Welcome to today's video, where we're going to take you through some of the causes
of front of hip pain when you're running. So, pain might be really the front here.
Now, we know how important is for you to keep running and that's really what we would like to keep you doing.
We'll go through a number of questions that you can ask yourself and also a suggestion of
something to try which can be your first steps back to pain-free running. And at the end of the
video then we'll give you some details as to where you can go if you feel you need a little bit more help.
My name's Claire. I'm a Physiotherapist from PhysioFit Health and I'm here to try and help you
move without any pain or issue or at least help you figure out what the next steps are that you need to take.
To get more from our expertise, please feel free to subscribe to our YouTube channel.
It's important to understand from the outset that pain is actually fairly complex and it's
a little bit too simplistic to be thinking that one thing might be causing and triggering the pain.
In my experience, you've got pain there's always a number of different things that come into
causing it and in order to help you it's really trying to unpick that and just figure out which
which triggers are the main ones that can be causing you that pain.
So, it's important to state here, this video is not designed as medical advice. If you've got any
issues around the hip, you've got the potential for it to be fractures, some stress fractures.
Other causes that perhaps aren't muscular in origin in which case you want to get it
checked out sooner or later and that's what your healthcare profession or professional
or Physio is there to help you with. It's really to figure out what's causing it and
which direction you need to go to. And that's really best done as a one-to-one rather than getting general advice.
Some of the causes of hip pain, there is a whole massive long list.
One of them could be really as simple as the fact that your hip just isn't moving as it should do.
So, you haven't got a full range of movements that it can move in all of the different directions.
Generally with the hip, the hip will lose rotation first before it starts losing any other
other types of movements. And that reduced rotation can actually cause a little bit of pinching
at the front of the hip. You can also get muscles that over work at the front of the hip muscles and tendons.
So, that can be one of the causes but generally as I was saying earlier, pain isn't
just one single cause. So, yes these muscles at the front might be overworking but you have to ask the
question is that because the muscles around the back of the hip so and the glutes maybe they're
not doing as much as they possibly could do. And so, you get these front muscles that are doing
more work than you need to, just to kind of get you running and kind of pushing, pushing you off
and bringing that knee forward. You can of course get referred pain and so, then you're kind of
looking above and below the joint. So, you've got your lower back that might be giving you
some pain down and around the hip area. You've got groin pain that can be mistaken from fore hip.
You've got knee pain that you can actually be feeling more on the hip than at the knee.
So ,yeah kind of have to look above and below the joint. You've got the fractures that I mentioned earlier.
So, you have your stress fractures and that might be causing some of that pain.
And you can also have the altered mechanics. Now, we've spoken about altered mechanics in that.
You can be overworking at these front muscles as you're driving the knee forward and being
a little bit weaker at the glutes at the back. However, so that's more of a muscular imbalance
whereas the issue could be within the joint itself. So, it's a ball and socket joint.
And just depending on a number of different things, medical history and activities that you may
have been doing when you were younger. It can change the joint itself in which case, no end
of stretching and strengthening is not going to change the the joint itself. And in some cases
you do actually need surgery to to help resolve it.
So, there's a number of different questions
that I would be asking you, if we saw you one-to-one. And also that you can ask yourself.
Now, I'll just go into a few of the kind of nitty-gritty detail that I'd be asking you
if you did come to me with front of hip pain and so, I'll be getting you to try and figure
out where you're getting that pain within that running cycle. So, do you get that pain more
when you are pushing off, when you are running on that one side. So, is it on the push off?
Or do you find you get that hip pain through that range as you're going through for that knee drive?
Do you find it more at the end range where that knee is kind of as high as you can get it?
Do you feel like you're kind of getting it around there? Or do you feel it more when you're
getting that weight onto the leg to then push yourself forwards? So yeah, just a few questions
just to really kind of identify really through that kind of that running cycle, that leg cycle,
where you're getting that pain. And then important questions to ask yourself
when you do start to notice your pain from the hip. Have you been going from doing no
running to all of a sudden running multiple times a week. So, just kind of think back to what you've
been doing in the training. You've been doing and it's really just have you not been doing so much,
to all of a sudden like ramping it up. And the other question is, if you have been running and
you've been fine, have you then started to change your training that you've been doing? So, have you
suddenly increased the activity intensity? So, are you doing more kind of hill sprints? Or are you
doing more interval training? So, kind of you get a little bit of that faster the high and higher
intensity activities. So, then you can start putting that all together. And so, if you do feel that you
really haven't been doing that much running and then all of a sudden you've ramped it up. Or you've
all of a sudden just gone into doing a lot more of the high intensity intervals and hill sprints.
You might start to be thinking that you just haven't given your body enough time to adjust
to the intensity of the activity. And that's when you can get the tendons can be quite irritated
and they'll tell you that by being painful. So, if you've caught this early enough,
it can be as simple as just easing back on those higher intensity runs that you're doing.
And just giving your body just a little bit more time to slowly adjust to the schedule
that you're you're wanting to actually achieve. Now, you have got the 10% rule that's quite good
just to keep in the back of your mind. And that works by you figuring out roughly your total
distance you'll be running during each week and then you want to increase each week by about 10%.
There's not that much evidence to really back up the 10% rule but certainly in practice
I'll see the training errors that people are doing and it can take 3 - 4
weeks to really get the body to tell you that there's been an issue. So, you might ramp up
everything. Feel that you're okay and then you can start with the aches pains and niggles.
And so, yeah it's just giving the body a little bit more time just to adjust.
If you've left this front of hip pain for a while, it can be a little bit more complex
and involved just to try and get everything to settle down. Doesn't mean that it won't
settle down but it might not be as simple as just easing off the intensity of the runs.
So, yeah leaving things generally it takes a little bit longer to start to see a difference. So, getting
it sorted sooner rather than later is always good.
So, certainly in my professional opinion,
keeping the flexibility of the lower back and the legs can really significantly reduce the
risks of getting any aches and pains. If you've got that range of movement, the muscles
kind of work a little bit better. It's a little bit easier for you to kind of
recruit them and so, you don't necessarily get them overworking as much as you may do
if there's a joint that's a little bit on the stiff side. Leg flexibility is good if you do want
to work on a challenge, we have an 8-week deep squat challenge that you can sign up to.
Challenge starts when you sign up and you get an email each week and it goes through the different
joints. So, you'll look at your lower back and the hips will cover the knee and then the ankles.
So, we'll go through different exercises that really target the different areas.
And you'll identify which areas are the ones that you would need to focus on.
So, at the end of it you come out with a whole range of different exercises that you can
create into a workout and that gets you that leg flexibility which I think is really important.
So, yeah details in the description below.
The easiest solution if you are confused
is to book an online Physio consultation. So, we'll go through your medical history and go through
really what you've been doing up till now and you know what's going on with the aches and pains.
And in doing that, we can help you identify really what's kind of causing all of the issues.
And in identifying what's causing it, it kind of helps you with that solution and so, you can get
your next steps as to what you need to do just to really help in your recovery. If you go onto our
website, you've got the book online button that you can press and then you'll be able to schedule it fairly easily.
I know how important it is for you to keep going out and doing your running and so,
all we want to do is help you in that and keep you moving as much as we can do. All right see you soon!