Rob is suffering from hip pain, a Femoroacetabular Impingement
- Related Injuries: Hip
March 13, 2017
Hello
For over a month now I’ve been experiencing pain at the front of my right hip. Just at the hip crease. The pain is like a deep aching but becomes much more intense when I bring my knee upwards and then rotate my leg outwards. Or if I’m lying on my back and bend my knee to 90 degrees and rotate my leg outwards. When squatting, I also feel pain when I try to straighten my legs out of the squat. I’ve been trying to stretch my hip flexor but this doesn’t seem to have helped.
Any advice would be great as I don’t want to do anymore damage to the hip, Thanks
Rob
March 13, 2017
Hi Rob
These are all pretty symptoms of someone who has got an issue with their hip – commonly an FAI, where just like a shoulder problem, the ball of the femur bangs into the socket of the hip.
This sounds really structural – as in something banging into something is painful, but it’s not really. It’s about how you use your ball and socket joint rather than the joint itself. The function of your hip is more important than the structure.
Your hip flexors stiffen up to protect your hip joint – the joint has too much joint play (hence the banging around) and so the muscle stiffens to limit the joint play and help moderate your pain. So stretching gets rid of your protection system, giving your more pain later.
You need to improve the control (not strength) around your hip, and ask why have you lost control? The most common answer is that your lower back moves too much because the middle bit of your back (due to posture) doesn’t move enough.
The plan is therefore to get the middle bit of your back moving more and learning to control the bottom bit of your back and gluts. This isn’t about just making you feel better, it’s about getting you better long term.
Squatting is fine as long as you can control the amount your lower back moves and how much compensatory hip movements you have. The deeper you go, or the bigger weight you lift the harder and more painful it becomes.
So squat all you like, just do it with control and pain free movement.
The Guru
