Would you care to elaborate? I've had open abdominal surgery and am starting exercise once again. I used to go to the gym for a while some years ago and nothing bad happened, but I'm always afraid of a hernia.
My surgeon had a look at the training program and told me to skip the initial exhaustion test, do it in 18 weeks instead of 6 by increasing the number of reps only once a week and remove the plus from the number of reps in the last series.
It's crazy how fast unsed muscles atrophy when you're past 40, I only stopped for 8 months (the recovery from my surgery) and I had to start back at day one.
After surgery it was fairly painful for a few weeks. Since recovery I've worked out hard and not had any trouble. I'm a sample size of one.