Exercising Hip Pain: Yes, You Can!

Hi there. I'm Doctor. Keller Wortham with another Home Edition, a house call. And today, I wanna talk about the hips, specifically pain in the hips, because I'd say after knees and low It's the most common musculoskeletal pain complaint that I get at my office.

But hip pain can mean different things to different people. And sometimes what you think is your hip joint doesn't really have much to do with the actual joint at all. But listen in, because I'm going to clear up the different causes of hip pain and then show you some exercises you can do at home to help strengthen your hips, prevent some of the main causes of not only hip pain, but also hip arthritis.

Okay. So let's start with some basic hip anatomy.

The hip is what we call a ball in socket joint. You basically have this ball, which is our femur coming up here into the socket, which we call the acetabulum our main hip joint. And that configuration gives us a huge range of motion in the leg. We can move it in all different directions. But it can put it at a little bit of vulnerability, for certain movements.

Then addition to the ball in the socket, we a labrum, which is this little kind of gasket or cartilage ring that deepens the socket there. Then we've got articular cartilage, which is the smooth soft coating on top of the bones, to allow the bones to kind of glide on top of each other smoothly. And then we've got additional ligaments shown and pink here that kind of keep the bones together. And of course, your muscles and your tendons, the glutes, the hip flexors, the hip adductors, and abductors. And then, lastly, an important dimension, Bursa. Bursa are little bags, basically fluid filled bags that exist in different spots of the hip to help tendons glide smoothly over bone or over other muscles.

Alright. So I have found that when people say they have hip pain, They can be talking about pain in their butt, in their low back, in their groin, even in their outer thigh, And it's important to identify the location because where they're describing the pain can help guide you on understanding underlying problem and therefore the solution for it. Alright. So let's talk about sources of pain.

The main sources of pain in the hip can be muscle strains, of like the hamstrings or hip flexors, tendinitis, which is inflammation of the tendons and where they attach, bursitis, which inflammation of those little bags or bursa that I talked to you about, then labral tears, labrum is that gasket I mentioned that can kind of get basically ripped and can cause pain deep within the hip. And then, of course, hip fracture which is the big nightmare scenario that we want to avoid. I'll talk about more about that in another video. But this usually happens from a fall and can resort in result in a shortening of the leg or turned out a period, appearance, and then the inability to bear weight.

And the last one that I'm gonna mention, when the one we're gonna focus on today because it's the most common out there for my seniors is hip osteoarthritis.

Alright? That is because of a loss of cartilage within the hip joint. That protective coating that helps keep the surface of the bone smooth so that they don't grind on each other.

So how do you know if you have hip osteoarthritis Well, the diagnosis is usually made by physical exam, by the history, and then by taking X rays. Our X rays, when they look, especially weight bearing x rays, can look to see how much of the space is left in that joint, the narrower the space, it means the less cartilage is left. And then sometimes you can start to see inflammatory elements there of the different bones.

So what do you do if you are diagnosed with hIP osteoarthritis.

Well, the first thing to do is, you know, try to rest and get the hip to kind of deflate. It's it's a flare up. You can start with over the counter medications to be short term, like NSAIDs, like ibuprofen or tylenol If the pain is more severe, you might need steroid injections, that your doctor can your orthopedic doctor can can administer for you. And of course, if we could very bad. You may eventually require a hip replacement.

But before all of these, before you get to all of these, it we must stress the importance of exercise.

Exercise is so important at preventing and reducing hip pain and also preventing and reducing hip osteoarthritis.

So today, I'm gonna show you four exercise is for strengthening the hip, and then four for stretching. Okay. So let's get started.

Okay. So I'm here on the floor, and I'm gonna show you four stretching exercises for the hip. These are important to help lubricate the joint, lubricating the joint is so important because the hip is a synovial joint, and that helps get the fluid to move around. It helps promote, blood flow to joint and nutrients to help, help the cartilage that's there.

So the first exercise is called a knee lift. I'm just gonna lie on my back. I'm gonna extend both feet straight and now I'm gonna bring one, knee into my chest. All I have to do is lie here and pull it in and pull it to my chest and hold it and get it kind of nice and tight in this shouldn't be causing any pain, hold it, hold it, hold it maybe fifteen seconds, and then go back down.

And then we can do the same thing on the other side.

Okay. That's just a simple knee lift in to help stretch the hip. The second HIP exercise. We're gonna sit with the the soles of our feet together.

This helps with the external hip rotation and some people call these butterfly and all you do, you put the soles of your feet together, you hold here, and then you just have to lean forward until you feel the stretch. You don't want to kind of arch over like that. You want to kind of keep your chest forward so you don't put any strain on your low back. You can pull on your feet a little bit to create a gentle traction.

And then if you wanna kind of flap the wings there of the butterfly up and down a little bit, you can. Again, you're just leaning forward to feel a nice gentle stretch in the inner groin here. Okay. Like most stretches, you can just kind of hold that for about thirty seconds and then relax out Okay.

The next exercise I'm gonna show you is what I call a double hip rotation. So you're gonna start with your feet flat on the floor.

And we're just gonna let our hips go from side to side.

The knees together. We're gonna let them kinda over to one side.

I'm gonna feel a nice stretch in my low back across the buttock, and then I'm gonna let them drop to the other side.

Again, hold there.

So with these, you can of course hold on either side for about fifteen seconds or you can kind of move back and forth slowly like I'm doing, you just want to feel the muscles along the sides of your butt and your abdominal area stretch.

And then the last exercise I'm gonna show you is just a gentle low back stretch.

And that's basically just pulling now both knees into your chest and holding there. Okay. You can squeeze here if you'd like. You can also bring your head up to your knees like this.

And that's very important for stretching out the muscles of the buttock and go back to keep the hips in better alignment. Okay. So we did our four stretching exercises. Now, we're just gonna do four strengthening. The first is just a standard hip section. Basically, you're just gonna stand here, stand straight. You can use a chair if you need to.

And then I'm gonna demonstrate this for it. It'll be easier for you and you're just gonna raise your knee up to your chest. Okay?

Raise your knee up to your chest. You can use your hand to hold it.

There you go. And you should repeat that exercise maybe ten times a good good strengthening motion here, and you can do that on each side. Okay? Second exercise I'm gonna show you is a hip extension, holding the chair here for balance, if you need it.

And then it's just slowly extending the hip the leg behind you. Again, you're doing sets of ten. Maybe holding for three seconds and letting it come back. I like to do ten on one side before I alter to the other, so you're getting a good muscle workout before we switch to the other side.

We've got hip abduction to the side. This is basically where you're gonna use this chair again for and we're just going out to the side this way.

Alright. We're gonna do a set of ten, holding for three seconds, coming back down, one, two, three, and back down. I wanna keep the toes pointing forward, coming back down, and of course I'll do the other side. And then the last exercise is just to heal to buttock raise. So this is basically kind of here and you're just gonna raise the heel up to your butt as close as you can get it and come back down.

Up to your butt, hold it and come back down. And of course, you'll do ten on one side, and then switch to ten on the other side.

Alright. So there you go. Whether you have pain or not, whether you're headed to surgery or aren't doing hip sizes to stretch and strengthen this incredible joint, you'll be doing yourself a big favor. You'll be helping protect your hips, help prevent the worst of arthritis that leads to the need for hip replacement.

So implement these exercises at least a couple of times a week. Alright? Thanks for tuning in. I'm Doctor.

Keller Wortham, and I'll be back soon with another home edition of House School.