Top 4 Exercises & Stretches That Actually Give You Hip Pain Relief

In this video I’m going to show you the top four exercises and stretches that actually give you hip pain relief. These exercises and stretches will be especially helpful if you’re dealing with hip arthritis, a Pulled Groin, a strained HIP, HIP bursitis, a hip labral tear, as well as hip tendinitis.

My name is Dr. David Middaugh. And 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 our channel so that you don’t miss out on any of the helpful videos that we post every single week.

Now let’s get into the four exercises this the second and the third, I’m going to show you some standing versions and the other ones will be lying down on your back. So you won’t need any equipment, you’ll just have to lie down somewhere. And then you have an option to stand with to these exercises.

The first exercise is called bent knee fallouts. And I especially love this one to warm up the hip joint, the ball and socket joint as well as begin to loosen up and calm down the hip muscles if you’re having a problem with the muscles, and if you’re dealing with arthritis or a hip labral tear, and this is especially good for that hip joint. And you may want to do extra reps and sets if you feel like it’s beneficial for you.

So the simplest thing to do is lie down on your back with your knees bent just like this. Then once you’re in this position, you’re going to think about each knee individually, keeping your feet flat on the surface that you’re lying on, you’re going to let one leg fall out slowly up to where it feels like it wants to stop or you have the edge of pain, you don’t want to push into pain, then bring it back in slowly.

And then you’re going to do the same thing going the other way. And just alternate side to side until you’ve completed 30 reps, or 15 reps on each side. So here’s four. And just take your time exactly the pace that I’m going here take a full second to come out and a full second to come in. And you’re not trying to stretch the leg all the way out.

Notice that’s all I have right here. As far as hip motion, if I try to push my leg out further, my my waist wants to turn my other leg wants to go with it. It’s not productive anymore. At that point, I’ve already maxed out the amount of motion that I have available right now in my hip joints. And I’m going to start to move other stuff. And that’s not the point of this, you want to move your hip joint only during this exercise.

So nice and easy in and out, satisfied. It should feel comfortable, shouldn’t tire you out. It’s kind of a stretch kind of an exercise you’re moving. But you are getting near the end of what motion you can tolerate without pain, or what you have the full range of motion available as well. A lot of people ask, How far should my feet be from the rest of my body like towards my bottom, and it doesn’t matter. Whatever is comfortable for you.

If you want to bend them up as much as possible, that’s fine. If you want to have a little more out, that’s fine, too. whatever’s most comfortable for your situation. And once you’ve done 30 reps total or more, if you feel like this is good for you, you really can’t get enough of this exercise. If you thought 30 reps was just warming you up and you want more than that, go for 60 100 reps. Whatever feels comfortable for you, as long as it’s not hurting you.

Obviously, you’re not over moving your leg outwards to your certain twist your body and move your other leg when you try to move the intended leg. But that should settle your hip joint it should free up the arthritis a little bit in your hip, it should allow the labrum to feel better and the muscles that could be causing a problem in your hip will also begin to move in a very gentle way.

The second exercise you are going to start from right here, you I’m going to show you a standing version of this. But right now we’re going to do glute sets. So you’re going to put your legs down just like so relax your feet relax, your legs move up just a little bit so you can see my feet. Then you’re going to let your feet fall outwards like this as long as it’s comfortable for you, because that’s going to pre-position your glutes to fire and then you’re going to squeeze your glute muscles, you’re going to tighten up your buttock muscles and make sure that you hold a tight for 10 seconds.

Go as tight as you can, without firing other muscles. You don’t want to find your quad muscles. You don’t want your your hamstrings in the back of your thighs right here to fire. You really just want to make these glute muscles fire. So if you try to go as hard as possible and you feel everything tightening up, you need to stop you need to back off, relax everything and gradually squeezes glute muscles and when you feel other muscles beginning to fire beginning to squeeze and tighten, then back off a little bit.

You just lose working. And even though it’s not the most intense for your glutes, that’s where you should be working so that you can train your glute muscles to begin to fire better without firing all the other muscles that are probably feeding in to your problem causing your hip pain.

After 10 seconds, relax and you’re going to repeat this 10 times. So hold the glutes for 10 seconds at the at the intensity that you can do without firing other muscles. If it’s 100%, for you go 100%. If it’s 50%, hang on a 50%, or whatever it is for you where you’re where you don’t fire other muscles. After 10 seconds, you can relax and go 10 times, glutes tight. After 10 seconds, go in and relax them. And just repeat like that.

Now for the standing version of this, you’re going to stand somewhere where you have some balance. So you might stand right in front of the bed or a table or near a wall. If this table wasn’t here, the wall would be right here. And you’re going to do the same thing with those butt muscles, you’re just going to squeeze them as hard as you can hold it for 10 seconds, and then relax, tighten up those muscles, hold it for 10 seconds, and then relax. If it’s causing other muscles to fire, then only fire up to the percentage that you can tolerate without causing everything else to fire.

So if it’s 50%, hang up there, that’s cool, do 50% and then relax. Notice how my hips come forward a little bit. That’s what should happen when your glutes activate properly. Now the next exercise is a resisted hip extension exercise, really easy to do in seated. And then you can also do it in line down. So we’re going to do this and seated and lying down, or you can do is sit somewhere comfortably, then you’re going to hold the back of your thought you could also hold the front of your shin like this.

Either way works as long as you don’t lose grip of your leg, and you’re just going to hang on your leg, my elbows a little bit bent. I’m hand over hand like this, if you choose to lock your fingers, that’s fine too. Just make sure it’s a comfortable grip on the on your leg, whether it’s out here, or back here behind the leg. Once you’re here, what you’re going to gently do, this is not a very hard exercise, you’re going to push your side down against your hands.

But you’re going to hold it up with your hands don’t push so hard that you actually break your hand grip, you’re trying to only push what you can, while feeling those glutes on that on the glute muscle the leg that you’re working activate. So for me, it’s not going to look like anything moves. That’s it right there, I can feel my butt muscle on the left, tightening up. And that’s what I want.

And ideally, you want to bring your knee up higher to your chest and do the same thing at that angle. And if you need to grab the front of your leg right here, this is as much as my knee will go to my chest, and then fire the glute muscle right there. I feel working and nothing else is working, it just works back in here.

Do that 10 times holding for 10 seconds each time and then do the you can alternate if you like you can do all 10 on one side, and then do the other side. It doesn’t matter as long as you get those glutes working. And if you’re just dealing with hip problems on one side, I would recommend doing both because chances are you’re developing the problem on the other side. But it just it just hasn’t happened yet. It’s not hurting you at this time. After 10 seconds, you can relax and try to bring that knee in more.

If it hurts to bend your hip like this. Some people have hip labrum problems, I just don’t want them bend all the way or hip arthritis problems where the joint doesn’t move very well either and it doesn’t bend all the way work to the ankle, it’s comfortable for you. If it’s down here, that’s fine. And in fact, if you can’t bring up your leg more than that needs to be resting down.

You could do it right here. I’m pushing against the floor with my foot and against the table here with the back of my thigh and I’m firing the butt muscle of this leg as I pushed down, that could work for you as well. An alternate way to do this line down would look like this, you just lie down like you were with the last exercise. And same thing, you’re going to grab the back of your thigh right here your other needs to be bent like so comfortable distance from your body doesn’t matter where your foot goes exactly.

And then same thing you’re going to be pushing your thigh away from your body and trying to activate this muscle right here. You don’t want to activate the hamstring, the front of the thigh, the quad muscle, the front of the hips, you definitely don’t want to feel to feel working. You just want to get the glute of the leg that you’re working to tighten and fatigue as you go through all 10 reps holding for 10 seconds each one and then alternate or do while on one side and do all on the side as well.

This is great, especially the back pain because oftentimes back pain comes on with hip pain. And if you can’t get your seats in lockdown your back. This is very relieving for some people. And some people just get a better condition in this one too. If you felt like you weren’t really getting your glutes while you were sitting and try laying down it might work better for you. And of course you can put your hands on the front of your knee or your shin or behind your leg wherever you like.

This next exercise is one of my favorites because it just works the heck out of your glutes. It’s so effective now. It’s called the Bridge exercise for those of you that follow our channel you’ve probably seen me talk about this exercise and other videos. I can’t leave it out of this video. It’s so critical for getting your glutes to work correctly. But when it comes to the Let me just take a little side note here for a moment.

I don’t care how you work out your glutes, you got to work your glutes though, if you’ve got a hip problem, most hip problems that we see here in the clinic come from a glute weakness. We see this all the time. Whenever we see people with hip arthritis, a labrum problems, some sort of sprain, like a hamstring sprain. Bursitis on the side of the hip, IT band syndrome.

They’re all rooted in a glute Maximus weakness, and there’s other glute muscles in there, glute medius, piriformis, all the deeper glute muscles, the DEM li muscles, the arbitrator muscles Quadratus from Morris, I went ahead and named them all, there’s probably one I’m forgetting. But all of those muscles need to get stronger in order for this hip problem to go away. So all we’ve done so far has been kind of like warm up things.

This next exercise is bridge exercise is one that really gets us glute muscles to work hard to really push the strengthening, which is going to give you the long term relief for your hip problem. Up to now it’s all been kind of pain relief, short term stuff that isn’t going to last very long. But this exercise here is where you’re really starting to bank some long term relief for your hip problem.

So let’s get to it. It’s a bridge exercise, you’re going to be lined down in your back like this. And then what you have to think about is flattening your back. So your lower back right in here above your, your, the band, the waistband of your pants, or whatever you’re wearing on your on your bottom half, push that down, just like that, that should suck your abs down against the table or the floor bed wherever you’re lying down. And once you’re holding that down right there, you should already feel like your butt muscles are wanting to activate. That’s good.

Once you feel like those butt muscles are activating, then you go ahead and fire them, make them work a bit so that you can tighten up those glute muscles don’t go so hard that this starts to work. Once you feel his glute muscles working a bit, then lift your bottom just a bit, a couple centimeters an inch or so hold it for 10 seconds right there. And think about those glute muscles working, you really have to concentrate and make those glute muscles work.

Otherwise, you’ll feel other muscles working after 10 seconds you can relax. And just to show you how to make it a bit more intense angle your feet out, you might even open your feet up a bit. And do the same thing back flat, but tight and then lift up a little bit. And think about pushing those knees out and hold it there for 10 seconds. This gets us glute muscles working. And generally the closer you move your feet in towards your body.

In other words, this way, it takes your hamstrings out of it. For most people, it will add a little bit of stretch here. But as long as that stretches in really intense, you’re firing those glutes and you’re not lifting really high. It’s okay, you don’t want to feel a big stretch here though, you feel a big stretch here, you can start to work the quads, which defeats the purpose, you’re trying to get the glutes going here and you might still feel the glutes working.

But most of the time with most hip problems that we see here in the clinic people are over dominant, they’re over developing their quads and hip flexors in the front of their hips. And so they’re not using their glutes properly and that’s the muscle imbalances are dealing with. So to show you one more time, at home, you’re going to do 10 second holds 10 times or shoot for that aim for that. Bring your feet in, angle the toes out, open the knees back flat, but tight, lift up just a little bit from wherever you’re lying down to do this, hold it for 10 seconds and do 10 reps.

Now to not make this video super long. I’m not going to do all 10 reps here. You can pause the video here, do your 10 reps, and then resume it once you’ve finished your 10 reps. So you can hear the next piece I’m going to tell you about now that you’re done with all those exercises. Hopefully you’ve got some relief at this point. If you do please comment on the video below. Let us know that this helped you out if you are looking for more specific help in other words, you’re dealing with a specific hip problem like a sprained hip bursitis and your hip IT band problem arthritis problem or a hip labrum tear check the playlists in the in the description below.

There’s links for videos in the description below this video that have more specific information for each of those problems. The point of this video was just to give you an overview to get you some short term relief but the videos that we have in those playlists are more geared to educate you and show you some other stuff to build on the long term relief so that you can avoid taking pain medications or going to go get an injection and hopefully avoiding unnecessary hip surgery that doesn’t really even address the root of the problem.

Guys, I hope you like this video. I hope that you get some relief from this it truly hope that you’re feeling better, sleeping better walking better, so that this hip problem is the thing of the past for you. If you did get some relief. If you liked this video, please give us a thumbs up and consider subscribing to our channel so that you don’t miss out on any of the helpful videos that we post every week. We’ll see in the next video friends. bye