Originally Posted by
philbob57
I followed my surgeon's advice to stay off the road for 3 months. IIRC, I got back on the trainer after 6-8 weeks, but he was none too happy about that. OldTryGuy had similar surgery, IIRC, and got on the bike very soon (a few days?) after surgery. I didn't have the replacement done until I was using opioids every day, and I don't like opioids.
The problem, according to my surgeon, is that one popular method is to cut through a big shoulder muscle, and it takes 6 weeks for the muscle to knit well. If you rotate your arm/shoulder more than 90 degrees too soon after surgery, the muscle separates, and it's very difficult to reattach the 2 parts of the muscle, because they retract quickly and require a lot of force to put them back together.
There's another form of the operation in which the surgeon goes through the back of the shoulder, which is trickier, because it's hard to get to the right place, according tomy surgeon. Also, a lot of people say recovery is very painful. It takes a lot of PT, and I did my exercises at home.