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Labrum Surgery Veteran Canha a Sounding Board for Athletics' Chapman

With Matt Chapman having hip and labrum surgery Monday, Oakland Athletics outfielder Mark Canha took talked with Chapman about what he might expect. Canha went through a similar surgery in 2016 and it took his six months to fully recover.
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Mark Canha isn’t going to pretend that the hip surgery he underwent in 2016 is exactly like the labrum surgery that was awaiting Matt Chapman Monday morning.

But hip surgeries do have similarities, so when he learned is Oakland A’s teammate was being operated on by the same man, Dr. Marc Philippon, who performed Canha’s surgery four years ago, the two men had a chat.

“I just kind of offered it as soon as I found out he was leaving to go to the doctor,” Olson said in a video conference call Monday. “I just offered to give him any advice or answer any questions he had about the surgery. And then (gave him) my experience with it. I basically just wanted to help him and kind of share my experience of if it's helpful to him.”

What Canha knows is there is a long road to recovery, something close to six months, which was how long it took for Canha to feel like himself again.

“The recovery was about six months and the key for that surgery, I was told. was getting back your glute stabilization -so it was a lot of lower body exercises,” Canha said. “After six months, I felt good to go.

“It felt different after I had the surgery done. Definitely a lot better. But it felt different from when it was a healthy hip, I guess you could say. It just feels a little tighter and a little more solid because they repair everything in there. ... It definitely felt more stable, like I could swing and drive into it the way I wanted to as opposed to before, when I would have pain swinging and running.”

Meanwhile, the A’s are down to the last two weeks of the regular season

He says that the A’s as a whole just need to keep on keeping on.

“It’s not going to be easy,” Canha said. “It’s very different, but we just want to get into playing some good baseball and going to the playoffs.

“It’s just kind of keeping our heads down and focus on the game and the task at hand. Each and every day is going to be about keeping our focus.”

Follow Athletics insider John Hickey on Twitter: @JHickey3

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