Do you have hip pain when you walk or run?
Do you avoid playing sports because your hip hurts?
Does your hip hurt when you walk up or down stairs?
If any of these describe you, then you’re in a similar situation to many of the patients we see at Solutions Physical Therapy & Sports Medicine. Hip pain is often caused by tightness of specific hip muscles and weakness of others. The main muscles around your hip are your hip flexors, adductors, and glutes. When the hip flexors and glutes get tight, hip pain is often the result. However these muscles often get tight because the glutes and core muscles get weak.
The good news is there are simple exercises you can do to improve hip flexibility, get your glutes stronger, and solve hip pain.
Hip flexor stretch
Hold this stretch for 30 seconds and do it 3 times on each side. Do this twice a day for maximal effect.
Piriformis stretch
This is called a piriformis stretch, but it really stretches 3 different glute muscles all at the same time.
Hold for 30 seconds and do it 3 times on each side. Do it twice a day for the best results.
This is really effective at reducing pain on the outside of your hip or your butt. It will give you a good short term response, but you still need to get the glutes stronger for lasting relief.
Split Squat
When your hip hurts in the front of your hip, it is often due to hip flexor tightness. The hip flexor gets short and compresses the hip joint causing pain or a pinching feeling. Stretching the hip flexors resolves the compression and the pain.
Split squats help you maintain the flexibility you gained from stretching your hip flexors by building core strength and quad strength on your back leg.
They also build glute strength in your front leg so you save time building strength in 2 muscle groups with 1 exercise.
As you lower yourself down, stay tall and don’t bend at your hip on the back leg. Your shoulder, hip and knee of your back leg should stay in a straight line the entire way down.
Hold for 5 seconds at the bottom and then return to the start position. Start with 2 sets of 10 every other day and work up to 3 sets of 10.
None of the exercises above should make you hurt more.
If you’ve tried these and you’re still hurting, we can help you!
At Solutions Physical Therapy & Sports Medicine, our physical therapists are experts at treating hip pain and will develop a plan to help you stop it.
Call us at 703-299-3111, or click here and a member of our team will schedule you an appointment with one of our expert physical therapists.
What happens if you don’t try have a plan to solve your hip pain?
- Your don’t get exercise because your hip hurts
- You avoid playing with your kids because your afraid of hurting your hip
- You get out of shape and are more likely to get other diseases and injuries
But WITH a plan to solve hip pain you can live the life you want again.
The exercises above are a great way to get started. They don’t require a ton of time and are pretty easy to do correctly.
But if you want an expert to listen to your unique problems and guide you to success, a Solutions Physical Therapy & Sports Medicine physical therapist will create a plan specifically for you.
You’ll feel confident that you have the knowledge and ability to solve hip pain and do all the things you want.
Call us at 703-299-3111, or click here to schedule your appointment and start your path to healing.
Working to keep you living your best life,
The Solutions Physical Therapy & Sports Medicine Team
