Melt away hip pain from sitting
We all sit more than we realize. If you get hip pain making it hard to sit still, get up from your chair or even walk around after, keep reading!
The Problem
“I treat a lot of hip pain patients because it’s often related to lower back pain. Hip pain can also get worse after sitting so it’s important to know the difference. ”
It often begins as tension or tightness around the hips when sitting, working or driving. It’s uncomfortable as muscles start to burn and ache causing you to shimmy around in your seat.
Soon it’s difficult to sit or drive for very long and pain may even shoot down your leg. Exercise feels good at first, but only up to a point after which your symptoms get worse. The pain can keep you from falling asleep or even wake you up when you roll on your side.
You become restless, agitated and exhausted. You avoid sitting, driving, and strenuous exercise in hopes “rest” will help.
“It’s when rest, stretching and heating pads fail that someone seeks my expert help.”
If this sounds like you keep reading. I’ll explain how to melt away hip pain from sitting so that you can get back to sitting, driving and sleeping calm and well rested.
The Solution
“First, understand that when sitting the muscles around the hips are not at rest. They’re actually working to hold the hips in a sitting posture.”
Newton’s first law of motion says an object at rest stays at rest, but an object in motion stays in motion. Day in and out the hip muscles become some of the most overworked muscles in the body. Muscles that live in tension stay in tension. This is the tightness you feel at first.
Without adequate rest the muscles get deprived of adequate blood flow. You experience this as hip pain. Getting up and moving around feels good up to a point because it restores blood flow. Yet, further exercise usually results in more pain by overloading already overworked muscles.
Hip muscles can get in such a habit of being tense that they stay tense even when lying down to sleep at night
Now, the reason you’ve read this article so far. Here’s how we help patients melt away hip pain from sitting.
Relax the overworked muscles at first
Hip pain from chronic muscle tension is a learned habit. To melt away the tension you need to teach them a new habit. How to relax again.
Releasing muscles in relaxed hip positions then stretches reduce pain and muscle tone. Group treatments close together at first to keep the muscles in a relaxed state.
Strengthen muscles after pain improves
Sore and overworked muscles become weak. Trying to do more strength exercises too early reinforces compensation. It’s also ineffective.
But, muscles that can get into a relaxed state are ripe for basic strengthening exercises. The timing is more important than the exercise choice here.
Change your sitting habits
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. Going back to the same sitting habits will give you the same result: hip pain.
Changing sitting habits at home, work and in the car will be essential for a long-term solution. The good news is that simple modifications are easy to install.
The Challenge
“You might be thinking the problem is weak glutes and you need to exercise them more. The problem is that overworked muscles cause weakness.”
More exercise loads the overworked muscles even more worsening symptoms. You’ll strengthen the wrong muscles no matter the exercise you choose.
Focus on getting the muscles relaxed early on to relieve symptoms. This also primes them to learn a pattern when you do start exercise.
Do any of this out of order and symptoms won’t improve or worsen.
If you’ve read until now you likely need help with hip pain. Send us a message and tell us how it’s holding you back.
Hip pain often comes from the the muscles
“Focus on getting the muscles relaxed early on to relieve symptoms. This also primes them to learn a pattern when you do start exercise.”
I had a patient with hip pain right on the side of her hip. Whenever she’d drive longer than 30 minutes it’d ache down her thigh. Getting up to walk around would feel better, but anytime she had to sit in place for a while the symptoms came back.
She told me that her hips always felt tight, but stretches that used to help didn’t anymore. She stopped hiking with her friends because the hills made it worse. Now, it started to wake her up at night.
Her mother had a hip replacement so she worried she would need one too. She came to me for help first, which was a good choice. I had a look and reassured her that her hip joint moved great.
I let her know that some of the hip muscles are so deep it can feel like the pain is coming from the joint. It was great news because it meant I could make a big difference if she followed my advice.
Now she drives back and forth from the city to visit family, hikes the escarpment and gets sound sleep. Her mood, social life and energy is better because she followed through on the plan.
We help relieve hip pain suffering
“If any of this relates to you, the good news is that there’s a lot you can do about it. We help patients with hip pain every day and we’d love to help you too!”
If you have hip pain when sitting, send us a message. Let us know how it’s affecting you and we’ll let you know if we can help.
