Penang, Phuket, Bangkok

I just got back from three weeks in Asia. The details of the trip are here; and the photos are here. The point of this post is to tell you that I climbed to the top of a 7-story Buddhist temple in Penang, and walked all over Bangkok. Also went on lots of walking tours in Phuket.

At the end of the day, I would be tired in the hip, and a little achy, but I was keeping up with people anywhere from ten to 30 years younger than I and with their own hips. I also did a yoga class a day. I notice I'm having trouble with step-throughs in flow, but not on the side of the new hip :-)

I think one of the reasons I was able to do so much walking and touring is that I also had a massage almost every day. One of the big under-reported and underdiscussed issues in the tightness in muscles after the hip replacement. part of the problem is from favoring one leg for a period of time before the surgery; the rest of it is probably from cutting and moving of muscle tissue during the surgery.

So when you pop back into your regular activity level, if you were active before, you are definitely going to have muscle spasms and tightness. I noticed on my trip that my IT band, which had been bothering me before the trip and which I had been using a body roller to release, was not a problem at all. The problem was in the glutes.

And of course I'm not you, because I also have a bad back, and the erector muscles deteriorated as a result of the surgery, too, and I had to get them back. There are many yoga poses (backbends like locust, sphinx cobra and flying cobra) that help this, and my back got better during the trip from the daily practice.

What don't I do now? Complicated twists on the left, cowface pose on the left, pidgeon on the left, and that's about it. I am careful about internally rotating, but not THAT careful. I still have occasional twinges when I move into certain positions, and I use them as indicators.