How long do you have to wait to work out after a hair transplant?

Thank you for your question. You are trying to figure out when is a safe time to work out after a hair transplant. Your doctor is recommending waiting 2 months, while you see the general consensus is 21 days, so you can be sure there will be some variability in opinions.
I can certainly share with you how I explain to my patients when would be the right time to work out. A little background: I’m a Board-certified cosmetic surgeon and Fellowship-trained oculofacial plastic and reconstructive surgeon. I have been in practice in Manhattan and Long Island for over 20 years. I am also the founder of TrichoStem™ Hair Regeneration Centers, a system we developed to non-surgically help  men and women with genetic pattern hair loss, as well as other conditions, who come to us from around the world. This lead to establishing a category of intervention for hair loss, which originally evolved from hair transplant surgery.
In understanding when is a good time to work out, as a cosmetic surgeon, I do a lot of procedures from eyelid surgery, facelifts, injectables, and lasers. In general principles in surgery, when you talk about limiting working out, I generally want to minimize the risk for bleeding. Generally, regardless of the technique of surgery, the first few days are the highest risk. There are several phases of wound healing that are applicable to all surgeries: the hemostatic phase, inflammatory phase, the proliferative phase and then the wound remodeling phase.
That said, very often my conversations with patients are about what kind of working out they do, and that can be quite variable because everyone defines working out differently. For example, we in New York City, one of the things very popular is hot yoga. One of the things about elevating body temperature, putting aside just working out, is vasodilation, which can be an issue in terms of swelling.
With weightlifting and losing muscle mass, I certainly appreciate your concern. Generally among the fitness community, not working out for about two weeks, you’re not going to lose much muscle mass. When it comes to two months, I think it’s important to ask your doctor the reason why two months of not working out is the timeline given.
When people get transplant, for example a strip technique, there’s suturing at the back of the scalp. Once the sutures are removed, unless there’s any pulling of the skin, the wound healing will be pretty much unaffected by what you do. When you have grafts in place, they are pretty much stable, so once you get past the first week, it’s a matter of how much risk of swelling there is.
When patients come to us for Hair Regeneration, particularly when they’ve had previous hair transplant surgery, they’re often ready for a speech about not working out. Since we’re doing something non-surgical with Acellular matrix and platelet-rich plasma (PRP) being injected under the skin, we’re not really making any kind of open wound. It’s all just entry points with the skin, then working out is again something I discuss, but you can do that a lot sooner than you would with surgery.
That said, from my hair transplant practice, I would tell patients like I do with other surgeries, that after the first week, it’s usually okay to do something light. After the second week, use your judgement and work out to the point where you’re not going to get yourself to incredibly high levels of exertion, or increase your body temperature, blood pressure, and heart rate to an extremely high level. With each subsequent week, it gets safer to get closer to what you normally do.
Instead of having a lot of people second guess what their doctor is doing, I think they don't have a clear justification. If you are somebody who works out with some regularity, you are pretty intuitive about your body, then you can probably use your judgment once you get beyond the 21 days, or 3 weeks, that is generally accepted as time when you can work out more aggressively.
In the context of just surgery alone, with the wide range of surgeries I do with a large group of patients who are very physically active and fit, I think asking anybody not to work out for two months is unreasonable, unless there was a clear justification. There are other body surgeries such as tummy tucks that require more recovery before exercising again, but that’s a very different discussion. When it comes to hair transplant, I can’t see clearly what the justification would be. I think it’s best to have your doctor explain it to you so you can understand the thinking, then maybe you can come to an agreement on the level of working out so your doctor isn't concerned you are harming the outcome of your procedure. I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck, and thank you for your question.

Thanks for the question. Of course it depends on what your job is but generally I advice my patients to be away from work for 10-15 days. I wish you all the best.

After the hair transplant operation you need to maintain some extra care for your body. We do not suggest patients to do sports for at least one month.