A torn hip labrum can cause serious pain that if not managed properly can lead to hip arthritis
or even a hip surgery.
Most hip labrum tears can be managed without surgery and even improved enough to get you
back to doing the things that you love to do.
In today's video, I'll be covering the top six exercises that you need to be doing to
get your hip labrum tear under control and improving without surgery.
The first four exercises are focused on getting pain relief and mobility back for somebody
dealing with a severely flared up painful torn hip labrum.
The last two exercises are more advanced exercises that are for someone that's still having symptoms
of a torn hip labrum, but it's no longer severe, it's a little more manageable.
And just to give you a quick tidbit on how hip labrum tears happen, I've got more videos
on this by the way, there's a playlist linked in the description that has more help for
torn hip labrum.
But just to make sure that you understand why we're doing these exercises.
The labrum is on the rim of the socket here of the ball and socket joint.
And usually the hip labrum tears happen towards the top and front part of the hip.
So pain very often is going to be in this area on the front of the hip on the affected
side.
And the root problem that usually sets up a hip labrum tear.
You know, one that wasn't caused by an accident, like a car accident is that the ball is too
far forward on the socket and it's rubbing against the cartilage right there the labrum
that's what the what the labrum is made up, it's made up of cartilage.
So if you have consistent chronic overpressure on the labrum, the cartilage right here on
the front part of the hip socket, then you begin to tear it.
So these exercises are focused on getting easy mobility back and even repositioning
the ball into the middle of the socket to alleviate that pressure on the front of the
hip joint.
The first exercise is really, really simple.
It's hit fidgeting, all you have to do is sit down somewhere just like so.
And just wiggle your legs in and out, it looks like I'm fidgeting, nobody know that you're
doing an exercise for your hip labrum.
And if anything, they're just going to say do you have to go to the bathroom?
Are you okay?
And the best way to do this is to do it for a few minutes at a time to three minutes.
You don't have to lean forward like I am on my arms, you can lean back, you can be resting
your arms on an armrest, you can have your hands in your lap, you can just do one leg,
the leg that's affected.
And the point of this exercise is to move that ball and socket joint in a nice easy
way that doesn't provide a lot of pressure, you're not moving into any sort of resistance.
And what you're doing is you're circulating the fluid inside the joint that can help to
nourish the cartilage where the terror is on your labrum, you want to make sure not
to tire out any of your muscles doing this.
If you do this long enough, you might start to get fatigued or tired and some of the muscles
in your hip that's too much because you could actually be fitting feeding into the problem
that setting up your hip labrum tear.
You want to do this in such a way that leaves you feeling just fine afterwards.
The second exercise is called bent knee fallouts.
Now this is more of a range of motion exercise, you're going to potentially run into an area
of motion that is going to hurt, you don't want to push into it.
In fact, find it the first time if you even have a painful range of motion.
And stay out of it.
None of these exercises should ever be aggravating for you.
So you're going to have to lie down on your back with your knees bent, just like this.
Get your feet at a comfortable distance from your body, knees, feet flat on the bed or
the floor or wherever you're going to be doing this.
And then all you're going to do is drop one knee out slow and controlled.
As far as it'll go.
Once you feel like you're the rest of your body, your other leg wants to go that's too
far, you've already maxed out the hip motion that's available.
So you only need to go as far as when your body wants to start to move.
For me it's about right there.
Then bring it back in nice and easy and do the same thing on the other side.
Even if it doesn't hurt you just to train your hip muscles to move independently of
each other.
You want to do this for a minute or two.
Nice and easy, it should not cause any muscles to get tired, it should not cause any pain.
It should just feel like simple, easy motion.
And in fact, if you do have pain, like let's say your knee only wants to go out half of
what I'm doing or somewhere in between.
And this starts to hurt as you go along.
In this exercise, you might find that you can go a little bit further each time you
drop your leg out.
And after doing this for a minute or two, you might find that your legs are moving near
the same if not the same.
That's some people ask can I move both legs in and out at the same time?
I think that's fine.
I just like to train it one leg at a time just for neuromuscular control for control
of your body for coordination purposes.
But if we're focused more so on allowing the labrum the cartilage tear the labrum tear
to heal, then it doesn't really matter that you're moving one leg at a time or both legs
at the same time.
It's kind of nitpicky.
The third exercise is glute squeezes.
Now, this begins to address the root problem of the previous two exercises, or just simply
to calm down the joint to come down the labrum to get the pain under control.
Now, this does help with pain control, too.
But it's moving a bit more into pulling the ball into the socket.
So all you're going to do is sit down in a comfortable place, it could be a chair, computer
chair, doesn't have to be a soft chair could be a hard chair, whatever is comfortable for
you be can be flat on the floor or a dangling it doesn't matter.
All you need to do is think about squeezing your butt muscles.
So you can see when I squeeze my butt muscles, my whole body lifts a little bit because my
muscles stick and under me, when you do that, you should feel like your body goes up.
Now here's a key thing you need to work on.
This is very important.
When you squeeze your butt muscles when you tighten those glutes.
You don't want to fire the muscles on the front of your hips and thighs here, you need
to make sure those muscles are quiet and not activating.
The reason for this is if you fire both the muscles on the back of the hip and the front
of the hip and thigh.
You're going to promote the ball being shoved into the socket inappropriately and causing
that pinching sensation that that painful torn hip labrum sensation more, you only want
to practice firing the muscles on the back of the hip, the glutes or the buttock muscles,
so that you can promote the ball being sucked backwards away from the front of the joint
where it hurts.
So once you can figure that out, you might need to play around with it, you might need
to not squeeze so hard figure out the percentage of intensity that you can squeeze your glutes
without your thigh muscles working to.
In other words, if you squeeze it 100% and your glutes and you feel your thigh muscles
working back off to say 50%.
And see if that's better for you.
You might even need to back off down to 10% or 5% in extreme cases.
Or maybe you can do it well that 90% or 95%.
Wherever you're at, it's okay, work from the percentage that you can fire your glutes without
your quads and your hip flexors also firing and hanging out there, then hold it for 10
seconds practice holding your glutes tight for 10 seconds without these muscles working
at the intensity that works for you.
As you get better at that I'm doing it right now, you can gradually increase the percentage
and you eventually want to get to as close to 100% intensity of your glutes squeezing
without your thigh muscles and hip flexors working.
Now an alternative to doing this because it might work better for you right away is doing
this lying down in the same position I was for that bent knee followed exercise.
So let me show you what I mean.
Knees bent just like this.
Tighten the glutes from right here.
This works sometimes to do it better without the thighs working.
And another way to do it line down is with your legs straight.
Just relax your legs.
And then try to work the glutes there without the front of the hips and thighs working as
well.
Any of these positions could be beneficial for you.
In fact, you might even work better standing up sometimes that helps if you just stand
up and make sure this is relaxed on the front of your body and just squeeze from back here
tighten these muscles without the front working.
That could get it for you too.
There isn't really a right or wrong as far as doing it sitting first or lying down or
standing up.
What matters is that you can get your glutes to work and then hold it without the front
of the hips and thighs working too.
And this is an exercise that I would tell anyone with a hip labrum tear.
You need to get obsessed with this exercise you need to be doing it all the time.
I mean, you should be sitting in your car driving, squeezing your glute muscles.
And as long as you're safe, you should be having a meal squeezing your glute muscles
that anybody noticing you should be sitting through a movie or a show or watching YouTube
thinking about holding your glutes tight without the front of your hips and thighs working
to.
The more of this you can do, the better off your hips going to be your you're going to
consistently take more pressure off and then you're going to set up your glutes to work
into a strengthening exercise, which we'll talk about here in a moment.
Now the fourth exercise, so this is still one that you want to be doing.
If you're still flared up in your hip labrum tear.
This is a hand heel rocking exercise.
So you're going to you're going to get onto your hands and knees on the floor on a bed
wherever you feel comfortable.
And you can be with your hands open flat or on your knuckles, it doesn't matter.
Then you're just going to rock back nice and easy.
Get your bottom towards your heels like a dog or cat sits on its punches and rock back
and forth in a comfortable range of motion.
You don't want to stretch into pain.
You can play with the position of your knees, you can open them apart more or bring them
together.
There isn't a right or wrong.
What I find is usually the knees more wide tends to be more comfortable but some people
are fine with their knees closer together.
It just depends on your genetics, your anatomy, the way that your body's built.
It Find what works for you.
And I would do this for 30 reps 60 reps, not more than a couple of minutes is usually beneficial.
Once you start doing more than two minutes worth of this, you get diminishing returns,
meaning it's not going to help you that much more for doing much for doing additional time
or reps.
But some people will do this for a long time because they just like the way that it feels
it really they may feel that that it really does help them.
You know, my advice is more guidelines not super specific, I'm giving you guidance on
how to improve your hip situation.
But it doesn't always need to be followed to the absolute tee in order to see the best
benefits I'll always highlight with you, you know what's really important like firing your
glutes without your quads and hips firing to okay these past four exercises are for
if you're dealing with a severely flared up hip labrum tear, if you have that situation
that you want to be doing those exercises about every hour.
Literally about every hour should be enough to really fast get your symptoms under control,
so that you can move into strengthening exercises that help to heal your labrum even further,
if you can do that frequency, find what works for you, because maybe a few times a day is
going to be beneficial for you.
What you need to know though is that you can't just do these exercises once or twice a day
and expect to have a massive improvement, it needs to be very frequently because of
that motion to get inside your joint the fluid that needs to circulate.
And the pressure you need to take off where the tear is you need to get those glutes working
right to remove that pressure.
If you just do these exercises once or twice a day, it's not enough time with for that
fluid to move around.
And for that pressure to be removed, it needs to be consistently throughout the day.
The good news is as you get better at that, then you get more glute control, the strengthening
exercises don't need to happen as often.
So these next two exercises are going to be more like three to five times a day basically
like 30 to 50 reps a day, you can even do more, you can go up to 100 reps as long as
you're not in pain doing so the first exercise is squat holes.
So I know I just said squats and you're probably thinking, Oh, it's going to hurt my hip.
But we're going to do little tiny baby squats.
And we're going to hold them in a very high position.
And it's going to be comfortable for your hips.
So what you're going to do is stand up.
And before we stand sideways here so you can see me from the side view.
Before you even do any version of a squat, you need to make sure that you can tighten
your glutes back here without your hips tightening on the front, it should feel like these muscles
are working.
And there's not much going on here on the front.
Once you've gotten that, then you're ready to do the squat, you're literally just going
to barely bend your knees.
That's it, you don't need to go down any more than that you're not doing a full on deep
squat, you're just barely unlocking your knees with your glutes tight.
Let me give you a full body of use.
You can see what my feet are doing and what my knees are doing.
So glutes tight, knees out, because that when you shove your knees out, it helps to get
your glutes working better.
And then you're also doing a forward hip motion like You're like a forward hip thrust motion.
So my feet are in position, glutes are tight, hips are forward, knees out.
And then you're just holding here you're going to count to 10 Slowly count 10 seconds.
And what you should feel are the glutes tiring out the glutes working tensioning and fatiguing.
And you should not feel that much work here in the front.
Now you might feel some, but the glutes should greatly outdo what the quads in the hip flexors
in the front here are doing.
If you feel the quads in the hip flexors working a lot, that means that you're using these
muscles too much.
And it's going to compress the front of the hip joint, it's going to pull that ball forward
on the socket and make more pressure onto the labrum.
If you can do this strengthening exercise, it's critically important that you practice
it a lot to really boost up the strength of your glutes, the more you can practice it
without your hips hurting the faster you can take that pressure off the labrum and the
faster you can get back to doing the things that you love to do.
Now once you feel like you've mastered holding your glutes without the front of the hips
and the front of the thighs working, then you're ready to go into exercise number six,
which is squat reps, repetitions.
Now it's virtually the same thing except no holding.
And the point of this is to teach your muscles to work faster, so that it can carry over
into your everyday activities.
Like when you bend down to pick up something when you walk when you do your normal everyday
things.
So instead of just coming down and holding now you're going to come down and come up,
come down and come up.
Here's the key things.
When you come down, your knees need to be going out, hips you to come forward, you need
to always come down into that position.
You see how it's important that you practice the last exercise because if you can't successfully
do this every time You're going to do your reps wrong, you're going to use your hip flexors
and your quads and you're going to make your hip labrum tear worse, you have to make the
glutes dominate the motion.
When you come down, knees go out, hips come forward every time, then when you come up,
when you're in the up position, you need to make sure that your glutes are tight up here.
So glutes are working down here by shoving your hips forward, knees out.
And then when you come up, glutes are tight.
So in real time, it looks like this.
Knees out, hips forward, but tight at the top, knees out, hips forward, but tight at
the top.
And you can only go You should only go as fast as you can go while controlling the motion
very well.
If you can't control the motion very well, you need to go back to the holes, and you
need to train your glutes to work more consistently.
As you do squats, you need to hold it and practice holding it while you're doing the
squat.
As you can see here, I'm going a little bit lower.
This tends to happen, you know, we started out just like that.
But as you get more comfortable with using your glutes better, the glutes get stronger,
and they can support you better as you go lower.
And eventually you might go into some deeper squats, as long as you're controlled, and
it doesn't feel painful for your hip, you can do that.
And it's actually a good thing for you to improve the mechanics inside your hip joint.
Once you progress to exercise number six, and you're doing squat reps, what I recommend
is doing 10 reps, and doing five to 10 sets a day, meaning 50 to 100 reps total in a day.
And you can spread it out at first, especially if you if you're learning this and you're
getting used to it.
But you can work to where you're doing them all in one sitting, you know, all in like
10 minutes, for instance, or 15 minutes, whatever time it takes you.
As long as it's controlled and you're using your glutes properly, you should go at the
pace that you can sustain that as you get better at it.
And if you can go a little bit faster, that trains your glutes more.
And eventually you need to add weights to this and go into other exercises.
But these six exercises are a great starting point to get that hip labrum tear pain under
control and then begin to heal it naturally.
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