Riding an Electric Trike After Hip Replacement: Deb's Hill Test on a Fat Tire E-Trike with an Armchair Seat

Back on Wheels With a New Hip: Deb's E-Trike Hill Test

Most of the test rides we film at sixthreezero are about the bike. This one is about the rider just as much. Deb is part of our team here, and when she climbed onto this electric trike for the video, she was riding on a brand-new hip. Her plan was simple: take the trike up a hill, come back down, and tell you honestly how it felt on a body that had just been through joint replacement surgery.

I've watched a lot of people try trikes over the years. I've fit riders recovering from knee surgery, riders with arthritis, and riders who haven't been on anything with pedals in decades. What I appreciated about Deb's ride is that she didn't treat it like a sales pitch. She narrated what she felt in real time, including the moment she decided she wasn't going to attempt one particular descent, and the moment she admitted she probably shouldn't go as fast as she wanted to. That kind of honesty helps someone watching at home figure out whether a trike will actually work for them.

So in this article I'm going to walk you through her ride from start to finish: the climb, the turnaround, the reverse gear, the seat, the way the trike handles bumps and shifting, and the bigger thing she kept coming back to, which was freedom. Along the way I'll add context from my side of things, the fitting side, so you can match what Deb experienced to your own situation.

Who this article is for

If you've had a hip replacement, a knee replacement, or any joint surgery and you're wondering whether riding is back on the table, this is for you. Same goes if you're waiting on surgery and feel stuck at home, or if you simply haven't ridden a two-wheeler in years and the idea of balancing makes you nervous. Deb touched on all three of those situations during her ride.

One thing I'll say up front, and I'll say it again later: I'm a bike fitter, not a surgeon. Talk to your surgeon or physical therapist about when you're cleared to ride and how hard you should push. What I can tell you is how the bike behaves and what riders like Deb tell me after they ride it. Put those two sources of information together and you'll make a much better decision than either one alone would give you.

Starting the climb in pedal assist and a low gear

Deb started the video by pointing the trike uphill. Not a gentle warm-up loop around a parking lot, an actual hill. She was in pedal assist, and she had the trike in a low gear. That combination is worth explaining, because it's exactly how I'd set someone up who's coming back from surgery.

Pedal assist means the motor adds power while you're turning the cranks. You're still pedaling, but the motor shares the load. The low gear makes each pedal stroke lighter and lets your legs spin rather than grind. Put those together and you get what Deb described: she could work her legs as well, without straining them. For someone rebuilding strength around a new joint, that's the sweet spot. You get movement and circulation, and the motor handles the part of the climb that would otherwise force you to push hard against heavy resistance.

I often tell riders that the gears and the assist are two separate dials. The assist decides how much help the motor gives. The gears decide how hard each pedal stroke feels. You can mix them however your body needs that day. Deb's choice, assist on and gear low, is the gentlest way to climb while still doing some of the work yourself. On a day when you feel stronger, you might shift up a gear or two. On a day when your hip is grumbling, you leave it low and let the motor carry more.

Fat tires that don't care what's under them

Early on, Deb pointed out the tires. This trike runs on fat tires, and her point was that you can take it on just about any surface. That matters more than people think. When you're recovering from surgery, you're not only worried about effort, you're worried about surprises: a patch of gravel, a crack in the pavement, a grassy shoulder you didn't plan on riding across. Wide tires spread the trike's weight over a bigger footprint and roll over that kind of thing with less drama. If that versatility is high on your list, our fat tire electric trikes are a good place to start browsing.

She also paused to take in the scenery. "Look how pretty this is" might not sound like a technical observation, but I'd argue it's one of the most telling moments in the whole video. When a bike is comfortable enough that you're looking around instead of thinking about your hip, the bike is doing its job.

First impressions of the seat

Barely more than a minute in, Deb was already talking about the chair. She said it was very supportive of her back and that she was sitting in a comfortable position. I'll go deeper on the seat later, because she had a lot more to say about it, but notice that her very first impression, before any turning or reversing or descending, was about support. For a rider with a new hip, where and how you sit shapes the entire ride. A seat that cradles your lower back and keeps your hips in a neutral position lets you relax into the pedaling instead of bracing against every bump.

That early comfort also set the tone for everything that followed. A rider who feels supported in the first sixty seconds is a rider who's willing to try a hill, practice a turnaround, and keep going. A rider who's uncomfortable from the start usually cuts the ride short. Deb kept going.

At the top of the first climb, Deb made a decision a lot of new riders will relate to. She looked at the hill going down the other side and said she wasn't going to attempt it. Instead, she'd show us how easy it is to turn the trike around. I love that she kept that moment in. Knowing when not to do something is part of riding safely, especially when you're recovering, and a good trike should give you easy options when you decide to change plans.

A turning radius that's better than you'd expect

The first option is the obvious one: just turn. Deb noted that the trike has a pretty decent turning radius. People who've never ridden a trike sometimes picture them as clumsy, like steering a shopping cart with a stuck wheel. In practice, a well-designed trike can come around in a reasonable amount of space on a typical road or path. You won't spin it on the spot, but on a quiet street you can usually swing it around in one smooth arc.

There's a technique piece here too. On a trike, you don't lean into turns the way you do on a bicycle. You steer, you slow down before the turn, and you let the three wheels keep you planted. For riders coming off surgery, that's a relief. There's no need to shift your hips or throw your body weight around to make the bike turn, and that kind of twisting is often exactly what you're told to be careful with in the early stages of recovery.

The reverse gear

The second option is the one that gets people's attention. Deb switched the trike into reverse and backed it up. She half-joked "we hope" right before it started moving, and then there it was, rolling backward. She was careful about it, too, saying she was trying not to go off the road, which is exactly the right mindset. Reverse isn't for speed. It's for getting yourself out of a spot without climbing off.

Then she switched back into pedal assist, pedaled forward, and was pointed in her new direction. Her reaction was short and sweet: that was easy, and off she went again.

I want to spend a minute on why reverse is such a big deal for certain riders. A trike is wider and longer than a bicycle, and it's heavier. On a regular bike, if you overshoot a turn or nose into a tight spot, you hop off and drag it backward. On a trike, that's harder, and for someone with a new hip, getting off, wrestling the trike around, and getting back on is exactly the kind of twisting, lifting, and stepping you want to minimize. A reverse function means you can stay seated, back out of a parking space or a dead-end path, and keep going. We group trikes with this feature in our reverse gear electric trikes collection if it's a must-have for you.

Real-world situations where reverse helps

These are the moments where riders tell me reverse made the biggest difference:

• Backing out of a garage or a narrow side yard where there's no room to turn around.
• Easing away from a curb you've pulled in too close to, so you can line up again.
• Getting out of a dead-end trail or a cul-de-sac without a multi-point turn.
• Repositioning at a bike rack or outside a café without standing up.

Every one of those situations would normally mean dismounting. If dismounting is the hardest part of your ride, and for a lot of people recovering from joint surgery it is, taking it out of the equation changes how far and how often you're willing to ride. Small frictions add up. Remove enough of them and riding stops feeling like a project and starts feeling like something you just do.

Getting on and off in the first place

Deb didn't spend time on mounting in this video, so I won't put words in her mouth about it. But it's the question I get most often from riders with hip or knee replacements, so I'll add my own perspective. The height you need to lift your leg over the frame, and how far you have to lower yourself onto the seat, matter a great deal when you're following hip precautions. If stepping over is a concern for you, take a look at our easy-to-mount e-trikes with a low step-thru frame, and bring it up when we talk about fit. It's one of the first things I ask about.

I'd also suggest practicing your mount and dismount a few times before your first real ride, with the trike parked on flat ground. Get a feel for where to put your hands, which leg goes first, and how the seat height lines up with your hips. Once that routine is comfortable, the ride itself becomes the easy part.

Back to Deb. With the trike turned around, she was ready for the portion of the ride where she'd really get to judge the ergonomics: a gentler descent she was comfortable with, and a longer stretch of steady riding where she could pay attention to how her body felt.

Easy steering and a relaxed posture

Once she was rolling again, Deb summed up the riding position in a few words: the trike is easy to steer, and you're in a relaxed posture. That sounds simple, but a relaxed posture is hard to fake. If the handlebars are too far away, you hunch. If the seat is too upright, you lose back support. If the bars are too close, your knees knock into them. When a rider says "relaxed" without having to think about it, the geometry is doing its job.

Extending your legs without loading your joints

Then she got specific about her legs, which is the part I'd pay the most attention to if you've had joint surgery. Deb said the design is really comfortable on the legs because you can extend them, and that's great because it isn't putting pressure on your joints.

Here's what's going on from a fitting perspective. When your leg extends comfortably at the bottom of each pedal stroke, the joint isn't cramped into a deep bend while it's working. A position where your knees come way up toward your chest, or where you're pushing hard from a tightly folded hip, is the opposite. A lot of the comfort difference between bikes comes down to how much your hip and knee have to bend and how much force you're applying while they're bent. Deb's experience was that this trike let her stretch out and pedal smoothly, and her new hip didn't complain about it.

Every body is different, which is why seat position and fit matter so much. Two riders on the same trike can have completely different experiences if one has the seat set correctly and the other doesn't. That's a big part of why we built our personalized bike fitting process: the goal is to land you in a position where your legs extend comfortably and nothing gets pinched or overloaded.

If the reclined, legs-forward feeling is what draws you in, it's also worth browsing our recumbent electric trikes, which take that idea even further.

"Like sitting in an armchair"

Before heading down the slope she'd picked, Deb checked that nobody was coming and took it easy. On the way down, she came back to the seat again: the chair is so comfortable, she said, it feels like sitting in an armchair.

That's not a phrase she was reading off a spec sheet. It's how a seat with real back support feels compared with a traditional bicycle saddle. On a standard saddle, all your weight sits on a small area and your back and core have to hold you upright. With a chair-style seat, your back has something to lean against, your weight spreads out, and your hips aren't perched on a narrow point. After hip surgery, that support can be the difference between a ten-minute ride and a ride long enough to actually get somewhere.

Armrests on both sides

Deb also showed off the armrests. She lowered the armrest on one side, then the other, and pointed out that you can rest your arms if you want to. It's a small detail, but think about what it does on a longer ride. Your shoulders and arms get a break. You're not gripping the bars the whole time. And when you're settling into the seat or coming to a stop, there's something to brace against. Being able to put each one down independently means you can set them up the way you like. If seat comfort is your top priority, our most comfortable electric trikes collection is built around this kind of support.

Feeling safe on three wheels

Maybe the most important line in this part of the video was this one: Deb said she feels safe on the trike. You don't feel like you're going to fall over if you lose your balance, she explained, because you've got three wheels supporting you.

For someone recovering from joint replacement, a fall is the thing everyone worries about: you, your family, your surgeon. On a two-wheel bike, balance is your job. Stop too slowly, wobble at a crosswalk, hit an awkward patch, and you need quick reflexes and steady legs to catch yourself. On a trike, the bike stays upright on its own. You can come to a complete stop and simply sit there. You can pause on a slope. You can ride at a walking pace without the front wheel getting twitchy.

She came back to that point later in the ride more than once: the stability is amazing, she said, and she feels very safe on it. When a rider keeps returning to the same feeling without anyone prompting her, I take that seriously.

Three wheels aren't magic. You still need to slow down for turns and pay attention on slopes, and I always recommend a good helmet, which you'll find in our sixthreezero helmets collection. But the baseline sense of security is completely different from a two-wheeler, and for many riders that security is what gets them out the door in the first place.

"I was pretty stuck in the house"

About halfway through the ride, Deb shared something that made the video for me. She said she was having a lot of fun, and then she explained why it meant so much. After her injury, while she was waiting for surgery, she wasn't able to do anything. She was pretty stuck in the house, because even sitting in a car was far too uncomfortable.

Think about that for a second. Not just unable to exercise. Unable to tolerate a car ride. That's a whole world shrinking down to the walls of a house. Anyone who's been through a long wait for joint surgery knows the feeling: the pain limits what you can do, the limits wear on you, and the weeks start to blur together.

So when Deb said the sense of freedom she felt on the trike was amazing, that it made her feel rejuvenated, that she felt like she could do anything, she meant it in a very concrete way. She went from not being able to sit comfortably in a car to cruising up and down hills in the open air. She even laughed and added that perhaps she shouldn't, but this was amazing. That little bit of mischief is a good sign. It means the trike gave her some of her confidence back.

I hear versions of this story constantly, from riders with all kinds of mobility challenges. The trike itself isn't the point. The point is getting out to the park, to the coffee shop, over to a friend's house, under your own power. For many riders that's the real return on the investment. If you're shopping with that kind of goal in mind, our electric trikes for seniors collection gathers the models riders in similar situations tend to choose.

Climbing again, this time with more pedaling

Then it was back up a hill. This time Deb kept pedal assist on but made a point of pedaling up the climb herself. Her reasoning was straightforward: get some exercise, get the blood flowing, and build the muscles back up around the joint.

That's the beauty of an e-trike during recovery. You're not choosing between a workout and getting home in one piece. You decide how much of the work you want to do, minute by minute. Feeling good? Pedal harder or shift up. Not feeling it today? Let the motor carry more of the load. The same ride can be a real workout on Tuesday and a gentle spin on Wednesday, and both count.

There's a mental side to this as well. After weeks or months of not being able to do much, it's easy to lose trust in your own body. Climbing a hill, even with help from a motor, rebuilds some of that trust. You prove to yourself that you can do more than you could last month, and that tends to snowball.

No pressure on the knees, either

Deb broadened her comments beyond hips. She said that if you've had a knee replacement, or any joint replacement, there's no pressure on the knees either. Coming from someone riding on a new hip, I think that's a fair description of how the riding position felt to her, and it lines up with what I hear from knee-replacement riders I've fit. Same caveat as before, though: your surgeon and physical therapist know your joint and your timeline. Use what Deb felt as a reason to ask them the question, not as a substitute for their answer.

When your legs get tired, let the motor take over

Here's the piece of advice from Deb I'd underline twice: when your legs get a little tired, just stop pedaling and use the power assist. That's the safety net that makes recovery riding realistic. On a regular bike, if your legs run out halfway up a hill, you're stuck. You walk it, or you push through pain. On an e-trike, you ease off and let the motor do more. You're never trapped by your own fatigue.

That matters for building a habit, too. If every ride ends with you exhausted and sore, you'll stop riding. If every ride ends with you feeling like you did something good for your body and still had energy left over, you'll want to ride again tomorrow. Consistency beats intensity, especially when you're rebuilding strength.

If you haven't ridden a two-wheeler in a while

Deb wrapped up this stretch with a line I think a lot of people need to hear: if you haven't ridden a two-wheeler for a while, this is the answer.

There's a whole group of people who'd love to ride but have quietly decided they're done with bikes. Maybe it's been twenty years. Maybe a bad fall left its mark. Maybe balance just isn't what it used to be. For them, the hardest part isn't the pedaling, it's the fear of tipping over. A trike removes that fear from the very first ride, so you can focus on enjoying yourself. You can see the full range of three-wheel options in our electric tricycles collection.

Rolling over a big bump

Near the end of the ride, Deb picked up some speed on a downhill stretch. She glanced at the display, clearly surprised by how quickly she was moving, and right around then she went over what she called quite a big bump. Her takeaway was about the tires: that's the advantage of fat tires, she said, because they absorb some of the shock when you roll over something like that.

For anyone with a new joint, shock is not your friend. A jolt that a healthy rider shrugs off can travel straight up into a hip or knee that's still healing. Wider tires with more air volume act like a cushion between you and the road. They don't erase bumps, but they soften the hit. Pair that with a supportive seat and rougher pavement becomes a lot less punishing.

I'll add a word of caution of my own here. Just because a trike can pick up speed downhill doesn't mean you should let it run, especially early in recovery. Trikes are most stable at sensible speeds, and they need you to slow down before turns. Feather the brakes on long descents and keep your speed at a level where you could stop comfortably if something appeared in front of you. Deb's ride had a closed, quiet road and a camera crew; your neighborhood may not.

After the bump, Deb eased the trike to a stop and got ready for the next part of the demo.

Shifting gears: pedal while you shift

Deb also shared a quick, practical tip about the gears: you have to change gears while you're pedaling. That's how this trike's gears work, and it trips up a lot of new riders. If you try to shift while the pedals are sitting still, the gear change won't happen properly until you start turning the cranks again, and that can feel clunky. Get in the habit of shifting with light pressure on the pedals, ideally before you reach the hill rather than halfway up it.

She shifted into sixth gear while riding along and described the feel nicely: there's pressure on your legs to cycle, but not too much. That's what you want on a recovery ride. Enough resistance that it feels like exercise, not so much that you're straining a joint that's still settling in.

Confidence builds with every ride

Toward the end, Deb said something I hear from almost every new trike rider: the more you ride this bike, the more confidence you get. And, with a grin, she added that this meant she was going to go faster.

That progression is exactly what I expect to see. The first few minutes on a trike feel a little unfamiliar, especially if you're used to a bicycle. The steering feels different, and you have to unlearn the instinct to lean. Within a single ride, though, most people settle in. Within a week or so, it feels natural. Over the course of this one video, Deb went from deciding not to tackle a hill to pedaling up climbs, playing with the gears, and joking about speed. That's a lot of ground to cover in one outing.

She closed by calling it a terrific little e-trike, saying she thinks you'll love it, and inviting people to come down and try it. I'd echo that invitation.

How to choose the right trike for your recovery

If Deb's experience sounds like what you're after, here's how I'd approach the decision, based on what she highlighted during her ride:

• Seat support first. If you've had hip or back issues, a chair-style seat with back support and armrests will likely matter more than any other single feature.
• Leg extension. Look for a riding position that lets your legs extend comfortably without forcing deep bends at the hip or knee.
• Reverse. If dismounting is difficult for you, reverse can save a lot of awkward maneuvering in driveways and tight spots.
• Fat tires. If your routes include rough pavement, gravel, or grass, wider tires will smooth things out and soften bumps.
• Pedal assist and gears. Make sure you can easily add help when your legs tire and add resistance when you want a workout.
• Step-over height. Think honestly about how easy it will be to get on and off while following your hip or knee precautions.

If you want even more stability and the idea of four wheels on the ground appeals to you, we also offer four-wheel e-bikes, which some riders with significant balance concerns prefer.

Try before you commit

The best way to know is to ride. If you're near us, come visit our store and take a trike up a hill the way Deb did. If you're not, our 30-day test ride gives you time to try one at home on your own streets, at your own pace. And if you're not sure which model suits your body and your recovery, reach out and ask for a fitting consultation. Tell me about your surgery, your precautions, and where you want to ride, and we'll narrow it down together.

Deb's ride is a good reminder of why we do this. Before her surgery, she couldn't sit comfortably in a car. In this video she climbed hills, reversed out of a turn, settled into an armchair-style seat, and laughed about going faster. If you've been stuck at home waiting on surgery, or you're working through recovery right now, I hope her story gives you a sense of what might be possible on the other side.