Why can I barely walk after sitting? I'm going to give you three causes for
hip arthritis stiffness after sitting. I'm also going to give you three ways to make it better.
This is a question that I get all the time from people suffering from hip arthritis.
Why do I get so stiff when I go to stand up after I've been sitting for a while?
And it's related to why people feel stiffness when they first get out of bed.
The first cause is because of a lack of movement over time. When that ball and
socket of the hip joint is just not moving because you've been sitting for a while,
or if you've been lying down, sleeping at night and you just haven't been moving like
you normally would throughout the day, throughout the day, you get up and go
do things and your fidgeting your chair, you shifting your seat, you shift when you're in
your recliner or you're standing and there's natural movements that occur in the hip joint.
Those little bits of motion that happen while you're awake cause the joint to lubricate itself.
And so that means that you're going to have less stiffness in the joints. But if your still
if you're not moving, like if you're sitting for a while or if you're lying down sleeping
at night and that hip joint is just in the same position for several minutes, several hours, like
when you sleep or sit, then what happens is the cartilage surfaces begin to stick on each other.
Now, let me take a side note here. A little detour to explain why this happens and then
we'll get back to the the causes. If you think of cartilage as like a sponge,
like a dish sponge that you dunk in water before you dunk it in water, it is dry.
And as soon as you dunk it into the water, it absorbs all the water and becomes hydrated.
And then if you squeeze that sponge, you push all the water out and the sponge
becomes relatively dehydrated. Now, think of cartilage as the same thing,
because if you look at it microscopically, it is we call it a collagen matrix. It's a
bunch of different cells and parts of cells that are kind of like a web space together.
And it looks very similar. It's like a sponge. And it is designed to be
very lubricated because there needs to be smooth motion inside the joints. But if
that joint has had an arthritic problem for a while, it's usually being over compress,
just like you're squeezing that sponge. And so it squeezes the water out of the cartilage,
which makes it less lubricated, less hydrated, and more likely to stick.
That's why the stiffness coming back to the sitting and while you're stiff afterwards so
if you're still for a long time, you just don't get much lubrication through the cartilage of the
joint and it leads to stiffness. And you slowly have to free it up after you get up to walk.
The second reason is related to that compression idea that I was talking about. There are muscle
imbalances in people that have hip arthritis that caused the ball and socket joined at the
hip to be compressed extra to be pushed together usually towards the front. And that causes that
cartilage to get the water pushed out of it, just like the sponge analogy that I was talking about.
And so when that compression happens, it's sustained over time because that muscle imbalance,
you live with it, it's there with you all the time until you decide to change
it and figure out what to do to correct it, which we talk about at length here on this
channel. But if you're if you have that muscle imbalance, you're going to get a
consistent extra compression going through the joint that's going to lead to that stiffness.
And the third cause of the stiffness from sitting when you go to stand up is that
when your hip joint is sitting, when it's in a sitting position,
your hips upwards like this is the right hip and this is the top of the thigh bone.
You're in this position right here. It's a little difficult to see. But when when you
move the hip into that position right there, what's happening in the ball and socket joint,
This is the front of the hip is your ball is this way on the socket. So the front
edge of the socket is being pressed against the front end of the ball.
So you get compression specifically in that area on the front of the hip. And if you're sitting
for a while, that part gets extra compression. So you've got multiple things going on here. You've
got the muscle imbalance, adding compression, then the weight of your body pushing against the
front edges of the ball and the socket joint. And then you haven't been moving for a while.
All those three factors come together to cause that stiffness that you feel
when you take your first few steps after getting up out of a chair.
So here are three things that you can do to help that stiffness that you might be getting
if you have hip arthritis and you go to stand up after you've been sitting for a while. The
first thing is to fidget more in your chair. So if you sit somewhere like so you're going
to have a meal or you're going to be sitting through a show or movie, something like that.
Then you want to sit in a way where you wiggle your thighs in and out from time to time. I mean,
you might even make it a thing where you consistently just wiggle your thighs in and
out. Just this little wiggle looks like a normal thing that people do. I mean,
you might be considered a fidgeter or, you know, somebody who has A.D.D. or I mean,
I'm not saying you have A.D.D., but people that just move a lot.
But you're doing it intentionally, not subconsciously, because what you're trying to
accomplish here is that movement inside the joints that you get some lubrication into that cartilage,
because if you just stay still, that's when it tends to stick and you lose the nice smooth
glide and the joint. But if you make it a point to wiggle your thighs in and out like this every
few minutes, at least, you know, 20, 30, 40 reps, or if you just do it consistently when
I tell people to do this, the most successful people say they just do it all the time.
They're not even counting reps. They're just in the habit of wiggling their thighs in and
out and they find that that's the most successful for them, that they feel tremendously less stiff
in their hips. But at the start of developing this habit, you might need to put yourself on
a timer and every 5 to 10 minutes, at most, 15 minutes I would do 20, 30 reps like this and and
just be like that until you figure out how to do this more subconsciously, more like a habit.
The second thing that you can do to help is to take that compression off and brace it when
that ball is forward in the socket. Because you're in a sitting position like this. So
my thigh bone comes up and the ball part of the thigh bone pushes up against the socket.
So if you can sit in a way where you're more reclined back like this, that helps.
That's why sitting in a recliner tends to be very comfortable for people with hip arthritis. But
if you don't have access to a recliner somewhere where you can lean back, if you can sit somewhere
where the chair's higher, like a bar stool type height or a computer chair, adjustable chair,
that can go up and down so that you can sit more like this where your feet are still on the ground
and you're putting some weight through your feet, but also some weight through your bottom.
But more importantly, your hip joints are in a more open position. You're more closer to standing
than you are sitting or somewhere in between. That takes some of the compression off of the
front of the hip joints as well. The third thing, this is a longer term fix. You've got to address
the root muscle imbalance that's putting all that compression through your hip joints,
because if you don't address it, then you're going to continue with hip arthritis problems.
It's only going to progress over time because that's the root problem. You could do medications,
injections, even having surgery doesn't take care of the muscle imbalance and it
still leads to other problems afterwards if if the muscle imbalance is still there. But
if you can address the root muscle imbalance, then you're going to take pressure off the
ball and socket joint for the long term so that you can tolerate sitting as long
as you want and you're not worried about having to fidget or sit in taller chairs.
You can be just fine. Be normal again.
If you're looking for a way to treat the root muscle imbalance of hip arthritis,
I've got a program that is comprehend it doing this. It's called the Hip Arthritis Recovery
Program. This program is 100% online and it's on demand. So you can access it any time you
want as long as you have an Internet connection and a device with a screen like a smartphone or
a computer or tablet, once you get into that program, it will walk you step by step through
my treatment approach that I use to help people recover from hip arthritis naturally, so that they
can avoid having the hip joint replacement and get back to doing normal stuff like getting up
out of a chair and walking to wherever you want to walk without hobbling or limping
or being in pain. You can find out more about the Hip Arthritis Program using the
link below down the description, and you can also see all of our YouTube videos.
We've got many here posted on YouTube. I put them in a playlist for you called
the Hip Arthritis Help Playlist. You find a link to that down the description below. Hey,
thanks for watching. I hope this was helpful for you. Give us a
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I'll see you in the next video. Bye bye!