Top 5 Exercises That Actually Help Cure Hip Impingement

Hey friends in this video, I’m going to show you the top five exercises that actually helped to cure hip impingement. My name is Dr. David Middaugh. And I’m a specialist physical therapist that’ll pass. So 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, we post up every single week.

So before I get into these exercises, I just want to let you know that I have a video called the hip impingement, everything that you need to know to make your hip pain better, it’s linked down in the description below. So if you’re not sure that you’ve got hip impingement, or you want to know about the symptoms, diagnosis of hip impingement syndrome, go check out that video first before coming over to this video.

And then that way you can know that these exercises are for sure going to help you out because if you’re not dealing with hip impingement, it could be something else like hit tendinitis, hip bursitis or maybe even osteoarthritis in your hip. And you need to find that out so that you can get the right exercises for your problem. We’ve got videos on how to find every one of those problems that I just mentioned. So let’s get over to the exercises.

The first one you’re going to do is called hip rocking. For this you’ll have to get on your hands and knees. So on the floor would work or on your bed, you just going to crawl up onto your bed or crawl down onto the floor and can be on your hands flat or on your knuckles just like I am right here. And Hip rocking is just like what it sounds, you’re going to rock your bottom backwards, nice and easy as far as you can comfortably go.

And then come right back up over your hands. He just got a nice and easy rock back as far as you can comfortably go and come right back up over your hands. Also, as far as you can comfortably go, and you want to do a good amount of reps, I wouldn’t even count the reps, I would just go for 234 minutes, this usually feels a really good and somebody who’s got hip impingement, especially when you come all the way back in this direction it for most people with hip impingement, it feels uncomfortable to bring your knee that close to the rest of your body.

But in this position, controlling the motion and controlling the weights because it’s not your full body weight in your muscles aren’t working the same as when you stand up and walk around, it can feel a lot more tolerable to sit back towards your feet as you go back. All you have to worry about when you’re rocking back and forth is to not stretch a whole lot, you don’t want to push it and force it.

As soon as you feel any symptoms into hip impingement. If you do, don’t push into it, you just want to stop before the symptoms and future reps and rock back and forth nice and easy so that you’re just producing movements inside your hip joints. And then you’re back. Some little variations you could put into this motion as you’re rocking back and forth for a few minutes is shoot your bottom or aim your bottom over one side.

So I’m going over to the left my left now. And then you can go over to the right, instead of just straight in the middle. And some people like to come up over their hands quite a bit to where they even straighten out their hips like that, that’s okay to do if you want to, I find that most people with hip impingement problems have the most discomfort coming up.

So I focus on having them work on this kind of motion, right here just to build some confidence in bringing your knee closer to your chest. So that you can better do this and other exercises and other movements. For somebody with hip impingement, this would be the number one go to exercise to make it more comfortable, more tolerable, to sit to move to do normal things, I would have somebody doing this every 30 minutes every hour as frequently as possible throughout the day as long as it’s comfortable for them.

Because they after doing this for a few minutes, people usually get up and feel better in their hip. Once you’ve achieved some good mobility in your hip. Now, with your hip impingement, you can start to activate the muscles. And the first exercise that I want you to do to activate your muscles is a diamond bridge, a diamond bridge looks just like this, you’re going to lie on your back, put the soles of your feet together just like this.

And then you’re going to think about flattening your back down against the surface that you’re on, whether it’s your bed, or the floor, and I always get questions on what’s better, the better the floor, it really doesn’t matter. As long as you fire the right muscles like in this case, I need you to fire your butt muscles, the glutes they need to tighten up really good. So if you can achieve that on the bed the same as you can on the floor, then it doesn’t matter.

But if you try before in the bed and you find that one works better for you then go with the one that makes you fire your glutes better. So once you’re there, push your back flat, then squeeze your glutes and then you’re trying to lift your bottom just a tiny bit like a half an inch, you know one or two centimeters and hold it there for 10 seconds. And the goal here is to make your butt muscles your glutes, tighten up and work really well.

After holding it for 10 seconds like that you can relax and you can do this 10 times so tight lighten up the glutes flat in the back that order isn’t as important. And then lift up, hold it for about 10 seconds. If you want to go more than 10 seconds, like 20 or 30 seconds, you can as long as it’s okay on your hip. After that you can relax. And for most people, they are more comfortable with their hips open like this for someone with hip impingement.

So this usually feels good just to relax here. That’s totally fine. And when you tighten your glutes and push up, you might even put a little bit of a stretch on the front of your hip. As long as you feel like it’s a deep stretch, that’s probably the where the bones are being compressed for hip impingement. That’s okay, and you can hang out there for a bit, you just don’t want to force a stretch down, you don’t want to push your legs down.

Some people like to sit up with their feet like this and push their knees down. Not a good idea for somebody with hip impingement. What we’re accomplishing here in this diamond bridge exercise is you’re forcing the ball and socket to align better by using the glute muscles with the knee out like this so that the hip position is open.

So rather than forcing it with your hands, you’re using your body’s muscles to improve the alignment and movement inside the hip joints. So back flat, but tight lift up want to make this my last rep but you’re going to do 10 reps minimum at home. To get those glutes working well. After you’ve woken up those glute muscles really well on this diamond bridge exercise, you’re going to stand up for the next one, it’s going to be a standing glute squeeze the way this exercise looks, you’re going to stand up, squeeze the heck out of your glutes just like this, tighten them up.

But do so in a way that does not make the front of your thighs tighten up as well. So if you can tighten as hard as possible, but without tightening up the front of the thighs, then that’s what you’re going to do go 100%. But if you find that your glutes can only go about 70%, before the thigh start to activate, then you can only go 70% Don’t exceed that.

Because if you start making your thighs, the front of your thighs, your hips tighten up when you’re trying to get your glutes to work, that’s not going to be productive to help your hip impingement. In hip impingement problems. Typically, people have dominance of these muscles in the front, and that brings the the ball forward in the socket, which is what impinges the joints.

So you don’t want to work the front muscles you don’t you want to keep those as quiet as possible, while making these work quite a bit because he’s going to wake up to pull the ball backwards into the socket and unpinch the joints. So this is a great exercise to do. Even when you’re standing around at home.

If you’re washing the dishes like this, if you’re standing in line, nobody will really notice especially if you’re holding it’s different if you’re contracting and relaxing because it’ll look a little funny if somebody’s seeing you out in public. But if you just tighten up those glutes, hold them tight find the the right tension back here that allows this to come down.

And then you can go there for 1020 30 seconds or longer, I would want you to be on a schedule of some sort, where you’re doing 10 reps at a time all together. And doing them every hour, every 30 minutes, I would get obsessed with making your glutes work without the front of the hip muscles working.

The fourth exercise here is a standing a butt blaster exercise. And it’s called the butt blaster because it really blasts those butt muscles, it makes them tighten up really good and work really hard. And that’s the point of these exercises is to wake up the glutes, so that you’re improving the alignment within that ball and socket joints. So all you got to do for this exercise is stand somewhere with good balance.

So you know, ideally like in front of a counter or a table or a chair is something that’s sturdy, you’re not going to hang on it a whole lot. So it doesn’t have to be very, very, very sturdy, you could use a wall, I’m going to just lean my this leg against the table here for balance. So for this exercise, you’re going to have 90% of your body weight on this leg, in this case, my left leg.

So I’m going to work out my right and then about 10% on my right leg and I’m just toe touching with my right foot right here. And then what I’m going to do is rotate my leg all the way out, twist the toe out, twist the knee out, and that already should begin to tighten up the glutes a little bit, then you’re going to slide your leg backwards behind your body and then out who hurt you felt it burn quite a bit.

So that was a little extreme. For me, I’m going to do a lighter version of it because I felt my my muscles over engaged. It wasn’t comfortable. So out, back and then a little this way Navy can pick it up right there. And I’m trying to get the glute back here to work quite a bit. So I’m trying to think about tightening up this muscle and make sure that you’re going all the way back there and not just out.

If you go out you’re going to fire the muscles that are right here where your front pocket are. That’s the TFL tensor fascia Lata muscle. There are other hip flexor muscles here, the rectus the rectus femoris the psoas muscles iliacus all those you don’t want to activate right now. You need to be focused on the back pocket muscles are ones that are over here.

So to do that turn out and that makes you go straight back, and then a bit out like that. And if you feel these muscles on the front and the front side of the hip working, then just go a little more back, hold it for 10 seconds right there. already feel it working tremendously. After 10 seconds or so then you can come down and rest. And if you need to make this a bit easier, you can lean forward a bit and do the same thing, toes out, knees out, go straight back and a little bit out. And you can feel that working back there.

And that’s a great exercise to get your glutes working, you might even feel it on the glute that you’re standing on the leg that you’re standing on, that glute will work as well. And then you could do the same thing on the other side, you would just turn around, make sure you’re balanced. So turn your toe out in the out, move your leg back, and a little bit out just like that, you should be feeling that glute working.

And I would encourage you to work both sides on this exercise, since the leg that you’re standing on is also getting a glute workout when you’re doing this one. Now the last exercise here is going to be a squat hold. So you’re going to do a little baby squat. If you haven’t done squats in a long time, or you’re afraid of squats because they hurt your hips or your knees, this version should be safe for you to do for your hips and knees. And in fact, it’s going to really, really engage your glutes.

So if you’re worried about it, just watch first and then give it a try. So you know what to expect. And the idea here is always going to be to fire the heck out of your glutes, because that’s going to unpinch or unempIoyed, change your hip joints. So it looks like this, you’re going to stand up with your feet about hip or shoulder width apart, just like so.

And then what you’re going to very suddenly do is just bend your knees a tiny bit, that’s all that’s the squat right there. From this position, you’re going to squeeze both butt muscles to drive your hips forward. It’s almost like that standing glute squeeze. And you’re going to hold it there for 10 seconds. But you’re also going to think about shoving your knees out.

So you’re shoving your hips forward and moving your knees out, hold it there for 10 seconds. And you should already feel those bonds tightening up tremendously. Let me show you from behind. So we start with your feet about hip width apart, shoulder width apart, there’s no perfect distance here, just comfortable toes out, knees out, hips forward, knees a little bit bent, and you’re holding it there for 10 seconds making sure these muscles are tight, you’re thinking about squeezing the heck out of these muscles, making them work and hold tight for those 10 seconds.

And you’re trying to avoid using the thigh muscles here. You don’t want these thigh muscles to engage a whole lot. So if they if they are firing up, when you do this, you’re probably going too low. A lot of people think that the squat needs to be way down here. And that’s an advanced version of this. You want to stay high. Just barely bend your knees a tiny bit. And you might even try this without bending your knees. It’s more like that, that standing glutes squeezes.

But the difference here is your knees are going to be out your feet are going to be out and then shove the hips forward and then you’re trying to think about rotating your legs out because that makes those glutes tighten up an extra amount. So to show you one more time from the back here, hips, feet hip width apart, knees out, but forward but tight, bring your hips forward, squeeze really hard.

From the side of you here. It looks like So knees out, hips a little bit bent knees a little bit bend and I’m shoving my hips forward, which kind of straightens out my hips. And then I’m thinking about glutes working back here. They are working pretty hard. I’m starting to get a little bit winded, just firing my glutes here. And that’s great.

That’s what needs to happen for a hip impingement problem. Hey, I hope this video was helpful for you if you’ve got a hip impingement problem, do these exercises every day until this hip impingement goes away and even after it goes away, I would look at continuing these exercises for another week or two afterwards.

And then you got to go treat the root of the hip problem which might involve a lot more advanced glute strengthening, you can check out a video that we’ve made on treating the root of the hip problem. It’s down in the description below. And if you liked this video, give it a thumbs up and also share with a friend that might need to learn about this stuff too. We hope to see you in the next video friends. Bye