Recovering from Hip Strains and Sprains: A Comprehensive Guide to Getting Better

In this video I’m going to tell you about hip strains and hip sprains and everything that you need to know about them to get better. My name is Dr. David Middaugh Finn, I’m a specialist physical therapist at El Paso Manual Physical Therapy. And this channel is dedicated to helping people stay healthy, active and mobile, while avoiding unnecessary surgery, injections, and pain medications. Please consider subscribing to this channel so that you don’t miss out on any of the helpful videos that we post every single week. So let’s get right to it.

What’s the difference between a hip strain and a hip spring, a hip strain has a TNF strain. That’s an injury to the muscle or the tendon, the muscles are all over the back side of the hip here, the glute muscles, the butt muscles, and they come out and attach to different areas of this part of the thigh bone. And then on the front, you have some hip flexor muscles and some abductors kind of on the outer friends that also come down and attach in different areas of the thigh bone right here.

A sprain which has a peanut sprain, that is an injury to the ligaments are different. They attach bones to bones, rather than tendons, they attach muscles to bones, ligaments in the hips are right around the socket right through here. And then they cover up the ball right here. And they attach to the top part of the thigh bone right here and keep the bones together here for stability.

Whereas the muscles and tendons are more responsible for movement, they when they contract and tighten, they create motion between the two bones. And when you get a hip strain or a hip sprain, usually you’re overworking those tissues, the tendon, the muscle or the ligaments, or you just injured them like in an accident of some sort.

And you’ve overstretched them, or you’ve a overexerted yourself, you’ve tightened up the muscles, or the joint you stretched out, stretch out the joint too much, which stretches the ligaments and that’s what’s causing the pain and the injury to the area.

For the signs and symptoms between a hip strain and the hip sprain, they’re going to be slightly different, but they overlap quite a bit. For a hip strain, which is the muscle and tendon, you’re going to generally feel the symptoms a little more superficial versus a hip sprain, it’s going to be deep in the hip.

And typically it’s on the front side of the hip versus a hip strain, you’re going to feel it more on the outer part of the hip, to show you myself like in this area over here, and the front pocket area where the muscles are right here. And they’re not going to feel as deep there versus the hip sprain is going to be deeper inside the hip right here.

There’s usually going to be pain with motion with activity. And if it’s a real bad hip strain or hip sprain, it’ll hurt with even just little motions like when you move your leg to go to get up or to get out of bed or to turn over or shifting your seat that can become uncomfortable. In really extreme cases, it can just throb and hurt even at rest.

But typically it worsens when you begin to move because you’re using the ligaments, tendons and muscles. And so it aggravates those already inflamed tissues a bit. The causes of hip strains and sprains are overdoing it somehow. So typically in a physical therapy setting, we’re seeing people that have overdone it somehow and exercise they may be in competitive sports, or they may just be going to the gym doing their weekend warrior or their exercise to stay healthy and fit.

And they get a little over excited with doing certain things, they run too much they get a cardio machine too much, they pick up too much weights or do some extreme activity that their body is just not ready to do at this time. They’re not fit enough or in shape enough to do that activity and they still make themselves go through it. And that’s what causes the strain or the sprain deeper.

The other reason we’ll see people with hip strains and sprains is from accidents from motor vehicle accidents, you know, a car accident of some sort, bicycle accident motorcycle accident, or it could also be an exercise accident where somebody took a fall or somebody ran into the individual and cause their hip to move in an unexpected way that can overstretch those ligaments inside the hip joints are caused the muscles and tendons around to start to seize up and injure the muscle and tendon causing a strain.

Now the way this is diagnosed, if you go to the doctor, they’re going to typically take an x ray of your hip to make sure that nothing’s broken. But that X ray won’t tell you much about the muscles, the tendons or the ligaments, it’s just checking for the bones and the alignment within the joints. In some cases, an MRI might be ordered, that does give us a picture of the tendons and ligaments. And it is possible to see inflammation in some of those tissues.

But most of the time, you’re going to just be diagnosed based on your history on what you went through. So the doctor is going to ask you questions like I’m going to ask you right now, where are you in an accident? Did you overdo it recently? Did you go start exercising a lot more than usual or did you run a lot more than usually run or bike more than usually run?

I would ask are you involved in any sort of consistent cardio exercise where you’re moving for 30 minutes or more at a time and did you up the time or the intensity did you go faster, more intense with whatever activity that you were doing, because that is likely to set up your hip strain or your hip sprain.

Another factor that we think about as healthcare professionals in the diagnosis of a hip strain or hip sprain is that this affects people that are in their 20s 30s or 40s. Occasionally, younger individuals in their teens will get this. And it tends to affect people that are involved in more endurance activities. If it’s a sporting accident, like a like a runner, or a cyclist, or somebody who’s going to the gym and using the cardio machines quite a bit.

As far as treatment options, your doctors probably going to recommend some sort of pain medication, maybe an over the counter pain medication, like Tylenol, which would be a lower level of paracetamol or acetaminophen, or a stronger over the counter pain medication might be indicated by your doctor like ibuprofen or naproxen or they may even recommend some sort of prescription strength pain medication, which they’ll tell you what they recommend, in extreme cases, and injection, like a cortisone injection might be something that the doctor offers you.

And the main reason for that is, if it’s a really bad strain, or sprain, and you’re not able to sleep, or even walk, and in those cases, they’re probably going to tell you to get some crutches and not use your hip, make sure that you’re walking around on crutches so that you’re not using the muscles and the tendons and ligaments inside your hip joint, which is going to be the next recommendation that they’re going to tell you to rest.

So they’re going to say you need to get off your feet only get up and around for what you absolutely need to do like going to the bathroom and taking care of your normal daily bodily functions and knees, you know, eating, drinking water, those kinds of things. But as far as going to the store going shopping, they’re going to say go get some help from somebody or use the scooter inside the store.

If you can, you need to just decrease and minimize how much you’re moving around and using the hip joint and the hip muscles so that those that sprain or that strain can fully heal once it heals enough, which typically takes anywhere from a week to a month depending on the severity. Once it heals enough, though, you can begin to get more active and begin to walk around more. Using a hip brace might be helpful for you.

There’s not that many variety of hip braces out there compared to other things like wrist braces and knee braces. But I have linked a hip brace that I think is good down in the description below. And it may be helpful for you to sleep better at night if you’re sleeping in that brace, or at least be able to tolerate a little bit more movement during the day without having to rely on pain medications to get through each day.

What doctors typically won’t tell you is that you should be moving your hips in very easy ways. Easy motions are going to be beneficial for you. And in fact, we’ll be releasing a video here in the next few days called the top three exercises to do for a hip strain or a sprain. So stay tuned for that where he It’s already been a few days go check that out in our videos. We’ve got tons of other videos for hip problems.

So in case you don’t think that you quite have a hip strain or hip sprain, we’ve got hip arthritis videos, hip tendinitis videos, all kinds of other hip related videos that you can check out and there’s a link in the description below that will take you to a playlist of all our hit videos. You can also go to the playlist tab here on our channel and find our videos organized into specific diagnosis specific problems that affect the hip joint.

Thanks so much for watching this video. If it helped you out, please give us a thumbs up share this with somebody that you think it might benefit. And don’t forget to subscribe so that you don’t miss out on our videos. Thanks so much. Have a wonderful day friends. We’ll see in the next video. Bye