Can using a stationary bike help heal hip arthritis? The answer is no unless you've
done a certain thing, which I'm going to tell you about. But if you're using a stationary
bike in hopes that it's going to help out your hip arthritis and you have it solve the problem
of your hip arthritis, then using a bicycle, whether it's a stationary bike or an outdoor bike,
road bike, mountain bike, whatever it is, it's actually going to be harming your hip joint.
And here's why that root cause,
that muscle imbalance. The way that this works, if this is the ball and
socket joint of your hip on the front of your hip, you have some muscles called the hip flexors in
the back of your hip. You have some muscles called the glutes, the butt muscles. Those
two muscles have a balance that influences the position of the ball and socket joint.
And if you're too dominant or too strong on the front because the glutes on the back got nothing
and they're not very strong, then you're going to shift the ball forward in the socket and cause
some bad pressure to go through your hip joints. Over time, as the weeks, months, years, decades
pass, you're wearing your hip inappropriately. And this is what causes hip joint arthritis.
Now, if you get on a bicycle and you don't feel that you're using your glute
muscles consistently each time you ride a bicycle, then you're compensating. It's very,
very likely that you're compensating with those hip flexors, maybe some other muscles
that also pull in the front of the hip, like your TFL muscle, the tensor fasciae latae.
Also some quad muscles in the front of your thigh. If you're using those muscles, if you
feel like your thigh muscles get more tired than anything else on a bicycle, then you need to stop
riding a bike right now because you're making your problem worse. Now, even healthcare professionals
aren't aware of this muscle imbalance concept as a root problem of hip arthritis.
In fact, they may tell you, go get on a bicycle. They may put you on the bicycle
in the physical therapy clinic. Even if you're feeling your quad muscles,
the front of your thigh working quite a bit when you're on the bicycle, even in the presence of
another health care professional. This is potentially feeding into your pain. If you
feel like you're getting worse going through this exercise, you need to say something.
You need to stop and need to look at fixing the root problem of hip arthritis,
which is going to be getting that imbalance addressed usually involves getting the glutes
stronger. Now there is a way to use a bicycle and use your glutes properly.
And the way this works is every time you pedal downward on the downstroke of a bike,
that leg that's pushing down you need to tighten the glutes of that leg each time you push down.
And when you cycle around and you push the other leg down, then the other glutes tighten
up. So riding a bicycle, whether it's an upright bike or a city, a recumbent bike,
one of the ones that has a backrest and you can lean backwards on the pedals are in front of you,
or if it's the one that the pills are under you, that's an upright bike.
It doesn't matter every time you push your leg away from your body. The glute
on that side should tighten up, and then you should alternate on the other side
to tighten up. If you can do this consistently and make your glutes
get the most tired out of all the muscles in your legs whenever you're on the bike,
only then are you actually using the bike in a way that's beneficial to resolve the root problem.
That's putting too much pressure through your hip joints. Otherwise, it's hurting your hip,
and it may not hurt in the moment when you ride the bike and you feel your thigh muscles working.
But over time you're gradually adding a bit more strength and a bit more strength. You're
feeding into the imbalance by strengthening the wrong muscles each time you're cycling,
and it's just a matter of time before you hit a certain threshold and your
hip is worse and it doesn't feel good to ride the bike.
Now, if you have a health care professional guiding you to use the bike, please do not
get mad at them. Please do not, you know, feel like they're out to get you or harm
you. They're doing the best they can with what they know. And the general
thinking in the health care field is that the bicycle is a very benign exercise.
In other words, it's good for everybody. And it's there's nothing that can go wrong in the bicycle
because it's low impact and, you know, you're not having to put your feet in the ground and
pound through your legs like you would when you're walking or running. But the fact is,
they're they're not trained specialists in helping people avoid surgery, using a bicycle right after
a surgery, like a hip replacement surgery or any kind of hip surgery or a knee surgery of any sort.
Once you're able to get the motion to ride the bike, that's generally a good thing because
it helps you to get more motion and to get the muscles moving properly. But fixing an imbalance
to offload excessive pressure going through a joint because that's causing hip arthritis,
that's a root cause. Then you need to make sure that you're using the
right muscles on the bike and your doctor, or your physical therapist.
Whoever's helping you out is probably just not a specialist in that. And they're doing the
best they can with what they know. But you need to think about what's happening in your body,
which muscles you're using, and make sure you begin to use the right muscles so that you're
helping your hip arthritis rather than hurting it without really knowing that you're hurting it.
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