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Client Case Study: How Marsha Put An End to Her Hip Pain

About the Author: Harminder

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Running is an active hobby that refreshes your mind and improves your overall wellbeing. It can boost your cardiovascular health, help you get back in shape and keep you energetic the whole day.

 

But sometimes, running can also prove to be a source of injuries and pain. A lot of people avoid active running and discard their goals related to competitive running because of joint pains and injuries.

 

You know what? You should never let go of your passion for running because of pain and injuries. It is very much possible to tackle joint pains when you take the right treatment fueled by proper knowledge and care.

 

Back in Motion Physical Therapy & Performance can help you find the right way to get back in form and enjoy painless running.

 

Here is a story of how Marsha was able to put an end to her chronic pain when running.

 

Masha is an avid runner and is passionate about competitive running. As with any sport, competitive running takes a lot of effort, dedication and hours of practice to build up stamina and muscle strength required.

 

And as running can be a vigorous activity that puts a lot of stress in leg and hip muscles and joints, incidences of injuries and joint pain are quite common among runners. Hip muscles, on particular, easily become tight. This makes them lose flexibility when under pressure and thus they become more prone to stress-related pain and injuries.

 

Marsha too felt the pain build upon her hip area and over time, the pain only kept getting worse.

 

Marsha was not ready to give up on running yet because of her hip pain. She tried a lot of treatment options. She tried seeing her MD and a few other physical therapists and could not find a viable solution to her hip pain.

 

Without prior specialized knowledge, it can be difficult to pinpoint the exact cause and provide accurate treatment to deal with it. And that's what Back in Motion Physical Therapy & Performance was able to provide to Marsha. Specialized care, unlike the generalist approach that her MD and Physical Therapist were providing.

 

Good for Marsha, as she did not stop searching. She knew something out there could help her and she had to see a specialist. Though hesitant at first, Marsha contacted Back in Motion hoping it would help. She soon found she was in the right place right from her first appointment.

 

Evaluation

 

Back in Motion has its own diagnosis and treatment process called the Gray Method named after its prestigious founder Dr. Scott Gray.

 

It starts with a general evaluation and then expands to specialized evaluation to discern an accurate diagnosis of the patient. This method does not stop with the diagnosis but digs deeper to find the exact root cause for the condition.

 

See, the thing with muscle and joint injuries is that they can be caused by different incidents or physical conditions. The hip problem could be caused by anything from a muscle strain, tendonitis, cartilage tears, hip pointers, IT band syndrome, arthritis, and fractures.

 

In Marsha's case, it was lateral gluteal tendinopathy.

 

Tendinopathy refers to the degradation or breakdown of the relevant tendon. Marsha's lateral hip tendon was damaged and that was the reason she couldn't run as freely as she wanted to.

 

Fixing the Cause

 

After the extensive evaluation process by Back in Motion, we found that Marsha's cause for pain was due to the overloading of her hip tendon. This happened because her gluteal and butt muscles were weak.

 

The treatment was, thus, designed in a way to help her strengthen her gluteal and butt muscles and make way for her hip tendon to heal properly. Stretching exercises of the antagonistic muscles (the abductors) and exercises to strengthen the lateral hips were prescribed.

 

Tendon injuries can be tricky to deal with. They are usually caused due to inadequate blood supply to the tendon tissues. Their wellbeing depends on their level of movements as they receive their nutrition from muscle contractions and loading.

 

So, resting the muscles is not going to heal them. Same way, overworking them can also injure them more. Both underloading and overloading the hip cannot make it any better.

 

Hence, tendon injuries usually need careful examination and continuous watch on the progress to keep the treatment consistent with the level of progress made.

 

Back in Motion is well aware of these technicalities. We designed specialized exercises that were focused on strengthening the hip muscles and give enough mobility to let Marsha keep running.

 

We did a logical progression of low load and higher repetitions to steer the progress towards exercises that mimicked Marsh's favorite sport running.

 

By identifying and dealing with the root cause of the hip problem, the muscle weakness, we were able to ensure the hip pain will not recur under the same circumstances again.

 

The End Result

 

After about 6 weeks of skilled Physical Therapy and care, Marsha is now back to running pain-free and has set personal records.

 

Are you suffering from any such problem? We can help. Consult us now by clicking here.

 

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