Avoid THIS with hip groin pain | INSTEAD try these 3 exercises

have you been diagnosed with hip osteoarthritis and are experiencing pain on the inside of your leg or in your groin area you may even be experiencing tightness right in the front of your hip well if you are i'm glad you're here because in this video i'm going to tell you the one exercise to avoid if you're experiencing this pain that's commonly prescribed and then three things to try instead so my name is elizabeth we haven't met before i'm a doctor of physical therapy and i specialize in helping people with osteoarthritis my whole goal of this channel is to give you hope and show you that you have options for pain relief besides surgery before we get into these movements i just want to talk very briefly about why you may be experiencing pain because i think it's important in order to actually understand why these movements can be helpful you have a few muscles in the front of your hip one that starts from actually your spine which can explain some lower back pain if you're experiencing it but comes down and helps to flex your hip so hip flexion is swinging your leg forward like this and then also bringing your knee up both of those are considered hip flexion your hip is your leg is moving in front of your body now you can imagine when you're walking you rely a lot on hip flexion bringing that leg forward but your hip moves in three directions so it does move forward it helps the leg move sideways and then it helps the leg move backwards now think about your daily movement the direction that you're commonly moving and let me tell you i can probably guess what it is moving forward as humans we spend a lot of time moving in a forward direction and then if you're using walking for a primary form of exercise there's more forward walking or forward moving so do you see a pattern here we spend a lot of time moving forward then you add hip arthritis to the mix you add pain to the mix you add muscle and balance to the mix and you may start limping so if i had pain on my right hip a lot of times you'll notice that your body doesn't want to spend a lot of time on that right leg because that's our way of our body adapting but when you're walking and you start to experience limping you have to use quite a bit of power to really kind of heave your leg forward so when we're commonly spending a lot of time moving forward and then adding a change to our movement adding a limp these muscles in the front of your hip can get really irritated so this is going to lead me into the first movement the movement that you should avoid okay let's talk about a movement that i would recommend avoiding if you're having groin pain or experiencing pain or tightness in the front of your hip this is a movement that's commonly prescribed and this is not saying this movement is bad this movement does have a time and a place especially if you have knee pain or hip pain spend a lot of time sitting it can't be beneficial but this is one that i would maybe avoid if you are experiencing groin pain this movement right here you're going to extend your leg straight out and then you're going to lift it up lift it straight up now this movement is considered hip flexion if we think about what we just talked about about what muscles are working and they may be overused this movement right here is asking the muscles in the front of those legs to do a lot you're lifting that leg against gravity so you can see why this movement may not be the best choice for you right now again not saying it's bad not saying you should never do it but we have to decrease that groin pain first so instead i'm going to show you three movements that you can try that are going to help relieve some of that pain number one is going to be backwards stepping now if you do not feel confident in your balance if you are having higher levels of pain or just if this is a new movement to you i would highly recommend having support nearby whether it's a chair a kitchen counter something stable to help as we move through these movements for this first one we're going to add in some backwards movement so i'm going to show you two different variations of doing this the first one is facing support where you have two hand support so you can keep your chest upright now when we step backwards we can alternate at first just like this so i want you to step backwards just as far as feels comfortable now you may feel a stretch in the front of your hip and that's okay the idea is we want to put those muscles on stretch and then contract them by moving forward when you move forward you just want to meet your feet at the same point meaning i don't want you to necessarily then step forward because that's getting in a little bit more into that hip flexion so i just want you to step forward so you meet the other foot you can also stand on one leg and then step backwards and come back step backwards and come back another way to do this is to just use one hand and support so if i'm going to stand on my left and then step backwards with the right i'd like the support to be on the right side the side of the leg that's moving that's going to give you a little bit more support versus if it was on this side a lot of times i see some leaning and some compensations so i always try to have it on the side of the leg that's moving stepping backwards and then coming forwards doing anywhere between 10 to 20 repetitions at first can be a great place to start now you can incorporate this if you're standing at the counter doing something if you're brushing your teeth just starting to incorporate some backwards movement whether you're alternating or staying on one side and just stepping that way that's going to work your gluteal muscles so one of there's three layers of the gluteal muscles and the first layer is one of the most powerful and that works on leg extension meaning your leg is moving behind your body so that's the muscle that we're focusing on in this movement because we're trying to get support of the hip on all sides which is going to move us into the second movement which is sideways so again you can start with two-handed support all we're going to do is just step out to the side and come back step out to the side and come back now i'll show you from the front you're going to step out to the side and come back again you're just stepping out as far as is comfortable and it may feel weird at first it may feel tight just because we don't move sideways very often so just take it to whatever you can tolerate this should not significantly increase pain if it does minimize the range of motion that you're stepping or use more support now the second layer of those gluteal muscles is the gluteus medius which helps us move sideways and there are a couple of other muscles that are involved in that so now you're just stepping again about 10 to 20 repetitions at a time whatever you can tolerate right now we don't want to overdo it now we've addressed the backwards movement and the sideways movement so those are two very simple things you can start incorporating throughout the day to help take some pressure off the front of the legs now moving into number three this one i do recommend having a chair for we're essentially trying to combat the forward direction of walking so if you hold on to the chair with both hands just lightly touching it you don't have to really grip it and you want your arms to be straight and you want to feel like you're just reaching a little bit feet are about shoulder width apart and what we're going to do now you're going to keep your chest up i always kind of like to look at something maybe on the floor about four or five feet in front of you and you're gonna reach your hips back now your knees are just relaxed they're not bent and we're not bending them it's all in the hips so you're reaching back notice my back is relatively straight i just don't want you to be hunched over and then come up reach back and when you reach back the idea is to feel a stretch right in the backs of the legs and using your glutes to bring you upright reach back just as far as you can go and then really use those glutes to squeeze up so this is working muscles essentially opposite to forward walking now we're trying to work the backs of the legs and the glutes to give us that good support all the way around now this one you want to try about eight to ten times at first this one in particular shouldn't necessarily feel really challenging think about it more of a mobility movement or a little bit more of a stretching movement a dynamic stretching movement so with these three movements essentially the goal is to take stress off the front of the hip and add in some variety in a way that's not going to flare up pain i do also have a blog post on these exact movements that you can click down below and see if you'd rather read and actually watch the movement demonstrations that way if you find this helpful the next step i would recommend is checking out the free 4-day arthritis friendly movement challenge essentially this is four workouts that are going to be nice to your arthritic joints and our follow along routines with me they start a little easier and progress in difficulty a little bit each time that's going to give you so many different ideas on how to add variety and how to build strength in ways that aren't going to further flare up pain so you can check that link down below or you can go to arthritis adventure dot com forward slash challenge it's totally free and i will see you on the inside

Channel: Alyssa Kuhn, Arthritis Adventure

Views: 125,367

Keywords: hip groin pain, hip pain, hip inner thigh pain, groin pain, hip osteoarthritis, hip oa, hip exercises, arthritic hip, hip arthritis, hip groin, groin arthritis exercises, hip arthritis groin

Id: 8qUuLH9AlvI

Length: 12min 0sec (720 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 21 2022