Hip Pain
Ouch! Did you feel a pain in your groin? Or maybe it was on the outside of your hip or even in your butt? Hip pain can trigger in a lot of places. Because of this, it can be difficult to trace the source of the pain.
Hips Need to Move
Often, body pain is linked to a lack of mobility. Stiffness and tightness often lead to difficulty in moving the way we were designed. This is especially true for the hips. The hip joint is a ball-and-socket joint that requires a high degree of freedom to work correctly.
Many Causes of Hip Pain
Many people, both young and old, have hip pain. In a young person, it can be due to a sports-related injury or even a genetic condition. In adults, hip pain can result from overuse or the way a person has walked for decades. Despite the differences, there are common elements to addressing hip pain. We need to get the bones in their proper place so that healing can occur naturally.
Breathing Affects Bones
Last time, we discussed how breathing links to pain. How a person breathes influences how bones are arranged and how mobile or stiff we are.
Ribcage Tilts Hips
The ability of the hips to move is influenced by the position of our rib cage. If the lower front ribs are flared up and out, the pelvis tips forward to balance us out. You can try this by sucking your gut up while standing. You’ll feel your pelvis tip forward.
Lost Movement Area
This forward rotation shrinks the space available for the hip joint. It can lead to bones, tendons, ligaments, and muscles running into each other. Plainly said, the joint doesn’t have enough room to move in the hip socket. The bones, ligaments, muscles and nerves hit each other, and we feel pain.
Tight Muscles
In this tilted scenario, the muscles in the front of the hip joint contract too much, which makes the problem worse. We might feel this as tight hip flexors. Hip flexors are the muscles at the top of your leg connecting the legs to the hips. When they are tight, it is more difficult for our thighs to extend behind our hips when we walk. We want the hip joint to be in the correct position to give us the most mobility so we can use our muscles without tightness. To do this, we need to look at breathing.
Proper Breathing
We are often taught to suck in our gut as we exhale. We are told to get all the air out by squeezing our abdomen, especially the belly button. The problem with this type of breathing is that it lifts our front lower ribs as we exhale. This puts us in the situation described above, with our pelvis tipping forward, which decreases the space for our hip joints.
Neutralize Your Hips
We can fix this with our breathing mechanics to position our hips correctly. If we exhale and allow the belly button to relax forward, the front lower ribs can drop down and in. The midsection opens up, and the pelvis can sit in a neutral position instead of being tipped forward. When the pelvis is in a neutral position, it gives the hips space to move.
Ribs Down & In
The key is to allow the ribs to stay in this ‘down and in’ position on the inhale as well. If you try to push your belly out as you inhale, which is often taught with belly breathing, this lifts your lower ribs because you are distending the abdomen. If you put your hands on your front lower ribs and then push your belly out, you can feel your ribs lift up. Unfortunately, this tips your pelvis forward and decreases hip space. We must consider keeping the lower ribs down and in on the inhale. Keeping those ribs down and in supports the primary breathing muscle, the diaphragm, making your inhale more effective.
Practice Breathing
Let’s do a Test.
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Inhale Test: Sit in a chair and inhale. What moves? What tightens? Do you feel your front bottom ribs lift up and out, or do they stay still?
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Exhale Test: Exhale and monitor what happened. Did your belly button go in, or did it relax outward?
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Hip Check: Now, put your fingertips on the muscles in front of your hips, where your pants crease between your torso and your thighs. Try to feel if the muscles contract or if they are loose and squishy. If you are sitting relaxed, these muscles, the hip flexors, should be relaxed. If you aren’t sure, lift your knee slightly and feel the muscle contract. Then, put it down and see if it fully relaxes.
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New Breathing: Inhale and keep the front lower ribs down, then exhale, checking that the front lower ribs drop down and in as the belly button relaxes out. Practice this a few times. It is difficult to breathe this way at first if you’ve been breathing the opposite way most of your life. As you practice this, keep your fingers on that front hip crease and check if your hip muscles tighten up as you inhale or exhale.
This little exercise shows you the link between breathing and your hips. You might feel both hips tighten or just one. Your hip might be tight the entire time, or you might be able to sense it loosen on the exhale.
Wake Your Muscles
As you practice this exercise and learn to feel the front of the hips relax, walking might feel strange. If your hip muscles have guarded your body for a long time, you might be wobbly when they start to release. We need to stabilize these muscles that have been dormant for a long time. The hamstrings are key. You will want to wake them up to stabilize the hips and pelvis as you learn to release the guarding action of the hip flexors. The upper hamstrings are needed to balance the relaxation of the hip flexors. Other muscles come into play later.
Relearn Moving
All this work changes movement at the hip joint in a good way. We want these changes so the tissues stop pinching and the nervous system learns a new way to use your muscles and move your thighs. Your breathing mechanics are critical in making this happen in a natural way so that other treatments can be more effective if needed. Try it and share your results. Dr. Amy Novotny: pabrinstitute.com
