Hello! My name is Brian Bruns, I’m a 29 year old professional kickboxer out of Riverside California and I’m a recipient of bilateral hip resurfacing. I wanted to write this out to discuss my experience with the surgery and help anyone else who is thinking about the surgery for themselves who have a similar story to mine. When I was researching the surgery there were a few older videos talking about it but none of them answered the questions I really had and most weren’t from anyone around my age. The surgery seems to be getting more and more popular so I thought I could help some people out by talking about my experiences.

I’ve done martial arts for the past 12 years, I’m a second degree black belt in karate and have competed as a Muay Thai kickboxer since 2009. I first started experiencing hip pain in oct of 2013 while training for a fight. I had always been pretty stiff and inflexible no matter how much I stretched. I can remember an instance working on high kicks where I suddenly had sharp shooting pain in the front of my hips that I would now suspect actually labral tears. Over the years the pain slowly got worse and worse and my flexibility also diminished. I still competed throughout the years but in 2018 it was starting to become too much to bare. I was constantly in pain, I wasn’t able to run any more and training was beginning to be unbearable. Finally in 2019 I went to a physical therapist and had x rays taken. The x rays revealed that I had some pretty severe hip impingements and that I should consider getting hip impingement surgery.

With the way insurance works in California, I wasn’t able to start insurance until 2020 and when I was finally seen by a orthopedic surgeon. It turned out that not only did I have severe hip impingement on both the femoral and acetabular side, I also had severe arthritis with no joint space left due to the loss of cartilage. In fact on the left side I had actually fractured off part of the impingement during training. Due to the cartilage loss I was no longer a candidate for the FAI surgery. The doctor then told me because of my age, I also wasn’t a candidate for a total hip replacement. Basically he said to come back when that pain is too much to do anything and they would have no other option. I quickly asked for a second opinion. while this surgeon was a little more detailed on why I didn’t have the options, I was told the same thing. I had even asked about hip resurfacing but he did not recommend to due to its “low Success rate”.
After this month went by and I honestly was pretty depressed but kept searching for options and stumbled upon the forum surface hippy. It has tons of people on there talking about their experiences. I spent the next week reading everything about hip resurfacing on the internet watching every video on youtube (even the surgery itself). I emailed the doctor and told him to put me in contact with someone who does hip resurfacing. He connected me to Doctor Anwar at Kaiser in West LA. he quickly called me and discussed everything about the surgery, and said I was an excellent candidate. Due to covid, the surgery wasn’t able to happen right away so I spent that time working out as much as I could to be in the best shape I could be going into the surgery, and watching every video I could find. After passing all of the pre op medicals it was go time. My doctor preferred to separate the two surgeries and do one at a time. He felt that the recovery process goes better overall.

My left hip was done August 26th. Soon after waking up I the recovery process started. Out of the bed and starting to walk with crutches. I had a ton of trouble lifting my leg up in front to walk and it was very very painful. The doctor and nurses assumed it was because of the muscle atrophy because of my activity and how bad the impingements were for so long. Because I was so active before, my muscles had basically been working wrong for a long time. I went home the same day of surgery and the real recovery began. The first 5 days were honestly pretty terrible, the pain was different as it wasn’t in the joint, but my hip flexors were SCREAMING every time I would try to move my leg. This lasted about 1 week and then the recovery process started zooming. I spent about 12 days using the crutches and the switched to cane for another week or so. I stuck to the at home pt pretty strictly and I definitely saw it helping a lot. At 6 weeks I was allowed to break 90 degrees of flexion and start internal rotation. I also got approved to go back to the gym for upper body workouts. The way my doctor described it was I could start easing out of those restrictions, but still no impact. 12 weeks go by and recovery has gone great, I would honestly forget that I had the surgery at this point, unless I did something a little too intense athletically. Then it’s time for the other side.

The right side was done November 18th and this time was a bit different. Upon waking up the pain I had from the first one, was not really there. Getting out of bed and walking around was much, much easier. This one initially seemed to be going a lot smoother than the first. Moving around was much easier, I switched to the cane after only 3 days and the pain only lasted about 2 days. In the long term, it did give me more issues overall. Again this was because of the muscle atrophy due to my activity levels, and my muscles not working properly. Through PT everything has greatly improved and this time at the 12 week mark I was back to boxing training.
I have been very very active since the 12 week mark and have had some minor complications but nothing unexpected. right at the 6 month mark I actually threw my first kicks and was blown away! I hadn’t been able to comfortably kick above my own knee in 10 years and now I was throwing body kicks with no issue. Most of all, I had no discomfort afterwards! I’m 8 months post op now on the right side and 11 months on the left and everything is going great. They aren’t perfect, and I still have some minor issues when it comes to my return to sport, and kicking specifically. In terms of my day to day living I’m totally happy. I still haven’t started running, not because I don’t feel that I can, but because I’m going to be adding impact through kicking, I want to save on any additional impact potential for now.

In closing, I’m happy with everything so far and will continue to progress and improve for years to come. I plan on making a YouTube channel and will be regularly posting my process from surgery and recovery now that I’m nearing the 1 year mark. I plan on focusing on the athletic side of things and really show what these new hips can do. Anyone who’s interested in following the channel name is called BionicBoxer if anyone is interested in checking out the progress over the coming months/years and I plan to spread the word about Hip resurfacing.