I went and saw a physical therapist this week. Once on Tuesday, and once today. My hips suck, according to professional opinion.
I have problems with my hips, specifically related to moving things outward. Here is a picture of me with my legs stretched as far as they go. This was even me laying on the ground, relaxing them and letting gravity help.
This also affects my internal rotation of the hip. For example, a healthy hip can generally go out around 40 degrees outward. Mine only goes to 19 degrees on one leg, and 20 degrees on the other. There’s another test. The Physical Therapist rotated it out, pressed it toward center, and I was supposed to try to resist it. No joke, I couldn’t resist a toddler.
Normal hip range
Another aspect of this is the trajectory of my knee. You know how you can lay down and pull your knee straight up into your chest and hold it? I can’t do that without injuring my hip flexors. My leg scoops out and the knee heads toward my armpit.
It also means that in jiu jitsu, if I’m sitting open guard, feet together and knees apart, if you push a knee of mine to the ground and I DON’T adjust my hips, I’ll injure myself. Sitting in full mount is incredibly painful for me, and even closed guard can be painful. My hips adversely affect my jiu jitsu.
Those hip muscles also attach to the lower spine, which means that my back has been aching like crazy, ready to seize up at any moment. My hip flexors also feel ready to be injured – sincerely, just rotating my legs a little too far, and I get VERY sharp pains. It sucks!
The physical therapist believes the ball of my leg’s ball and socket joint is off track. It doesn’t sit in the right place due to unknown reasons. She first pushes her finger deep into the side of my belly and presses on the hip flexor near my spine. She does this to help relax it. Then she has been pressing strongly on my femur downward, then pulling the leg out, trying to help it sit where it’s supposed to.
Then begin the exercises. So far I have had to do the following:
- Foam rolling my back
- “Open Books” – lay on the side with the knees bent and arms extended out together. You then open your arms like a book. Your knees and hips stay facing the wall, but your arms open like a T and your shoulders/back are ideally laying flat.
- Lumbar Rotation – my back is on the floor, my feet are on the floor with my knees bent. I then rock my knees from side to side.
- Hip Flexor stretch – kneeling in a deep lunge with the back knee on the ground.
- Calf stretches – standing on a wedge, hugging the wall.
- Bird Dog with rotation – on all 4s, I am on opposite hand/knee. One hand is on my neck, and I touch that elbow to my opposite knee, then bring that leg out straight, and twist my torso so that my elbow is facing the ceiling and my chest is facing the wall.
- Bridging – my knees are parted, with a resistance band on them. I have to hold them apart, and I bridge slowly.
So far, just in the past 3 days, the physical therapy has helped, although my back has been so terrible. Terrible enough that I have just rested or done easy movement this week, with no jiu jitsu. I’ll work on getting some photos of my range of motion – both for my personal documentation and for the blog.
Jiu-Jiu’s Question: Have any of you had success with increasing hip flexibility or flexibility in general? Have you gone to physical therapy and had success? Any words of encouragement? I’m feeling bummed and frustrated and in pain over here. 🙁
Hi there! I’m so sorry to hear about your pain and I can relate completely. I had knee surgery two weeks ago today and it has been more mentally challenging than anything because I cannot train at all and it’s very frustrating. I’m very lucky to have an inspiring coach who sends me videos and texts and is doing his best to help me be positive and focus on the things I can control. He told me that when you’re physically unable to train then you need to work on your mental game. He says to watch videos, make notes, ask questions and picture yourself doing these things and making plans for when you get back on the mats and your body can catch up to where your mind is. So, I’m trying and that’s the best I can do.
About the flexibility… You may want to look into something called hip dysplasia. My youngest child was diagnosed as an infant and had to wear a harness for 6 months that realigned her thigh bone into the hip socket correctly. Obviously you can’t do this as an adult, but it sounds very much like the same thing. My husband had the same issue and he practices a lot of yoga to increase his flexibility and strength through the hips and core.
I work at an office that has a group of physical therapists. I’m lucky to be able to talk to them on a regular basis and they are doing wonders for getting the mobility back in my knee, so I shouldn’t be down for much longer. These guys know their stuff, but the key is to follow the doctor’s orders and do the exercises like instructed.
I hope you get better soon!
I talked to the PT about hip dysplasia and she said it definitely wasn’t that, so that’s good! I have no doubt I didn’t quote her quite right, but I did ask her about that. Thankfully, after starting and consistently doing the exercises, I’ve had dramatic results. Not up to normal ROM, but dramatically better than what it was when I started.
How is your recovery going?
I have good news! Yes, you can definitely increase flexibility, in any age.
Before I was admitted to professional ballet school in Czech Republic, I had to work on my hip flexibility a lot because one of the requirements was: While laying on your back, bend and open your knees. Bring your heels closer to your butt and connect bottoms of your feet together. Now, the requirement was that your spine, outer part of your feet and outer part of your knees had to be on a floor. You can see it is impossible thing to do….
Try to always warm up your body throughly before any stretching. Either with workout, running or hot bath.
Before class I like to lay on my back and do circles with my hips (legs are straight. Lift your R leg up while bending your R knee and try to bring the knee close to your L shoulder, then to R shoulder, turn your R hip out and bring your R let straight down on a floor again, both legs together. I do 10 each leg, then again.
Ardha-Matsyendrasana (spinal twist) from Yoga is great hip stretch too. I do the easy version with one leg straight.
Kneeling on a floor (knees slightly open)with butt sitting between you heels is good too.
And your photo- stretch against the wall is good, you may try to put some weights on your feet to help that gravity.
All those physical therapy exercises you described are great and I am sure you will see big improvement.
About your spine: Ardha-Matsyendrasana
Forward bend ( standing with feet wide apart. Start to slowly roll down. then grab your head with
your hands and “stretch” your neck. Hold for 30 sec)
Inversion table- if you have one. I swear by that.
If your physical therapist is right about the ball and socket joint off track, maybe you want to talk with orthopedic doctor/surgeon….
I hope you will feel better soon!
Thank you for sharing your experiences and the specific exercises. I’ve been consistently doing my PT. We did a follow up and my flexibility and hip strength dramatically increased! Crazy! So yes, I agree with you that things get better with work!
Right now I’m JUST doing the PT exercises, but I have my eye on yoga as well, so I really appreciate the yoga poses you recommend.
Hi, going to pilates has worked wonders for me. Give it a try, tell them your goals and they will get you there. It may take a year (it did for me) may take less time but pilates can fix 99% of muscular/skeletal rotation issues – give it a try you wont regret it.
I haven’t looked into pilates, only flirted with the idea of yoga. I appreciate the suggestion!
I am prenaturally flexible in some directions of hip motions (‘butterfly’ feet together knees to the ground bend forward…) and not very in others, though that’s more to do with related muscles than actual hip motion. I’ve been working on this routine https://gmb.io/hip-mobility/ to shore up muscles for both the easy ones and the hard ones.
Thank you for the link. I’m working on doing my PT daily (which is its own struggle), but I have my sites on some easy yoga and routines like this for the future. Thanks for sharing!!
Seriously, it sounds like flexibility isn’t the issue. Strength is. In the physical hierarchy strength should almost always take priority over flexibility. Flexibility has a habit of sorting itself out to a normal degree if you perform strength exercises through a full range of motion. If your present “full” range of motion isn’t an actual full range of motion, the act of always striving for an increased range in the strength exercises will eventually fix those problems.
I would recommend Starting Strenght, you should really look into it. Don’t dismiss it firsthand. Think hard before you simply conclude something along the lines of “I can’t do that”. Can you sit down on a bench that’s about the height of your knees and then stand back up? Then you can absolutely squat! You’re already doing it! You said your hip was so weak you couldn’t resist any lateral tension? That’s a strength issue. If you’re having an off-period from bjj, spend your time getting stronger!
I have no personal quarrel with physical therapists, but her assertion sounds a bit weird… Your femur isn’t sitting in the socket? That’s kind of a big deal… http://orthoinfo.aaos.org/topic.cfm?topic=A00352
And I repeat; I have no quarrel with physical therapists, but from my experience people can almost always perform way more intense exercises than they will prescribe. I don’t hang on every word Mark Rippetoe (of Starting Strength fame) says, but this article highlights the silliness of thinking people feel better and become stronger, fitter and more flexible by not pushing themselves… http://startingstrength.com/article/strength-health/exercise_government_style
Hey Marcus – thanks for the reply. Thankfully with the military, my PT is completely paid for, so I’m able to use it as a resource. It has helped IMMENSELY. My range of motion has increased dramatically. Yes, it’s a strength thing, and these exercises are helping strengthen those joints. I’m now in PT for both my hips and my shoulder. My right shoulder has a tendency to slip out, and BJJ really exacerbates it – so we’re working on strengthening the surrounding muscles. Very honestly bench press and dead lifts would exacerbate it as well.
I’m familiar with Starting Strength, and have used it in the past. I love Mark Rippetoe.
I do want to be very clear – I have shit memory. This means that if the physical therapist told me A, I might remember it as B. So unless she wrote it down (she didn’t), then my quote is absolutely not accurate. But – an aside, when I have seen general practitioners about my hips (the initial PT referral and a sciatica flare up) they were both really surprised my my lack of range of motion – a frowning “That’s not good” reaction.
Thankfully, my right hip now can go all the way up to my chest straight with no problems, and the left hip can go about halfway up – much more than before.
Thank you for the comment and the links and the concerns!
Sucks to hear. I have a similar issue, Coxa Vara. But I still haven’t suffered as bad as what you are suffering.
I hadn’t heard about that. Thankfully the PT has helped a LOT. It has increased my joint strength and range of motion dramatically. Now I’m getting PT for my shoulder because my right shoulder tends to slip out. 🙁
I’ve had really good results using cossacks squats (gradually increasing ROM over time) and also I have found this drill really useful https://www.instagram.com/p/BDLzSEph6-j/?taken-by=zaolife . Good luck!
Oh good lord – that is truly and honestly beyond my physical ability. Thank you for the share? 😀