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Ever since I wrote about my torn labrum on my hip, I have been getting a few emails from readers asking about what type of hip exercises I do at home. From my interactions with readers, I come to the conclusion that my torn labrum is not as severe as others and that my pain is a small pittance compare to what others are going through.
This post is a discussion of the type of hip exercises (including hip stretches) I do at home for my torn hip labrum to manage the pain. Please note that I am not a doctor or a personal trainer. I have no idea what is the severity of your hip injury. These are examples of hip exercises that worked for me.
Hip exercises are going to hurt
When you injure your hip or back, you want to continue to move that injured muscle group as soon as possible. The last thing I want to do when I was recovering from my car accident was move. Staying on the sofa with a bag of cookies and watching TV was all I want to do between doses of pain killers. But that is the worst thing I can do for myself. The longer your body stays still, the longer the recovery time and the more painful it is to rehabilitate that injured muscles because of muscle atrophy.
That is not to say that you spring from the sofa with a cheerful song in your head and do leg kicks like a Rockette. You might not be able to do any leg kicks for a while, but you must keep that idea in the back of your mind. The goal is not to just stop the pain, but to someday do a few leg kicks because you feel like it.
If you ever have a cast on a body part, you will notice that when you take the cast off, the injured arm or leg is weaker than your other uninjured arm or leg. This is muscle atrophy. You either use it or you lose it.
So when you injured your hip, the worst thing you can do is sit still or lay down in your bed all day. Because you avoid using your injured muscles, they hurt even more when you do use them. So you continue to limit your range of motion, which cause your injured hip muscles to get even weaker, which cause you more pain the next time you use them. Are you following this vicious cycle I am trying to paint?
You must start doing rehabilitation exercises as soon as you are able to in order to speed up your recovery.
Ice/heat therapy for your hip muscles
After the onset of the initial cause of the injury, the pain and swelling you feel are caused by inflammation in your injured hip muscles. Inflammation is your body’s trumpet call before the cavalry (white blood cells) charge to heal the injured site. This is a good thing because without inflammation, there is no healing. But the problem is that sometimes your body does not know when to turn that dang inflammation off! So practice RICE while you are rehabbing your hip muscles with hip exercises.
I find that a combination of icing and heating my hip muscles works best. Icing for 20 minutes brings down the swelling cause by inflammation, then applying a heat pad for about 20 minutes to loosen the muscles after doing hip exercises. But when my hip muscles do not hurt, I do not even bother with the icing.
Please note that you should not apply heat to an injured area (this only makes the swelling worst) for the first 24-48 hours after a hip injury. Icing should be used exclusive for the first 24 to 48 hours. Afterwards, you can do a combination of ice and heat. If icing is too intense (your skin tends to get thinner as you age), try wrapping a towel around it.
I like using frozen peas because it is malleable. By using a couple of bath robe belts, I am able to tie the peas around my hip and move about even when I am icing. When the peas start to get a soft then it is time put them back in the freezer. I do not eat the peas I use exclusively for icing. I find that the freezing and thawing cycle changes the taste of the peas for me.
I was doing this every few hours (when the frozen peas harden up again) for weeks after my car accident. Of course, at the time, I also injured my back. So imagine a short Chinese woman with a bag of peas tied around her left hip and a bag of peas tied around her back with multi-colored bath robe belts, shuffling around her apartment with bad hair. Yeah, that was me four years ago. It wasn’t funny then, but I can see it having the potential of being a sitcom episode now.
Hip stretches
I never do my stretches without a small warm-up (I used to be able to, but not anymore). Remember how I mentioned that your heart rate from computer work is almost equivalent to sleeping? When you get up from any sitting position, your muscles are not primed for stretching. When you are warmed up, your body actually recovers faster and you are less likely to injury your muscles. So before you do any stretching, get up and walk around a bit to warm up. Here is a list of hip stretches I do on a regular basis:
Warrior pose (pay attention to the feet placement)
triangle pose (pay attention to the feet placement)
Sun salutation (only arch your back if you can)
Groin stretch (try this stretch moving your toes closer and further from your body. You can hit different parts of your hip muscles)
Strengthening your hip muscles
Ditto on the warm-up discussion on the hip stretches section.
Exercise dvds for your hips
I prefer to follow an exercise dvd for my hip stretches and hip exercises. The reason why I like exercise dvds for hip rehabilitation exercises is that I do not have to think about it. I just follow what what is on the screen. I recommend the following exercise dvds for hip rehabilitation:
Rehab Your Body At Home (approximately 20-25 minutes if you do both Part A (easy) and Part B (harder))
Pick Your Spot Pilates (the “spot” you want to pick is your thighs. approximately 15-20 minutes)
Sara Ivanhoe””s 20 Min Yoga Makeover – Sculpted Buns & Thighs (approximately 20 minutes, more advance)
Final thoughts about hip exercises
I have been living with a torn hip labrum for the last four years. It took four years, 3 chiropractors, 2 rounds of physical therapy, and 2 orthopedic surgeons to finally diagnosis the pain on my hip. The tear is small enough that my doctor does not consider surgery an option right now (who knows if this will change after my first pregnancy), but the torn hip labrum is painful enough for me to need hip exercises and a combination of icing and heating on a regular basis. I cannot say that I am pain free, but considering where I was 4 years ago, I am just thankful that I am able to live as I did prior to my car accident with only a few modifications to my lifestyle.
My hip joint itself is in good condition. It is the tear on the labrum that is causing me pain. It sometimes makes a crunching sound when I do the clam exercise where you are lying on your side, opening and closing your bended leg. Because my hip joint is in good condition, my doctor feels that I should continue with my hip exercises since it is helping, but you should check with your doctor in case your torn hip labrum is more severe or there are problems with your hip joint.
If you want further ideas on how to treat your hip injury at home, you might want to consider reading Heal Your Hips. Reading this book a few years ago gave me the idea of doing hip exercises on a regular basis to manage my hip pain. All the above exercises can be done with modifications in a pool. Pool exercises are actually the first step to rehabilitating your hip muscles after hip surgery before doing them on the ground. Heal Your Hip will give you photos and a list of pool exercises you can do if you are not yet ready for rehabilitating your hip on the ground.
One final thing, you will get better. Your body is a wonderful machine designed to heal itself, but it is also a slow clunky machine. Understand that even though you might be causing yourself some pain from doing hip exercises, but in the years ahead you will feel better. Sometimes it is discouraging when you are doing everything you can and the pain does not stop. But you will get better.
Until next time and thanks for stopping by.
Photo by: cobblucas.
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{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for all of this great information. I have one leg shorter than the other by nearly an inch, so when I don”t wear shoes with a build-up, it hurts my hips to walk. I honestly never thought of doing hip exercises before *smacks forehead*. I”m going to try some of these out!
Sagan – An inch? That”s a lot. Mine is only about a quarter of an inch. Because I do not wear orthotics, I believe that is partly the reason why my back aches sometimes when I walk too much. Thanks for the comment.
Hello,
I am a professional ballet dancer and a yoga instructor also. I have a labral tear in my right hip that was diagnosed almost 2 yrs ago. The pain has actually subsided, but sometime it flares up. Right now, it has definitely been flaring up. I find that ice helps in addition to using a foam roller. It helps with loosening all the muscles around the area which tend to be real tight from sitting, dancing, and life
I use a cream called Sarna also before dancing and that helps warm the muscles up and it feels nice when you start to get warm.
Just a few thoughts…
Susy – Thanks for the tip. I used a foam roller for a while. But I found that using a tennis ball gives me more precision, especially for the muscles close to the groin area (but it can be more intense). I”ve never heard of Sarna, but it sounds like something I want to try.
Hi, asithi:
I am pending from diagnosis but it seems I have a labral tear and a little impingement. When you say exercises hurt, but they are worth, how do you control the possibility of worsening the tear?.
I ask that because I think I hurt myself yesterday only flexing a little more than normal after having run. (My condition seems to be quite good, and normally I am very careful and I did that carefully, but yesterday nearly nothing hurt me and today everything is worse.).
By the way, I have tried some of your exercises and they didn”t hurt. Now don”t know if should dare, but anyway I would like to know your point about that.
Regards and thanks for your blog.
jacinto – I do not run, so I have never felt what you are feeling. However, I do bike and after a long bike ride, especially with an incline, my hip would hurt more the next day. I believe it has to do with the amount of force I am exerting when I push against the pedal going uphill. When I do high impact aerobics (ie. step aerobics) which requires jumping, I have the same increase in pain on my hip the next day. So based on my experience and what you are telling me, I believe the pain you are experiencing is from the force exerted on your hip when you pound the pavement.
When this happens, I go back to my old standby of icing, heating, and stretching. I am lucky enough that it goes away on its own within a day. And since I know how my body works, I usually do the icing, heating, and stretching as soon as I am home so I feel very little of the pain the next day.
Depending on your diagnosis, your doctor might not decide to do anything with your hip. For me, my doctor does not think surgery and its recovery is going to give me any more mobility or less pain than what I am feeling. Sometimes I have days where I do not feel a thing as long as I remember to exercise. The point of the hip exercises is to retain what hip mobility you have left and to strengthen the muscles around it. A couple years ago, I would not have been able to bike for miles like the way I do now. I really think the hip exercises help. So basically I monitor my hip pain and if the condition worsens then my doctor will re-visit his original diagnosis.
Your doctor will let you know if your tear will worsen with exercise. But you know your body best. As you do the exercises you know at which point to stop the movement when there is a sharp pain. The hip exercises on this post are common exercises given to patients recovering from hip surgery. And if your doctor sends you to a round of physical therapy before surgery, the hip exercises they give you will be similar to the ones listed on this post.
The only thing I suggest you try is deep tissue massage with a tennis ball. I will write a post about the technique sometimes this week to explain this in more detail.
Asithi,
I have found this article to be one of the most helpful ones I”ve found so far. I am 20 yrs old and am dancing for the first time professionally this fall. For about a year and a half I”ve had stiffness in my right hip after sitting long periods of time and while doing certain things in ballet class. I”ve decided to take the summer to rest and to my suprise my injury just seems to get worse. I haven”t been diagonosed, but I have been researching this injury and have not found any other that pinpoints my pain as closely as this does.
I”m hoping it will soon go away, but I don”t know what the odds are for that if it is a tear. I”ve just tried your excercises and it is already seeming to feel better than 20 minutes ago. I”m wondering if you usually ice after you do the excersices?
I felt really depressed after reading a lot of others experiences with this injury, I was excited to finally see some hope and I am so happy
Thank-you!
Kayla
Kayla – Yes, I do ice my hips sometimes. I find that as long as I do my hip exercises at least every other day, I am usually fine most of the time. But even then, sometimes I get discourage because the pain returns when I don’t do my hip exercises.
My doctor said that they usually do not recommend surgery for patients with minor labrum tears (which is the case with me) because the body will eventually heal itself. He said that I am doing everything right to maintain mobility in my left hip. I have no idea whether a labrum tear will heal itself. And from what I read of other people’s account of their labrum tears many people opt for surgery.
However, I have this injury for the last four years. I would say that when it was initially injured, the pain level was close to a 9 (on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the most painful). Now my pain level is close to a 2 (enough to make me complacent, but not pain free). Since my doctor recommends that I re-evaluate the situation after my first pregnancy, which is what I am doing. By the end of next year if there is no change, I might seek my 3rd medical opinion on my hip.
Hi Asithi:
I have finally been officially diagnosed with small Labral Tear at 10’oclock.
Now I would like to do your exercises. But I wanted to ask you:
What have you been told about what can harm your lesion?. How fragile is the tear for one to be able to harm himself?
And what do you know about the lesion itself can lead to arthrosis?.
Regards.
Jacinto
P.S: What about the tennis ball massage?
Jacinto – Didn”t you ask your doctor these questions or were you ushered out of the office because your 10 minutes are up (ask you can see I have a problem with doctors who do not spend time talking to their patients)? As my doctor, he told me to continue to do the exercises, the icing and heating, and stretching as long as if makes me feel better. By the time I was finally diagnose, I have been managing the pain own my own for 3 years. My doctor said they usually do not recommend surgery for small tears because it usually get better on its own (notice he did not use the word heal on its own).
The first year, my pain level was about a 9 (on a scale from 1-10 with 10 being most painful). I am probably down to a 2 or 3 on a normal basis, but on a bad day (sometimes the weather and hormones contribute to this), I say it is about a 4. And then there are days when I do not notice anything, but they never last long.
A reader brought up the subject of arthroscopic hip surgery with my doctor, but he mention that there is a potential for nerve damage. And no matter how minor, it is still surgery and he does not think I benefit from it. But some people has found success with their torn labrum with this surgery. If you read all the postings on this thread (it goes from 2006 to now) you can how some people need surgery and others get by with hip exercises.
As for your arthosis question, I think you are asking about arthritis. From what I read, it seems like this could be an issue later on. I figured this might be something to worry about at least 20-30 years from now as long as I take care of the hip joint and its surrounding muscles. But one thing that I read in various books is that you do not want a cortisone injection on your hip. The reason is that sometimes the cortisone injection leaves behind a substance that is almost like grit in your hip joint. And over time, it could wear away the smoothness on the socket. I”ve gotten two cortisone injections, but thank goodness it was on my hip bursa (yes, the diagnosis on the second year was hip bursitis).
Thanks for the reminder about the tennis ball massage. I posted part one of Deep Tissue Massage using Foam Roller Exercises for Hip Pain today. I will follow-up with part 2 next week.
Hi again:
Well, the fact is I got a conventional but sophisticated MRI and found the tear and a very subtle impingement, but I haven”t still gone to the doctor.
Anyway, I don”t expect much from her, since before knowing I had the tear, she told me that I had FAI impingement so surgery was only diagnostical and prothesis unavoidable. So I don”t think she can go brilliant about my doubts.
My pain scale is normally from 0 to 3, without pills or exercises, so I think I can expect a good quality life, but i don”t want to do wrong steps; so I am trying to get well informed; that”s why I ask you
Anyway, I think I will learn by the forum you linked me to; thanks for that and for the exercises. I will go telling you my evolutions.
Regards
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