How can you stop the person in front of you reclining their seat in a plane?

I had an incident where the person in front reclined. I asked them politely to put the seat up, but got a sparky, rude reply. Later in the flight, needing to use the rest rom, I asked again with the same response. I then got up and hip checked their seat.They are probably still seeing their chiropractor on a regular basis. BUT, the seat went up and didn't recline the rest of the flight.