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The Hip Didn't Stop Me
Two surgeries before 40. The first one was supposed to fix everything. It didn't. The second one actually did. Two years later I'm still in the gym, still lifting heavy, and I want you to know what that looks like.
Getting older sucks.
Nobody really prepares you for it. And I say that as someone who has spent seventeen years running a CrossFit gym. I know what it looks like to age well. I preach it constantly.
Then my hip started going and I had to live it instead of just talk about it.
I'm not known for moving well — ask anyone at Fringe, they'll confirm it. What I'm known for is moving fast and moving heavy. That's my thing. And my hip was taking it away. Stairs hurt. Walks hurt. Everything hurt. All the time, pain was in the back of my mind.
Here's what happened next, and what I want you to hear if you're in a similar spot.
The First Surgery
Before the total hip replacement, I had a hip preservation surgery. A bio-joint procedure. At the time it was considered somewhat experimental, which also meant there was real hope attached to it — preserve the native joint, avoid the replacement, buy years.
The recovery was long and hard. More limitations, more restrictions, more months of following a protocol and not doing what I do. But I did it. All of it.
Two years later the joint had degraded. Not back to square one. Worse than square one.
That's a specific kind of demoralization. You do everything right. You sacrifice the better part of two years. You trust the process — and the process fails you. You're left more beat up than when you started, looking at a second major surgery, and you just feel stupid for having hoped.
When my surgeon came back with total hip replacement, I wasn't scared. I was exhausted. And I didn't have a lot of trust left.
The Replacement
On paper the total hip replacement sounds more serious. More permanent. It's the thing people say in a heavy voice.
The reality was almost the opposite of the first surgery.
The recovery was smoother. The timeline was shorter. I did exactly what my physical therapist told me to do — every rep, every drill, no heroics, no shortcuts — and I was released from therapy well ahead of the average patient.
Six weeks out I was back in the gym.
Not competing. Not testing maxes. Just moving. Finding out what this new hip could do.
Two years in, I'd put it at 85 out of 100. Not perfect. But 100% better than before surgery. The pain that made daily life miserable is gone. I walk my dogs. I go up and down stairs without thinking about it. I do the stuff I took for granted before.
And I train.
What I Actually Do Now
I still do Olympic lifting. I choose to stay in power positions rather than full squat — that's my call based on long-term preservation, not something my surgeon told me I had to do.
I'm deadlifting and squatting in the four hundreds.
I still do the workouts. I still push. I'm still in the gym every day alongside my athletes.
I've chosen to give up running. Not because I can't — because I'd rather preserve what I have and lift heavy more often. That's a trade-off I made with clear information, not out of fear.
And I'm not a unicorn here. We have another coach at Fringe who's had a total hip replacement. She's back coaching and training. We've worked athletes through ACL and MCL repairs, bicep tendon tears, pec tears. Major joint surgeries are not rare. Neither is coming back from them.
The Only Mindset That Works
The trap is this: you hear "you shouldn't do X" and your brain hears "you can't do anything." You go from athlete to patient in your own head and you stay there.
I stopped asking what I could no longer do.
I started asking what I should do right now to get to my next post-surgery personal best.
That's it. That's the whole shift. But it changes everything — what you show up to, how you train, whether you still think of yourself as an athlete or just someone managing a bad hip.
You are still an athlete. You're just in a different chapter.
This Isn't Only a Hip Thing
If you've had a knee surgery, a shoulder repair, a tendon that gave out — same applies. The joint doesn't matter as much as the question you're asking yourself about what comes next.
We also have Vitality, a program built specifically for athletes 55 and older who want to keep moving and keep getting stronger on their own terms. That demographic and this conversation overlap a lot. But honestly the approach is the same for anyone coming back from something major: smart modification, programming that's built around your history, and a coach who actually knows what you've been through.
That's what we do. Varied but not random. Built around you.
Come In
If you've had a major surgery and you're trying to figure out what fitness looks like now — bring your clearance, your PT notes, and your questions. We'll take it from there.
Book a No Sweat Intro. It's free. It's just a conversation. No pitch, no pressure.
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