Gluteus medius repair recovery: week 0

what's typical at week 0

weeks 0–6

Weeks 0-6 · brace and protected weight bearing

The first six weeks are about protecting the repair, not progressing it. Almost every protocol uses a hip abduction brace and keeps weight off the leg — flat-foot or a fixed partial load with crutches. Open and full-thickness repairs are often held this way to eight weeks. The brace feels like the slowest part of the whole recovery, and that is by design: the tendon-to-bone repair is mechanically weakest in this window.

The first pain point the studies actually measured is at three months, so the first six weeks themselves are not directly observed. The honest reading is that early pain is dominated by the surgery and the limits of the brace, not by the underlying tendon. If your pain is climbing rather than easing after the first week or two, that is worth a call to your surgeon, but the modal experience is a slow settle inside the protection of the brace.

Active abduction — lifting the leg out to the side under its own power — is the one movement everyone is told to avoid here. It loads the exact tissue that was repaired. Gentle passive range of motion and the prescribed isometrics are usually all that is allowed.

documented at this week

milestones around now

• wk 0 ·Protected weight bearing in a hip abduction brace (0-6 weeks (about 20 kg partial weight bearing); endoscopic and larger full-thickness repairs are often kept protected to 8 weeks)
• wk 6 ·Discontinue the abduction brace (6-8 weeks; some protocols grade this to 10-12 weeks for larger tears)