Pedal Exerciser or Exercise Bike After Knee Replacement?
You've been told to get the new knee bending at home. A little pedaller under the desk, or a real bike? People who've had the operation weigh in.
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At physical therapy, one person in r/Kneereplacement gets five minutes on the exercise bike before anything else. They say it loosens them up for the rest of the session more than it builds anything.
Then you go home, where there's no bike, but the exercise sheet still says bend it. So the question keeps coming round in that sub: do I need a stationary bike at home, or will one of those little pedal exercisers that slides under a desk do? The person asking it this time had no gym within an hour's round trip and no driving after the surgery.
If you're a few weeks out from a knee replacement, or the date is booked, the threads have owners on both sides.
The cheap answer is a floor pedaller, or the dearer under-desk cycle that does the same job. The big answer is a stationary bike, often a secondhand one. Which one depends on the job you need it to do.
Is a pedal exerciser good for knee replacement?
For getting the knee to bend, the owners say yes. One used a little under-desk pedal bike for several months, with every set of home exercises and sometimes after getting up to loosen the stiffness. They reckon a cheap one is worth it.
The clearest comparison comes from someone who's had both knees done. For the first they rented a ROMtech, a rehab bike made for home use. The second went differently:
My second knee was a tougher recovery in general. I used the floor pedaler instead of the fancy bike. And wasn't nearly as aggressive with PT. My range of motion though was just as good.
u/nmacInCT, in r/Kneereplacement
At the three-week mark the second knee bent a little further than the first had. What the pedaller didn't do was build muscle. They used the bike at PT and the gym for that. For anyone buying one only for the recovery, their advice is to get an inexpensive one.
That's the pattern across five threads. The pedaller is for range of motion, and the owners don't claim more for it. One sceptic says it's fine for loosening a stiff joint but not the same as a stationary bike for building muscle or breaking up scar tissue.
The person who gets five minutes on the PT bike tried an under-desk cycle at home and found it didn't do the job for them. The stationary bike did.
The pedaller covers the bending. The rest of the sheet is done flat on your back. When the bed's too soft for that, where to do the lying-down exercises is a question of its own.
Cheap and flimsy, or a step up
Several pedaller owners bought cheap, and it was enough. One used what they call a stupid little thing until the knee bent enough for their spin bike. Their verdict: "kind of flimsy, but they work."
Another found a Stamina pedal exerciser at a senior centre's garage sale and says to check the thrift stores.
That cheap tier is a folding floor pedaller, the kind that sits on the rug in front of a chair. The step up is an under-desk cycle, which costs more. One owner kept theirs in front of the recliner for several weeks, pedalling slowly at random through the day, and slid it under the coffee table between times.
Small ones also fit where a bike won't. The thrift-store owner lives in a 400 square foot house, with no way to get an exercise bike in.
Someone else bought a pedaller that straps to a chair and takes about two feet of floor in front of it. It kept their knee moving until they'd healed enough for a true recumbent at the gym, and they were at 137 degrees of bend at ten weeks.
What a stationary bike does that a pedaller doesn't
Strength, and the later part of the recovery. One reply to the no-gym poster: start with an under-desk exerciser and don't agonise over which, then move to a stationary bike. They call the bike invaluable, and not forever, just while you rehab.
Two cyclists say their surgeons told them much the same. One surgeon called bike rehab the single best recovery tool, the other one of the best possible exercises for a new knee.
The bike at PT was a recumbent for more than one owner here. One started on it early, and says how far back the seat sits decides when a full turn comes.
At home, the one rule is that you have to be able to get on it. A recumbent has no crossbar. The five-minutes person warns that every other bike does, so be sure you can get over it.
Someone else says an upright works fine as long as it's step-through and the seat drops low enough to start.
Several bought secondhand. One owner found a cheap stationary bike on Facebook Marketplace, and three more in a later thread say the same.
If you already ride, three people in these threads put the bike they own on a trainer instead. One put miles on it once full turns came, about three weeks out, and before that rocked the pedals back and forth to stretch. Another calls the trainer the best thing for their recovery, and a third says raise the seat a few centimetres higher than you're used to.
Can you use either before the knee turns a full circle?
Both, say the owners, in different ways. The pedals on an under-desk cycle are shorter, so a full turn comes sooner in the recovery than on a recumbent. Several owners started on one and moved up.
A full-size bike doesn't have to wait for a full turn either. The sceptic raised the gym bike's seat five notches and rocked back and forth for ten minutes, then pedalled backwards, before a forward turn was possible. They'd started on a pedaller too, which loosened the knee but bothered their back, the same complaint they have about recumbents.
The Marketplace owner did half circles as soon as PT gave the OK.
When you start, and how hard, is your surgeon's call and your therapist's. Every voice above is a patient. The five-minutes person says there are two schools on early recovery now: PT straight away, or rest and ice for a few weeks first. They told a day-five poster not to push it.
Someone else would wait to buy a bike at all until they knew how the knee was going to be.
One more option: the ROMtech bike the both-knees owner rented for their first knee can be prescribed for home rehab. Ask the surgeon's office about it before you buy anything big.
Start small. A cheap floor pedaller covers the bending, and an under-desk cycle is the step up if you'd rather spend more. Have it waiting in front of your chair, before the surgery if the date's still ahead.
The bike can wait until you know how the knee is behaving. When it comes, a secondhand step-through or a recumbent is what the owners here rode. The ones who already ride put their own bike on a trainer.
