My home prehab/rehab set-up

I'm preparing for the first of two total hip replacements and am doing the maximum possible to set myself up for the best outcome I can. It turns out I'm setting up quite a physio rehab clinic here at home. After the initial hospital stay, I should get home-visit physiotherapy but I've got some equipment ready to go. I'm hiring a few home OT items (raised loo seat, an adjustable-height sitting chair, shower stool) but this is about physio rehab.

My set of goodies includes:

• Our backyard swimming pool.
  Although I won't be able to use it for the first 3 weeks after the operation (not until the wound has thoroughly healed) it'll be highly valuable after that. I have a floatation belt and a copy of Heal Your Hips by Robert Klapper. I've been doing the aquatic exercises for a few months now. The Water Walking and Water Running are both really good.

• Recumbent exercise bike.
  I got this cheap second hand and it's in great condition. I've been using it a couple of times a week for about 10 minutes, about as much as my current hip flexibility allows.

• Resistance band, set up to allow for a pseudo-dead lift.
  This has been very useful pre-op to get things 'straightened out' if I'm feeling stiff or sore.
  This video (http://youtu.be/g_eEQJo-a_Y) shows what I mean.

• Sand bag.
  About 20kg of sand. Cheap and easy weights!

• Home-made THX rings.
  Good for upper body strength and lots of fun.

• Dogs.
  Walkies!!!

• Weighted back-pack. I've got a back-pack and figure I'll carry some weight like house-bricks when I go walking, as my level of fitness increases post-op.
• Sunlight. It'll be summer when I get my operation so that means lots of sunshine both pre-op and post-op to make sure there's lots of natural vitamin D in the system to assist recovery.

Non-exercise items include:

• Ice. I've been icing the hip every day for the past couple of months.
• Red light. Has been shown to improve healing of soft-tissue wounds so I've got some bright red light sources available to shine on the area - an LED brake-light and a multi-colour LED floodlight. Sounds wacky but it's claimed to be effective.
• Earthing sheet. If the Schumann Resonance is good enough for Tour De France cyclists, it's good enough for me.
• DIY Pulsed EMF. While avoiding microwave EMF (wifi, cell phone, cordless phones, smart meters etc) is important for improved recovery, Pulsed EMF devices can be very beneficial for bone healing. Dr Pauluk has lots of good info, but I'm too cheap to pay $1300 for a SomaPulse, so I've created a home-made version using some induction coils off ebay, an iPod and some custom-created waveforms to play through it.