focusing on using right leg as much as possible)

3 x 5-8 leg press on reformer (right leg, 1 green spring + 1 blue spring)

2 x 10 leg press on reformer (left leg, 3 green springs + 1 yellow spring)

1 x 1-3m seated pike stretch

2 x 10-20s compression static hold (both legs at once)

2 x 8-15 bent leg lift (both legs, one at a time, lying on back)

2 x 10-15 hip abduction (left leg, lying on side)

2 x 20-40s hip abduction static hold (right leg, lying on side)

1 x 5-10 glute bridge (focusing on using right side as much as possible)

2 x 5-10 single leg glute bridge (left leg)

1 x 5 prone hamstring curl (right leg, with weight of orthosis)

1 x 5-10 prone lumbar extension

1 x 10 hip extension (left leg, with right leg kneeling and forearms flat on floor above head)

1 x 10-20s side plank (both sides, feet on floor)

Upper Body Workout

10 minute warm-up

Static Holds

1 x 30-60s reverse plank (feet on foam)

1 x 30-60s hollow body hold

2 x 10-30s side plank (both sides, feet on foam)

1 x 30-60s plank (feet on foam)

1 x 20-40s bottom of push-up hold (feet on foam)

1 x 60s support hold on dip frame

1 x 30-60s bottom of dip hold

1 x 30-60s dead-hang on rings

1 x 15-30s support hold on rings

Resistance Training

3 x 5-8 push-up (feet on foam)

3 x 5-8 inverted bodyweight row (feet on foam)

2 x 8-15 bent over dumbbell row (3kg, both arms at once, legs straight with head supported)

2 x 10-20 dumbbell shoulder press (3kg, one arm at a time)

2 x 10-20 dumbbell shrug (6kg, both arms at once)

2 x 8-15 biceps curl (6kg, one arm at a time)

3 x 10-20 dumbbell shoulder abduction (1-2kg, one arm at a time, lying on side, switching between a pronated, supinated and neutral grip)

By now, I had hoped to get some good quality footage of how the exercises have progressed, but that did not end up happening. I was planning to film things when my orthosis broke, and without it, I could not do most exercises well enough to bother. Since then, it has been too much to get my head around on top of my normal routine. The only way I have been able to get through the week is by doing exactly the same thing every day with no variation. The exercises that have improved the most are lunges, side planks (with a straight arm now!), and left leg glute bridges. It is now over a year since I had my hip replaced, so in lieu of videos, here are some progress pictures:

Keep in mind that my pelvis is equally wonky in the before and after shots. The improvements in alignment are a result of strengthened muscles, and no longer having a partially dislocated left hip (making it possible to cleanly transfer force through my leg).

This picture (warning: side-butt) does a better job of showing the muscle I have built around my left hip. The difference looks more dramatic than reality, since my posture was still heavily affected from surgery in the first photo, and the angle is slightly different. I could have stood straighter before the operation, but I did not think to take a photo then. For comparison, this is what the wasted right side currently looks like, and this is both sides together.

From here, the main new thing I will incorporate into my routine is my newly-acquired vibration machine, which is meant to be useful for stimulating muscle growth when nerve damage has occurred. I will not be using it under any professional guidance, and I am unsure if it will be beneficial for my specific type of neuropathy, but I thought it could not hurt to try. My right leg has gradually improved this year, but at a much slower rate than my left, and I am still uncertain if some of the muscles will ever grow at all. I will experiment with the vibration machine over the coming months, in a final attempt to make substantial improvements to my right leg. There are also one or two more corrective dumbbell exercises I want to somehow fit in.

I plan to maintain my current activity levels for another five weeks, then assess what seems sensible from there. Maybe I will decide that attempting to push onward through another winter will only lead to trouble, and scale things back for a couple of months so some mental recuperation can occur. I think it will be possible to keep up a six-days-a-week routine most of the time no matter what, but I might stop doing my main upper body workout for a while, and then reintroduce it in spring for one final anabolic burst. Or, with just over six months left of the year, I might decide it really is not the time to be getting soft, and somehow hold steady the rest of the way. It does feel like there will continue to be tangible benefits if I can keep up the intensity.