Simple ways to help when your experiencing pain in the front of your hips

I get a lot of questions from a variety of people complaining about anterior hip pain. For this blog post I’m going to cover just a few points that are beneficial to most folks without going too deep into anatomical detail. 

There are several factors to be aware of when suffering from hip pain, including: 1) being aware of your range of motion, 2) listening to your pain and discomfort, and 3) focusing on your posture.

If you are feeling hip pain, avoid deep ranges of motion until you are not feeling that pain anymore. Pay attention to your posture, pay attention to your form, and pay attention to what needs to be stable and what needs to be mobile.

Femoral acetabular impingement (FAI)

The femur or the high bone meets the acetabulum, which forms the largest ball and socket joint in the body, and is super important! So, FAI means there is some kind of pinching or impingement taking place in that joint. This can be caused or based on anatomical features, not great form when you’re squatting, other areas in the body that lack range of motion or areas of the body being limited causing a compensation in the hips.

What is really important when I first work with people is to first identify if there are any limited mobility in their ankles, thoracic spine, and even up in the, shoulders (because of the shoulders relationship to the thoracic spine)- when there is limited mobility in those areas it can put pressure on the hips.

The goal is to see how we can change our movement patterns to get any pressure or stress off of the hips completely. So when I first work with someone, how they move in their daily life, what their posture is, how they squat, are all super important to observe and learn.

So many of the students I work with who complain about pain in the front of the hips, tilt their pelvis and arch their low back when they squat which pushes the femur into the acetabulum and that compresses the front portion of the hip, putting pressure on the labrum.

So avoid stretching deeper or squatting deeper, even if you don’t experience pain as you’re doing so. A common misconception is that deeper is better and that the joints will get stronger when you load them more- but that is not the case. The joints don’t get more prepared as your load them, they get more strained as you load them.

So, the best thing to do and most important steps are to back off from any deep flexed position, listen to your discomfort and pain, investigate your posture, and any inflexibility or limited range of motion in your ankles, thoracic spine or shoulders- when we lack mobility there, the body is smart and is going to make up for it elsewhere- that is in the knees, hips and spine.

Pain and discomfort are signals that what you’re doing is not working, and you want to figure out what is contributing to that instead of putting more fuel on the fire. While practicing yoga this means being mindful of how you move, using blocks to be cautious of where you’re moving and how deep into flexion you’re going and avoid anything that causes pain.

To summarize, we want to stabilize more instead of going into deep ranges of motion and passive stretching, avoid sitting for long periods of time and pay attention to our posture, your form and then find out what needs to be stable and what needs to be more mobile!

Happy moving! <3