Chronic hip pain, like any other chronic pain, can easily end your sport, or in the case I mention below, end an exciting career!
As you may know, I’ve been the repetitive strain injury moderator for http://www.AllExperts.com.my for about 15 years – I’ve lost count. Occasionally I receive a message that is a common enough pain problem that I want to share the answer with everyone.
This question came from an Irish Step Dancer. As you watch these beautiful dancers you can easily see how they are repetitively straining all of the muscles, and causing chronic hip and leg pain.
You may not be an Irish dancer like the woman who sent this question, but if you are a runner, golfer, or you play tennis – or if you are just having chronic hip pain – you’ll find answers to the cause of your pain, and what you can do to resolve it!
The Cause of Chronic Hip Pain
I am a competitive Irish dancer. I love what I do, it is my passion. I am 40 years old and I have been Irish dancing since I was 35.
The pillar of Irish dancing is core muscles and hamstrings. The better I have gotten with my dancing, the worst my everyday pain in my high hamstrings right at the hip joint (Bicep Femoris). I have been in pain for 4 years now. It only gets worse.
can you please advise.
Obviously “Bridget” is overusing all of her muscles. She doesn’t have a “chronic hip pain condition” she has overuse syndrome, and it CAN be reversed easily. It’s just a matter of discovering what is causing the pain, finding the source of the pain, and then eliminating it with simple self-treatments.
Here is my answer:
Hi,
I LOVE Irish dancing, and I’ve always appreciated how grueling it is for the dancers from their hips to their feet. I’m happy to tell you that it is easy to treat each of the muscles, but it’s more than just your hip joint and hamstrings, this chronic hip pain pattern actually starts from your quadriceps, specifically your rectus femoris.
It will help you follow this discussion if you first read about hip joint pain relief. You’ll see that your quadriceps cause your leg to go straight after you bend your knee, so it is being repetitively strained from all of the dancing.
The rectus femoris is the only one of the four quadriceps that originates on the tip of your pelvis, so when it is being repetitively strained – and therefore shortening – it is pulling DOWN on your pelvis and UP on your knee.
As your pelvis rotates down from this strain, it causes the muscles of your hamstrings to become OVERSTRETCHED. The worst thing to do is to stretch your hamstrings without first treating the muscles that have caused your pelvis to rotate. The overstretching occurs because the origin of your hamstrings are on the base of your pelvis, so as your posterior pelvis is going your hamstrings, which have their own spasms occurring and tying the fibers into knots, are now being overstretched as the pelvis moves.
The muscles of your hip become involved because they are twisted as your pelvis pulls them down in the front, and contracts them as your pelvis moves up in the back. This puts a great strain on the top of your thigh bone, called the greater trochanter.
When you read the website I mentioned, you’ll see that you need to do the treatments in a specific way to release them in a manner that will reverse the domino-effect your rectus femoris is putting on your pelvis. As you release each muscle in what is called the Julstro Protocol, the following muscle will be able to release.
As a dancer, I suggest you self-treat each of the muscles regularly, even daily. This will force out the toxins that are created as you dance for hours, and will enable your muscles to heal while you sleep so you’ll be fresh in the morning and not carrying around yesterday’s pain.
You can release all of the muscles that are causing your chronic hip pain, and you’ll find that you’re dancing better, with more flexibility, and you’ll also feel stronger.
Wishing you well,
