2 min read

Dr. Kurt Hoverson

Posted on Apr 11, 2024

Avoid Hip Pain By Adding Three Exercises To Your Daily Routine

Many things can cause hip pain, such as previous injuries, prolonged periods spent sitting, hip/pelvis alignment, and decreased hip mobility.

Pain can be present anywhere around the hip, but the most common areas are the front or side. You might also experience a decreased range of motion in your hip due to pain and tight or weak muscles. You may even notice limping while walking and have trouble bearing weight on the painful leg.

You are most likely to experience hip pain if you sit for long periods, have recently picked up a new sport/ activity/ exercise (ex. running), or if you already suffer from back pain due to altered movement patterns.

In most cases, the treatment can also serve as a form of prevention for hip pain! The goal is to return as much range of motion as possible to the hip, then learn to control and keep that motion.

The following exercises are intended to be down 2-3x/day and prioritizing at least one session right before a workout.

Windshield Wipers

Start position Knees bent and upper body reclined back, with arms supporting.

End position Rotate knees to one-side, trying to keep your chest “tall and proud”. Then repeat on your other side.

You should feel tension on the side and back of your hip.

Complete 10 reps, 2x each direction.

Hip Flexor-Hamstring Stretch

Start positionHalf-kneeling position, squeeze glute of back leg and drive knee forward.

TIP: If you feel pain in your low back, you’re going too far.

End position Sit back on your heel and keep your front leg straight as you fold your spine forward.

You should feel a stretch through the front of your kneeling leg and a stretch through the back of your front leg.

Complete 8 reps, 3x each leg

Load

Start position Split-stance position, with equal weight between both legs; both feet flat.

End position Move your body forward over your front leg and shift your hip toward the side. Back foot is on your toes, with ~70% of your weight now on your front leg. Reach your front arm straight overhead.

You should feel a tension stretch through side of your hip.

Complete 8 reps, 3x each leg

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3 min read

Janny Chan

Posted on Mar 9, 2023

Education

Test Your Hip Mobility

How tight are your hips?
Test your hip mobility with these simple exercises.

Stiff hips may be an early indicator of arthritis.
Here’s what you need to know.

It’s estimated that roughly 10% of the population experiences some form of hip pain, increasing as we age. Hip stiffness is often the first sign of impending hip pain.

Understanding the characteristics of tight hips and what you can do to help is the key to preventing pain.

5 Ways To Test Your Hip Mobility

Here are a few movements you can do to test your hip mobility.

These movements are best reviewed with a physical therapist, chiropractor, or massage therapist. Doing the tests yourself will give you an indication of your hip’s mobility and stiffness.

Squat Test: sink into a squat, and attempt to shift side-to-side. You may find one hip feeling more tension than the other.

Internal Rotation: lay on your back, bring your knees to a 90 degree angle, and rotate the feet outwards. This is the internal rotation of the hip. Compare range and feel side-to-side.

External Rotation: lay on your back, and bring one knee to a 90 degree angle. Keeping the thigh still, rotate your foot inwards. This is the external rotation of the hip. Compare range and feel side-to-side.

Flexion: lay on your back, with your legs flat. Bring one knee towards your chest. This is flexion of the hip. Compare range and feel side-to-side.

Extension: lay on your stomach, legs flat on the ground. Keep your knees straight, bring one leg off the ground. This is a hip extension. Compare range and feel side-to-side.

3 Common Reasons For Hip Stiffness

The hip is a highly mobile joint that relies on cartilage, bone, muscles, and nerves to work together. Each one of those components may contribute to feeling stiff in the hip.

Nerves: the ability to rotate the hip, and move it into adduction and abduction is limited by the mobility of the major nerves of the hip and thigh. Issues with major nerves of the hip build up over time due to movement, postural habits and/or a lack of mobility.

Muscles: your muscles and tendons are the most common sources of hip stiffness. Many office workers and athletes may complain of “hip flexor” stiffness or “glute stiffness”. The stiffness here may coincide with weak muscles, decreased range of motion in certain directions, and pain with use.

What starts off as stiffness and a pinch can become a chronic issue if not appropriately addressed. Hip pain can often feel like a pulling, cramping, or sharp pains at the front, back, and side of the hip. These will often be aggravated by general movements like sit-to-stands, side-to-side movements, running, or even walking.

Joint: cartilage damage (e.g. labrum of the hips) or surface degeneration of the articulating bones, “wear-and-tear” at the hip joint leads to significant reductions in the range of motion..

With joint issues, hip stiffness and pain are often felt deep in the groin. This pain is not palpable, meaning massage (or any other similar intervention) brings no temporary relief. There may be clicking, locking, or a feeling of “catching” at the hip. Athletic movements and stair climbing get more and more difficult.

Those with arthritis feel stiffness in the morning, continuing with aggravation and groin pain throughout the day, making a simple walk very difficult.

What Can I Do About My Hip Stiffness?

Regardless of the causes of your hip stiffness, understanding which movements are restricted or painful and what activities are limited is important to know moving forward. Thankfully, movement and exercise routines deliver amazing outcomes for hip stiffness.

Physical therapy can guide your hip mobility, and start creating movement goals. Along with massage therapy and chiropractic treatment, manual therapy techniques such as joint mobilizations and myofascial techniques provide relief for hip stiffness.

Want To Have FutureProof Hips?

Book a session with me! I’ll assess your movements and set you up on a FutureProof plan to increase your mobility, reduce pain and prevent injury.

Book your session today

6 min read

Top 5 Muscle Pain Relief Stretches You Can Do Anywhere

Posted on May 15, 2017

Education

Top 5 Muscle Pain Relief Stretches You Can Do Anywhere

Many people think of stretching and immediately associate it with pre or post-workout, but what about adding in some muscle pain relief stretches during your work day?

We are spending a considerable amount of time (approximately 8 hours) seated at our desk during the day, or looking down on our phones or tablets. Surely, we should take some time to think about muscle pain relief. Overtime our bodies will no longer want to deal with the strain caused by static posture. The most common types of pain we experience are neck tension, stiff shoulders, hip and back pain.

We take you through five effective active stretches for your whole body, resulting in increased mobility and muscle pain relief.

Neck Stretch: Hold for 10 seconds, 3x/side

Bend your head to the right.
Lower and press down your left shoulder
Reach forward with your left arm, just below shoulder level.

This is a great neck stretch for overall neck tension and muscle pain relief since it stretches out the upper trapezius muscle, while simultaneously promoting activity of the serratus anterior muscle. Both of these muscles work together to create healthy shoulder movement.

Thoracic Spine Rotations: Complete 5x/side

Lay on your right side, with your right leg extended and your left knee bent at 90 degrees, propped up with either a foam roller or pillow, to lock out your lumbar spine.
Outstretch your right arm to shoulder level with your palm facing up, and place your left arm directly on top.
Slowly start lifting your left arm up, mimicking the motion of an archer, rotating segmentally up the spine to evenly distribute the motion.
When the back of your left arm reaches the ground on the opposite side of your body, slowly rotate back to the starting position.

This stretch is great for thoracic spine relief. To increase extension and rotation within our thoracic spine. This will also offload the lumbar spine, decreasing back tension.

Hip Flexor Stretch (iliopsoas muscle release): Complete 5x/side

Start in a kneeling position, with your left leg forward, and your right knee bent behind you.
Tuck your pelvis under and squeeze your right glute.
Reach your right arm up and overhead to the left.
Lift your left arm up to shoulder level and rotate to the left.

This hip flexor stretch helps to offset prolonged sitting by stretching out your anterior hip flexors, especially the psoas, which can pull you into an anterior pelvic tilt.

Pectoralis Wall Stretch: Hold for 30 seconds/side

Find a doorway or the edge of a wall, and place your left arm against it, with your elbow bent and your arm overhead.
Sink forward into the stretch.

Stretching out the pectoralis muscle will correct your slouched posture and restore normal shoulder motion.

Hip External Rotator Stretch: Hold for 1 minute/side

Lay on your back with your knees bent and both feet flat on the floor.
Place your left heel on your right thigh, just above the knee.
Lift your right foot off the ground, and hug your right thigh into your chest.
To intensify the stretch, use your left elbow to push your left knee down and roll your body slightly to the right.

This is an effective stretch to increase hip mobility and reduce sacroiliac joint pain.

These stretches focus on the major muscle groups that usually contribute to neck and low back pain and stiffness. They are super simple and easy to do virtually anywhere! Something as little as spending a few minutes stretching is all you need for muscle pain relief. Small sacrifices daily will help the longevity of your body.

2 min read

How To Fix Your Tight Hips

Posted on Feb 6, 2017

Education

How To Fix Your Tight Hips

If your job requires you to sit all day, chances are you’ve complained about having tight hips a few times throughout the week. Here is your 6 step guide to unlocking your hips.

The tight hip sensation you feel is just a manifestation of your body sending signals to your brain to move the body part/joint around. If you continue to ignore those messages, your tight hips will only get worse.

The awareness and sensations become hard to discern, and you may feel confused on whether you are doing the activity right or wrong. Having self-awareness will help you understand when it is time to have a health care professional coach you through the next steps.

Here is when a Myodetox Therapist can provide you with solutions according to your individual needs, to move you along your progressions through the use of our manual therapy and movement education techniques.

So how do you tackle tight hips?

Try out some of these hip drills and exercises to regain the ranges of motion you have lost throughout the years.

1. Warrior Pose – Get into a one line stance by bringing one foot back and bending the front knee until you feel a comfortable stretch in the hip and quad of the back leg.

2. Downward Dog – Bend forward to place your hands firmly on the ground. Walk your hands out until you get into a tolerable pike position.

3. Low Lunge Quad Stretch – Get into a one line stance and place one knee on the ground. Reach back to grab the foot of the leg that is on the ground. Pull that foot towards your buttock until you feel a tolerable stretch in the quad of the same leg.

4. Hip Opener stretch – While in a lunge position extend the back leg keeping your knee of the ground. Bring both hands firmly on the floor inside the front leg. Use your elbow to drive the knee out until you feel a comfortable stretch in the groin/hip of the front leg.

5. Pigeon Stretch – Bring one shin on the floor in front of you with your opposite leg straight back behind you. Place your arms or forearms on the ground in front of you, whichever is more comfortable. Anteriorly tilt your pelvis by sitting up tall and bringing you tailbone towards the sky. Lean forward until you feel a comfortable stretch in the hip of the leg that is in front of you.

6.Cross-legged Arm Reach – Cross your legs in front of you and reach towards the sky. Take one hand and bring it over your head to try to touch the opposite shoulder blade. Take the other hand behind the back and try to touch the opposite shoulder blade.

3 min read

A Weak Butt Causes Hip Pain

Posted on Dec 6, 2016

Education

A Weak Butt Causes Hip Pain

If you’re feeling hip pain, it’s probably because you’re not walking around enough, and you’re not activating your butt enough.

If you’re not texting on your phone, you’re sitting at your desk hunched over, working away on your laptop. Time flies, and next thing you know, you’re getting up for a walk, but only after a couple hours have passed.

Although you’re working hard, you’re not working your butt enough. And even though you may not feel any pain now, the mid-day walk to grab lunch will eventually catch up to your hips.

To get a better idea how your butt is related to your hip pain, allow us to explain.

This important group of muscles do this as their major actions:
Medius: abducts the hip (hip to the side)
Maximus: extends the hip (pulls the thigh behind you)
Minimus:abducts the hip (hip to the side)

These important muscles are often weak and underworked. So many of our jobs require us to sit for prolonged periods of time. The lack of mobility causes our gluten to “turn off” or stop firing as effectively. Once our glutes stop firing, we start developing imbalances within the hip which can lead to aches and eventual hip pain.

When building strong glutes, you can expect to see some of these things happen along the way:

Alleviate back pain: Learning to contract your glutes in a multitude of ranges can alleviate a lot of the mechanical back pain you are currently experiencing. Your glutes work to stabilize the pelvis and keep the hip joint centered. When they’re strong, your lower back doesn’t need to compensate and take excessive mechanical stress.

Increase performance: If you want to maximize your athletic potential, squatting should be a top priority. Stronger glutes will improve your speed, agility, and jumping skills, and quick side-to-side movements. Every time you take a step, your glute max stabilizes your pelvis, making transitions into movements safe on your pelvic joints and ultimately your back.

Abolish knee pain: A strong glute medius keeps the pelvis stable and prevents swaying from side to side. When your pelvis isn’t stable, it puts a lot of excessive pressure on your knees and ankles. When your glutes are strong, it helps to maintain proper alignment of the knee, hip and ankle. This natural alignment keeps your knee from hurting by tracking the knee cap properly.

Try out these 3 movements and see if you can hold the positions for 1 minute each with total control.

This will give you a good indicator of how well your glutes are doing.

Kick backs

Single leg bridges

Side Clamp