Imagine this situation, it is the fall and you have been back swimming for about 5-6 weeks since your summer “break” from swimming (is there ever really a break?!). You have been increasing your training volume and you start to notice your hip is getting a little sore. You shrug it off, because being is sore normal for a swimmer.

After Some Time, You Start to Notice the Soreness isn’t Going Away

The soreness is actually starting to get a little worse. After another week or so, you start to consider your hip painful rather than sore. Your ability to kick is decreasing, you are getting frustrated, and you have no idea what to do. You finally admit to yourself you have hip pain when swimming.

This is a more common situation than you think.

While not as common as swimmers shoulder, there are plenty of swimmers who have some sort of hip pain. In this article, I am going to go over a classic presentation I see in the clinic and what I do to get a swimmer back in the pool pain free. Before we jump into that, here is some more background information on swimmers and hip pain.

Where Does Your Hip Hurt?

Commonly, a swimmer will feel some discomfort in the front of their hip. In some cases, the hip pain can radiate down the side of their thigh, but does not go past the knee. One of the common muscle that tends to be painful to touch is the Tensor Fasciae Latae Muscle.

What Makes Your Hip Feel Worse?

Some of the motions that may aggravate your hip pain are flexion (bringing your knees to your chest) and internal rotation at 90 degrees of hip flexion. There will also be a limited ability to extend the hip due to tightness in the front of the thighs, but there may not be any associated discomfort with this motion. The muscles in the front of the hip (TFL, rectus femoris, and iliopsoas) and the muscles on the inside of the thigh (adductors) tend to be really tender to touch.

In the pool, breaststroke kick usually is the most painful, but flutter kick for a prolonged period may also aggravate the issue. Dolphin kick typically is pain free.

Do You Have Weakness in Your Hips?

Some of the muscle groups that show weakness are the hip flexors and hip abductors (glute medius). The weakness in the hip flexors may be a response to your pain, so it may not be a true weakness. I have found that after decreasing the pain in the hip, your hip flexor strength returns back to baseline quickly.

Why Did Your Pain Start Now?

This is a tough question (check out another blog I have on this), likely with the increase in training volume, on top of having the stress of school, balancing swimming and a social life, the muscles around the hip become fatigued. After a while, the muscles can no longer recover and start to become a bit irritated from all of the work. This irritation can result in muscle inhibition, where the muscles that are irritated decrease their activation. This your bodies attempt to try to protect the area that is painful. This is why there will be weakness in muscles that may have not been weak before. The tightness in other area’s be a result of other muscles trying to compensate for the inhibited muscles. Correcting the weakness will both help eliminate tightness and improve the strength in the tissue with the issue.

Does this Sound like You?

If so, stay tuned for part 2 where I will go over what you can do to help decrease hip pain when swimming so you can reach your goals.

Have questions or thoughts? Contact me!