Hi guys! This video is about stretching for hip bursitis or trochanteric bursitis. One of the
comments on the previous YouTube video that I made about treatment for hip bursitis – have a look,
I'll link to it in this video if you want the whole treatment process – somebody asked what
stretches should they be doing. Now actually, you shouldn't be stretching it, and I'll explain why
and give you a little bit more info about that in this video. So, for those of you who
don't know me, my name is Maryke. I'm one of the physiotherapists from sports-injury-physio.com,
where you can get online physiotherapy assessment as well as treatment for your injuries. So have
a look at the description of this video if you want more information or a link to our website.
Good! So, to understand why you shouldn't be stretching or why stretching can often
actually aggravate a hip bursitis, it's useful to first understand
what actually goes on with the anatomy of a hip bursitis, or the injury process. So,
your trochanteric bursa – which I can never say – is … You actually have several bursas,
and they are all kind of in different areas in this area of your hip. So, it's typically that
you'll get quite severe pain over this bit; it's painful to sleep on it at night; any compression
of that area is painful. And the process of how it develops is, that bursa or bursas are there
to actually stop friction between your tendons that attach onto the bones there and the bones,
and it's … They're pretty good at that, but often, when they get too much compression and
too much friction, they can become inflamed and painful, and then they hurt like mad.
And the injury process for that is, if something causes it to be compressed more than what it can
handle, you get that injury. So, typical thing is, if you've got weak hip muscles and you drop your
hips as you run or walk, or you stand with your one hip like this the whole time – that type of
thing can compress it and cause pain there. So, why am I saying you shouldn't stretch it? Can
you picture, that if you're stretching your glutes ... So, the typical stretches that people will do
are things like this; they'll take their leg, and they pull it across – can you see that
you're going to squash that bursa more? So, you've got something that doesn't like being squashed,
and now you're just squashing it more. Same thing for these type of stretches: Again,
depending on where it is, it will likely squash it. And this type of thing: This one can usually
work a little bit better, but it depends on how sensitive you are. So, stretching is not the first
type of treatment that you should be aiming to use when you've got a bursitis. I've done
a whole video of what treatment approaches and things can be useful for it, but it's more about
rehab where you don't cause that compression component with it at the beginning.
Injections can sometimes be useful, depending on how painful it is.
Dry needling can be useful if you've got a lot of tightness, to get rid of that. Massage can be
useful, but not if they're going to go dig into that bursa. So, if somebody's doing massage for
it, they need to stay away from that bursa, because they'll … If they go and press on it,
it'll just make it worse. So, they need to work around it. But I've … In my experience,
if it's a really painful bursa, doing massage, even around it, can affect it. Because as you
press through, you do get stretch on that, and you do get compression of it. So, if you want
more information about trochanteric bursitis, I'll link in this video to the video I did that
kind of explains it in more detail. But the key message here is, if you've got that condition,
doing glute stretches, especially those rotation type stretches, can actually make it feel worse.
So, it's not the first thing you should be adding into your program for treatment there.