Do you experience hip pain?
You may experience hip pain from a variety of diagnoses, but we see the two most common causes being hip osteoarthritis and joint impingement.
In both these cases and many other causes of hip pain, the main way we address your hip pain is with addressing any underlying hip joint mobility restrictions and weaknesses in surrounding hip and core musculature.
We wanted to go over a few generalized exercises that are often helpful to people with hip pain. We highly recommend that you seek an individualized physical therapy assessment with one of our doctors of physical therapy or with a physical therapist you trust in addition to the below exercises to ensure you are doing exercises individualized to your condition.
Mobility
Piriformis Stretch - 10x10 seconds
This exercise is great at stimulating addressing limitations of your hip external rotation mobility. Crucial for being able to sit criss cross and being able to untie/tie your shoes.
Hip Internal Rotation Stretch lying down - 10x10 seconds
The other rotational mobility direction that is often limited when you have hip pain is internal rotation which is very common especially if you notice that you walk significantly toed out.
Stability
The glutes are like the rotator cuff for the hip and there are three of them - glute max (the big butt muscle most people think of), glute med, and glute min. Very commonly all 3 will be limited in strength. The glute med and min are ones that are extremely important when we're walking in providing stability to the hip joint. The glute max is important in aiding your quads (muscles in the front of your thigh) in getting out of chairs and off the floor. Often times when these are weak, more pressure is placed on the hip joint contributing to pain.
Leg Lift on your side (aka hip abduction) - 2x10-15 reps
Addresses strength of the glute med and min
Bridge - 10x5 seconds, squeezing glutes together before lifting each rep
Addresses glute max strength in addition to the glute med/min exercise above.
Bird/dog - 10x5 seconds ea side
Addresses core, back, and glute strength while challenging your stability and balance.
We hope these exercises and article serve as a good starting point for you to be able to begin exercising to address your hip pain and get you back to doing the things you love pain-free.
We always love chatting with our community and hearing about what you have going on and how we can help. That’s why we offer FREE 15-minute phone consultations to find out if we're the right fit to help you reach your goals.
