I agree everyone heals differently. 6 weeks in, the Doc says I can walk. I'm good with that. He also said the trainer is fine, though no power. I heal pretty well for someone who's nearly the same age as @shovelhd.

how old are you, 40s?

55

still young~! keep us posted on your progress. I'm at about 60% of my power output but I am feeling about 70% to where I was. I still get a lot of aching pain in my muscles that get irritated when I hammer and sit for too long. I am trying some glute exercises and glute contractions to see if it will help engage the glute more and relieve the stress off the other stuff.

sometimes when one muscle is sore, look to the muscle the controls the opposite movement for the cause. a weakness there could be causing the sore muscle to work harder.

70% given your injury is pretty good. expect some bad days, but keep plugging away.

Teton,

Any special tricks to raise your max power after these injuries. My FTP is coming along surprisingly well, but max power is still crap. I think my cardio didn't take the hit like the actual muscle strength did thus the better FTP than max power. Within the past week, I've started doing short intervals to try to get the max up.

I'm not tetonrider, but my experience has been the same as yours. Crash March 29, then off the bike for six weeks, FTP didn't take much of a hit but max power is down. My FTP is about 10% higher than pre-crash, and the highest it's ever been...but it's still not high. ;)

I was doing the glute stuff from the get-go, as that was one of the exercises I was told to do. I wish I had an answer, but I know it's just going to take work.

I'm walking, but not well. I'm doing everything I can do to walk right. I have been keeping a crutch around, and using the hand grip as something to latch on to. I don't want to buy a cane, but will if I have to. I just didn't want to rely on one. I took my dog for a walk around the block yesterday, and did OK, but still needed the crutch. I'm up to an hour on the trainer a day, though I took my normal Monday off. Endurance sucks, but I feel decent on the bike, and I'm working on pedal stroke, and range of motion. This is just very slow going. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it sure wasn't this!

Keeping healing thoughts for all of you folks.

hey, mike--i'm not an authority; i just have my own experiences to go on. i also don't know what you've been doing thus far during your recovery.

what i find with injury is that the body quickly goes into protection mode, which can involve "disconnecting" some of the normal ways our muscles fire. during the recovery process it is very easy to unwittingly develop some bad habits. max efforts, almost by definition, require everything to be firing optimally in addition to having the (an)aerobic capacity.

where am i going with this? if your injured leg is firing just a fraction of a beat late it may also be continuing to fire a bit too long, and then it is impeding the down-stroke of the good leg. for max efforts this can be more noticeable. i noticed it when doing some low-cadence/high-torque seated efforts, but it was present in other areas.

to fix it, one really needs to go back to basics. for me, this meant really thinking about when and how the injured leg fires. i focused on starting and ending the pedal stroke at 11 & 5 o'clock instead of 12 and 6. because my injured leg was a bit slow, when i was attempting to fire at 12 and release at 6, i was actually applying power at 1 or 2 and then fighting the upstroke.

this is something you could try to work on on the bike.

i'd also suggest really assessing imbalances via core work and doing off the bike work (weights or just isometric). say what you will about tom danielson, but the exercises in the core advantage book actually do a great job of identifying and correcting muscular imbalances.

other than that, i think recoveries from major injuries share some similarities with a base-building period. you've got to build up the base (sounds like you have/are), and then the maximal efforts come as you put the icing on the cake. expect to have some failures with short intervals, but keep plugging away.

good advice overall.

I noticed with my pedal stroke that I would fire late and definitely fire for too long. The muscle is still tense when it shouldn't be. I did this by putting my hand on the bad leg and feeling the quad area and then doing the same for the good leg. The strength just isn't there for me either.

FTP is still down quite a bit but today was the first day I actually tried to hit a decent number, 246W. Pre-injury I was around 309W.

I'm going to focus on endurance and not bother so much with maximal efforts or short hard efforts, the strength just isn't there yet.

ovoleg--not saying that you are doing this, but i want to be sure you don't ever get too hard on yourself. you had a major injury and on top of it it sounds like you and your doctor agreed on a very conservative approach to activity. with the time off you took ​plus the injury's effects, it is perfectly normal for your threshold to be a bit low.

someone who had less time off (i'll use myself as an example--riding the day after surgery, albeit with zero resistance) would experience less of a drop in threshold.

of course we all decide for ourselves what is right, but there is no real reason to avoid shorter, hard efforts...IF one feels the desire. after all, shorter, hard efforts are one way to pull up FTP (raise the ceiling) as opposed to pushing up the floor via endurance/tempo/sweet-spot.

Good point thanks. I'm not too hard on myself but it sucks when I get dropped by club riders that I wouldn't even have to try to drop before. I'm dying OTB on a club ride where the avg speed is like 15 mph lol. Last week has been better for sure.

I noticed with hard efforts my quad area starts to bug me, not muscle fatigue but pain'ish. It's prolly about 3/10, mostly discomfort. This happens if I go at 300W+ for about a minute. Tomorrow ima try to shoot a bit for endurance.

What I've been doing the past week was just do my local climb(30min climb) and then descend and head home. Usually leaves me with about 1.25 hrs of riding and a decent amount of effort.

the first part of your post has to do with the mental part of recovery. you took a huge hit and now can't keep up with riders you used to drop. that sucks, but the only way to get better is to keep at it. this is tough when you are staring in the face of a huge setback and constantly reminded that you have to work hard just to get back to where you were, let alone to gain fitness.

the truth is we don't know for certain if we'll ever get back to the same point where we were pre-injury--there are no guarantees in life. however, i believe that we might as well believe we'll progress even further. either way, if you want to ride faster than you are today, the process is the same.

as for the second part of your post, it is helpful to be honest with yourself and distinguish between the "good pain" and the pain you shouldn't push through. the former is usually the muscular stuff; the latter is often the nerve-y or mechanical pain. not everyone is good at figuring out the difference, and we're in a sport that values suffering. be sure you're doing the right kind. (sounds like you are backing off at the right time, but this is a reminder for myself as well as others reading the thread.)

Hopefully I'm not naive but I'm thinking it's going to take some time but I should be able to get back to pre-injury performance and then work on improvement. Again, assuming I don't get AVN(praying to not get it).

It feels sort of like the muscles are weak so they're getting overworked and strained, thats the kind of pain I think I am getting. Almost like you're working out on a sore muscle.

My walk is at 100%, my downhill stairs ability is at 90% and my uphill stairs ability is like 50%.

sounds really solid ovoleg. remember, if one muscle group is very sore, look to the opposing muscle group for clues. it is sometimes (often?) the case that the overworked muscles are overworked precisely because they are compensating for something in another area. e.g., tight hamstrings can lead to sore quads fighting them.

just something to think about as you experience those sensations.

how long after the fracture can you stop worrying about AVN?

it can kick in anytime up to 4 years, but realistically after 2 years you're pretty much in the clear.

what's avn again? is it only a concern for hip surgery?

I had to google it. somethng something necrosis. essentially the bone stops getting enough blood and dies and Ovoleg becomes Oneleg

(hope it doesn't happen 'cause then this joke makes me look terrible)

and I'll feel bad for laughing out loud at your joke!

Ovo while your concern is justified I think you are spending way too much energy worrying about it, energy that could be used positively towards your recovery. Let your doctor worry about complications, that's their job. Your job is to regain strength in a measured and realistic manner. I would be concentrating more on form than numbers. I have fallen into that trap so I get it.

Exactly.

My Doctor said I was too young for a new hip, so I'm running with that.

ovo (& others)--you asked me for advice privately and i responded, but i wanted to add a little update as i had a bit of a breakthrough.

in addition to the normal issues noted above WRT max power, i've been having a bit of trouble with cornering and descending. my leg and hip just don't move quite the way they used to. i'm a big believer in increasing ROM and breaking up scar tissue. i've been open to alternative treatments (mentioned 'cupping' before....as with acupuncture i don't really believe in all of the miracle stuff attributed to it, but it can be useful for breaking up some scar tissue along the same lines as massage), as well as straight-up massage. for some injuries it, along with acupuncture, seems to have helped; it hasn't for others. (for the acupuncture, my main thing with it is restoring some neuromuscular firing patterns...'waking up' some stuff that is not firing right due to injury.) it's also super cheap stuff for me ($15/hour), but for someone who is open-minded and/or willing to try anything to see if it works for them, it's worth exploring.

but back to the point: i had an absolutely brutal massage yesterday which seemed to finally break up some scar tissue. this was like full body weight of the masseuse/knees on legs/glutes. i was able to move today with more fluidity in the hips and legs. the lateness in my pedal stroke seemed a bit better (helps with max power), but the main thing i noticed is i'd lost some of the robot-like stiffness when i tried to do things like lean the bike and/or shift my hips. i could make more subtle movements instead of doing more stepped motions.

if you haven't already tried it, working with a good masseuse can be money well-spent and i think it may have some influence on returning to more fluid motion and, therefore, max power. ($75 for 1.5-2 hours)

Thanks for the advice. I should have thought of that plan myself but didn't. I'll give it a try tomorrow on my ride.

Teton - I went out for a 40 mile ride climbing the one mountain that's somewhat close to me. I tried your suggestion on "starting" the pedal stroke earlier with the bad leg. My average power was up on the climbs (probably due to your suggestion combined with all the miles I've been riding) but the split was 55-45 which I attribute entirely to your suggestion - thanks again for the advise.