Hey guys,

Long time lurker here. So i had my surgery on 1st of July of this year (1.5 months post op as of writing this post). My SW weight was 348lbs. I use to be a power lifter back in 2015 with 12% body fat. I gained all my weight during '16-'17 after something happened in my life. Now after the surgery i want to workout again (usually dead lifts and squats, mostly compound exercises).

My incisions has healed well and i am walking around 2 miles a day. I despise walking to be honest so i was wondering is it OK to lift heavy weights that include core muscles after 1.5 months post op.

6 minutes ago, trot23 said:

Hey guys,

Long time lurker here. So i had my surgery on 1st of July of this year (1.5 months post op as of writing this post). My SW weight was 348lbs. I use to be a power lifter back in 2015 with 12% body fat. I gained all my weight during '16-'17 after something happened in my life. Now after the surgery i want to workout again (usually dead lifts and squats, mostly compound exercises).

My incisions has healed well and i am walking around 2 miles a day. I despise walking to be honest so i was wondering is it OK to lift heavy weights that include core muscles after 1.5 months post op.

Do yourself a favor and wait for your doctor to clear you for heavy lifting. Your external incisions might appear healed, but everything else under the subcutaneous layers, might not be. Take things easy until your doc gives you the thumbs up. I was cleared to start trying things at 6 weeks, I wasn't anywhere ready for anything heavy until almost 3 months out. I tried to push too fast, too soon and almost ended up popping the muscles at the main incision point.

Edited August 14, 20187 yr by Matt Z

Run this past your team first

29 minutes ago, trot23 said:

Hey guys,

Long time lurker here. So i had my surgery on 1st of July of this year (1.5 months post op as of writing this post). My SW weight was 348lbs. I use to be a power lifter back in 2015 with 12% body fat. I gained all my weight during '16-'17 after something happened in my life. Now after the surgery i want to workout again (usually dead lifts and squats, mostly compound exercises).

My incisions has healed well and i am walking around 2 miles a day. I despise walking to be honest so i was wondering is it OK to lift heavy weights that include core muscles after 1.5 months post op.

If some anonymous person on this site said, "Sure, go ahead!", would you really act on that? Don't be ridiculous. Call your doctor's office.

My daddy,had a ventral hernia from abdominal surgery. He was a man, why follow logic and the rules? It was an ugly looking thing and I said (God forgive me) Daddy keep your shirt on so nobody sees that.
Maybe you won't develop hernias but those rules are there for a reason. Ease back in very very slowly , at the first ping , STOP. I honestly would give your body a while longer to heal before you go "Arnolding" there a lot of less dramatic things at the gym ?you can do, nobody is going,to give you a Life Sentance of "walking", use your head for more than a neck decoration.

One of the things that I have learned from my orthopedic adventures is that the connective tissues to our muscles, which includes the fascia part of the abdominal wall that helps to hold our guts in, have relatively little blood flow, which means that they heal a lot slower than the associated musculature. So you may feel healed and strong enough to lift more, your connective tissues may disagree. Incisional hernias are fairly common after abdominal surgery such as ours, and can sometimes be triggered by something as innocuous as a sharp sneeze or cough.

I resumed some lifting fairly early, but kept the weights low, on the order of half or less than what I had been doing, and used the machines to specifically avoid compound lifts and to isolate the core so that it could heal. It was more of a range of motion and stretching exercise than muscle building at that time. My doc is more conservative than most in this regard and recommended avoiding things like crunches and sit ups for 12 weeks, and arguably that is not conservative enough (the plastics guy detected an umbilical hernia when I went for a consult, which was not notable to me, but was to him).

OTOH, an incisional hernia can be a ticket to a subsidized tummy tuck if you need it!