Exercises On Crutches: What You Can Actually Do

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The short answer. You can train almost everything except the injured limb: your arms, your back, your core, your uninvolved leg, and your cardiovascular fitness, mostly from a chair. The injured limb belongs to your surgeon and your physical therapist, and nothing on this page touches it. Get cleared for general exercise first, then start with the five movements below.

Before anything on this page: this is general fitness information, not medical advice. Your surgeon and physical therapist set your weight-bearing status and your restrictions, and their instructions override everything here. Get cleared for general exercise before you start.

First, the conversation you need to have

Not “did anyone tell me to stop.” Cleared. Here is the exact sentence to use, and it takes ten seconds:

“I would like to do seated and floor-based upper-body and core training, and strength work for my uninvolved leg, while I’m non-weight-bearing. Is there anything in that I should avoid?”

Write it down and ask it at your next call or appointment. It is the difference between training and guessing.

If the answer is no, or not yet, then it is no. Nothing on this page is valuable enough to do against advice.

You should also know your weight-bearing status in plain language, because it governs everything:

• NWB, non-weight-bearing. Nothing. The foot does not touch the floor, not even to balance.
• TTWB or TDWB, touch-down. The foot may rest on the floor for balance only. The usual instruction is roughly the pressure you would use to crush a crisp without breaking it.
• PWB, partial weight-bearing. A specific percentage or number of pounds. If you were given one, you should know the number.
• WBAT, weight-bearing as tolerated. As much as is comfortable.

If you are not sure which you have, that is the most important call you will make this week. Everything else waits on it. Our guide to weight-bearing status covers what each one means day to day.

What you can train, and what you cannot

This is the distinction that makes the rest of the page usable.

Not yours to train: the injured limb. No exercises for it, no timelines, no progressions. That belongs to your care team, and when your physical therapy starts they take over. Any page on the internet that gives you a post-surgical protocol for your specific repair is guessing, because it cannot see you and does not know what your surgeon found.

Yours to train: everything else. Which, when you count it up, is most of you:

• Both arms, and they are about to work harder than they ever have
• Your back and shoulders, which need specific attention for reasons below
• Your trunk
• Your uninvolved leg, which is currently doing the work of two
• Your cardiovascular fitness
• Your hands and grip, which most people ignore until they hurt

Fix your crutches before you train

Much of the discomfort people report on crutches comes down to fit and technique, and both are adjustable in about ten minutes.

Your weight goes through your hands, not your armpits.

The pad at the top of an underarm crutch is there so you can squeeze the crutch against your ribcage and steer it. Your hands carry you. The armpit contains a dense bundle of nerves and blood vessels, and resting your bodyweight on it is the most common mistake in the first week.

How to do it: squeeze the crutch tops against your ribs with your upper arms, straighten your elbows, and push down through the handgrips. Your shoulders should drop away from your ears and your body should lift.

Also worth ninety seconds: check the fit. Two fingers of gap between the armpit pad and your armpit. Handgrips at the height where your elbow bends 15 to 30 degrees. If you use forearm crutches, the cuff sits one to one and a half inches below the bend of your elbow, never on it.

More detail: how to use crutches, how to stop armpit pain from crutches, and crutches that don’t hurt your hands.

Four rules for everything below

1. The injured limb is cargo, not a training target. Support it, do not load it, and do not let it dangle.
2. Respect your hands. They work every time you cross a room. Never train grip to failure.
3. Pull more than you push, about two to one. Every crutch step is a pressing motion, done hundreds of times a day with your shoulders rolled forward. Rows and face pulls are the priority, not push-ups.
4. Stop rules beat everything. Sharp pain, pain at a surgical site, dizziness, chest tightness, or a movement that does not feel right, ends the set.

The daily five

If you do nothing else on this page, do these. About ten minutes.

1. Seated band row

Band anchored in front of you at chest height. Sit tall, arms extended. Drive your elbows back past your ribs, squeezing your shoulder blades together and down. Pause one second. Return slowly.

Cue: “Elbows to the back pockets.” Watch for shoulders creeping toward your ears.

3 sets of 12 to 15.

2. Seated band face pull

Band anchored slightly above head height. Arms extended up and forward. Pull toward your forehead, elbows flaring wide and high, hands finishing beside your ears.

Cue: “Pull the band apart, not just back.” Watch for elbows dropping below shoulder height.

2 to 3 sets of 15.

3. Long-arc quad, uninvolved leg

Sit tall. Straighten your good knee until the leg is horizontal. Squeeze the thigh hard for two seconds. Lower slowly.

Your good leg is doing the work of two on every transfer and every hop. Train it deliberately rather than leaving it to cope on its own.

3 sets of 12.

4. Scapular depression

Hands on the chair seat beside your hips, arms straight, shoulders relaxed up near your ears. Without bending your elbows, push your shoulders down away from your ears so your torso lifts about half an inch. Hold two seconds.

This is the exact movement you make on every crutch step, so it is worth training on purpose.

3 sets of 10.

5. Supine chest stretch

On your back, arms out in a T or a goalpost, palms up. Let gravity open your chest. A rolled towel down your spine turns it up.

Everything about crutch walking pulls you forward and closed. This is the daily reset.

60 to 90 seconds, end of day.

Seated exercises

The chair is where most of this happens. Use a sturdy one with no wheels, and support your injured leg on a second chair or stool at whatever height you were told to elevate it.

Floor exercises

Better strength positions, but getting down and up is a skill. Practise getting up first, next to a couch, before you ever go down deliberately. If you cannot get up, do not go down.

To get down: both crutches in one hand, free hand onto a chair seat, lower onto your good knee, bring the injured leg through and out in front of you, sit onto a hip, roll onto your back. Reverse it to get up.

Skip the floor entirely if you have restrictions on hip or knee position, if you have had abdominal surgery, or if you are alone in the house. The bed versions work nearly as well.

• Floor press. On your back, weights at chest height, elbows at 45 degrees. The floor limits the range, which keeps the front of the shoulder out of the position it likes least. 3 x 8 to 12.
• Dead bug. Arms toward the ceiling, low back pressed flat, lower one arm overhead slowly without letting the back arch. 3 x 8 per side.
• Side-lying external rotation. Elbow pinned to your ribs, towel roll underneath, rotate the forearm up. A two-pound weight is a real workout here. 2 to 3 x 12 to 15.
• Thread the needle. Side-lying, knees stacked, open the top arm across your body like a book. 6 to 8 per side, daily.
• Glute bridge. Cleared users only, because it loads the hips and whether that is acceptable depends entirely on your restrictions. Ask first.

Cardio without legs

You do not need a leg to raise your heart rate. Work at a level where you can speak in short phrases but not hold a conversation.

Seated intervals. 30 seconds hard, 30 seconds easy, 8 to 12 rounds. Rotate through: big arm circles forward and back, band punches, fast overhead reaches, fast seated marching. About twelve minutes.

The upper-body burner. Four movements, 40 seconds each with no rest, 3 rounds with 90 seconds between: band row, overhead press, pull-apart, arm cycle.

If you have access and are specifically cleared: an arm ergometer is the usual first choice. A recumbent bike using only the good leg works if your care team approves it. Pool work is an option only once any wound is fully closed and your surgeon says so.

Two or three sessions a week. If you can only do one thing, do the strength session, since conditioning tends to come back faster afterwards than strength does.

Hands and grip, which almost everyone skips

Your hands are load-bearing joints now, doing a job they have never done. Five minutes, and never to failure, because you have to crutch to the bathroom in four hours.

• Towel squeeze. Squeeze 5 seconds, release 5 seconds. 10 reps.
• Rubber-band finger extension. Thick band around all five fingertips, open the hand against it. 2 x 15. Everything you do on crutches closes your hand. This is the only thing that opens it.
• Wrist flexion and extension. Forearm on your thigh, light weight, hand hanging past the knee. 2 x 15 each direction.
• Forearm rotation. Hold a hammer by the end, rotate the palm up then down. 2 x 12.

And one free habit: rotate your grip on the crutch handles every few minutes of walking. Half an inch forward, a few degrees round. Holding an identical position for an hour is what makes a hand sore, and variety costs nothing.

What not to do

• Anything that pulls, pinches, loads or twists near the injured area. No matter what any page says. This page cannot see you. You can.
• Standing work without something solid to hold, a clear floor, and shoes on. A fall is the worst thing that can happen to a healing repair.
• Grip training to failure. See above.
• Heavy pressing volume on top of all-day crutch walking, especially if your shoulders are already complaining by the afternoon.
• Anything you saw in a video by someone who does not know your restrictions. Including this page.

Stop and contact your care team today if you notice

• New pain, tenderness, swelling, warmth or redness in a calf or thigh
• Chest pain, shortness of breath, or coughing up blood: call emergency services
• Fever, chills, or increasing redness, warmth or drainage at a surgical site
• A sudden increase in pain that does not settle with your usual measures
• New numbness, tingling or weakness, or a hand or foot that changes colour
• A cast or splint that becomes painfully tight

This list is not complete and it is not a diagnosis. If something feels wrong, it is always correct to call.

A sample week

On a bad day: band row two sets, chest stretch 90 seconds, grip circuit. Six minutes. Six minutes beats forty minutes you did not do, and the streak matters more than any single session.

When your physical therapy starts

This is where a page like this stops and hands over. Your physical therapist is in charge of your injured limb and your progression, and if anything here conflicts with what they tell you, they are right.

Tell them you have been training. Some people hide it, worried they will be told off. Do not. It is exactly what a physical therapist wants to know and it changes what they do with you.

And expect the first session to be humbling. Walking again after weeks off a leg is strange and often disappointing on day one. That is normal, and it is not a sign you did anything wrong.

Related reading: crutch gait patterns, how to use crutches on stairs, non-weight-bearing crutches, and crutches after surgery.