Hip pain is widespread among runners and can put a stop to your running in the worst case. Learn more about hip flexor soreness an injuries, possible causes, how to alleviate and prevent a recurrence.
What are hip flexors?
Hip flexors are muscles and tendons in front of the hip joint, which connect the legs to the pelvis. They move your thighs forward and upward, affecting the movement between your upper body and legs. They affect the smoothness of your crotch, feed into quads, affect the hamstrings, and affect the spine and cause low back pain if they are tight.
Why are so many hip flexors tight?
There can be many reasons why the hip flexors are tight. Number one is that you have a hip flexion or tendonitis due to:
- Overload from repetitive movements
- Increase speed work or uphill training
- Poor biomechanics
- Wrong support in your running shoes
- Shortening of the hip flexors
- Low back pain/weakness that puts extra strain on the hip flexors
- Overuse of the Psoas muscle that pulls on the connecting tendons
- Overenergic crunch in the stomach that causes agitation in the Psoas
- Groin load
- A stress fracture in the hip
- Osteoarthritis
How to treat a sore hip flexor?
You can do many positive thingsp flexor-specific stretching and mobilization to exercises aimed at weaknesses that often lead to hip flexor injury.
Do not forget the benefit of resting first for any injury/pain, and concentrate on stretching, strengthening, and making sure you have the right running shoes for when you return to running.
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