HIP AND GROIN INJURIES

Sports Hip & Groin Pain Physio in Mawson Lakes

What Is Athletic Groin & Hip Pain?

Hip and groin pain is one of the most complex type of injuries that we can get in the body. There's a lot of interplay between multiple structures and that's what can make hips and groins a tricky area to treat and a tricky area to keep better and that is why it is super important to get the right type of physio who knows what you need to get you back to better than ever. So, lucky you landed here!

Understanding Hip & Groin Pain in Athletes

So when we talk about the hip and grin, it's a much more complex error than that firstly the hip itself is made up of the femur and pelvis and more specifically the acetabulum which is the socket of a hip but the side of this article we're gonna focus more on the groin and the muscle muscles associated with that.

Classic hip and groin pain presentation is a sharp or achy pain located in the front of the hip and down the inside of the thigh. You can often be a pain that warms up with activity and gets worse once you cool down but most athletes will complain about the pain that just gets worse and worse with movement and exercise to the point where they can barely move any more. Other common descriptions of a groin pain are this general feeling of heavy legs and an inability to produce acceleration and run fast.

Hip and groin pain it often felt with sprinting sharp change of direction kicking twisting through the abdomen and hips, which is why it's so common in ball sports where these movements are done at high intensity and on high repetition.

The common problem with hip and groin pain is most athletes will develop these early small symptoms and hope that they go away, and sometimes they're lucky they do but more from then not they become this completely debilitating injury.

What Causes Hip & Groin Injuries in Athletes?

For the purposes of this article when I talk about hip and groin pain, I'm gonna focus more on the chronic groin injuries but I'll briefly chat about acute groin injuries here, so what we commonly know as a groin or adductor strain. These often happen when there's a sharp change of direction a quick kick across the body or rapid acceleration and it often felt as this tug on the inside of the thigh. These are treated like any other muscle injury and you can read about that in my muscle injury page. The most common cause for chronic or persistent groin pain is overload so this can be an increase in training frequency and increase in training intensity or sometimes generally just not being strong enough for what your body needs to do.

Like I said before, these injuries often start off quite minor, where you might notice a decreasing power that decrease in acceleration which eventually becomes more of an ache and a pain and this progresses to a full-blown debilitating hip and groin pain sandwich. Other things we can consider as causes of hip and groin. Pain can be bony changes so these can be present from birth or they can be a result of significant loading through childhood and adolescence. Other main causes are a decreased level of strength in the surrounding areas meaning are groins have to do more work.

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Common Hip & Groin Injuries

This is where the situation starts to get a bit murky. There are a tonne of hip and groin injuries and terminology out there but I will go through the main ones and explain why they're not as important as we look towards Rehab.

So for starters we've got adductor tendinopathy which is essentially an irritation and overload of the tendons in our groin.
Inguinal hernias are another issue that we can often see with athletes, this is essentially a pseudo hernia whereby the tissue in our abdomen can press up upon a little hole in our lower abdomen known as the inguinal canal.
Femoro-acetabular impingement or FAI is a bony related issue in our hip, so this can either be a pincer impingement where a piece of bone on the hip socket can cause some impingement on the ball of the hip. Or we can get a cam impingement whereby the head of the femur so the ball has a bit of bony change. The important thing to know with these is they are more common than we know and most athletes can go their full career without having an issue with these. If you do happen to have one it is definitely not all gloom and they are easily managed.
Pubic bone stress is another aspect of hip and groin pain and as the name suggests this is just a stress response on the pubic bone most commonly because of the adaptive muscles pulling on the bone, it is important to hear that this often happens in conjunction with other hip and grinding injuries and a lot of these injuries will often appear together.
Hip flexor tendinopathy is an overload injury of the hip flexor tendon, and this pain is often felt in the groin region.

an afl player who has injured their groin_hip.jpg

Our Proven Treatment Framework

When we talk Management of these injuries this is where physiotherapy is crucial so it's always important to see a sports physio especially one who knows their way around these injuries because they can often be misdiagnosed which means they are definitely going to be mismanaged. So at Feel Good Physio Co. I have a proven framework that gets athletes better.

STEP 1 - ASSESSMENT

Any injury requires a deep-dive into why it happened. It feeds into a solid rehab plan, but also helps understand you as an athlete. But groins and hips are a complex system so we need to know why your problem started. This is achieved through an in-depth chat, and a thorough physical assessment and this paints the picture that we need for rehab. By the end of this, we should have a set of measures that we can use to track progress.

STEP 2 - TREATMENT

Treatment is always going to depend on the injury and the person. But, more often than not we use a combination of manual therapy to help with symptom relief and mobility. Following that it is vital that we use exercise based rehab to get you back to your best. Again, this is tailored to your injury and your sport/goals.

STEP 3 - RINSE AND REPEAT

We don't just stop there, we need to continuously treat and re-assess how you're progressing, this is how we actually get you back to your goal. Otherwise, it's just blind treatment. This timeline again, will vary depending on the condition and long-term goal.

STEP 4 - RETURN TO TRAINING/PLAY

We're almost there, once we're happy with where you're at, it's time to return to your activity/sport/exercise. But, the job isn't done there. Most people drop off here (physios included) but this is the vital point where you will sink or swim. If you don't continue rehab from this point, it's likely that you will fall into the cycle of repeat injuries.

Staying Strong & Injury-Free After Rehab

It's important to continue rehab and prevention work well after you've returned to play. This separates those who just return to play and those who return to perform. This is my main goal for you during our rehab journey. I want you to leave here with the tool-kit required to manage your condition and injury well after you've finished with me!

Why Athletes Choose Feel Good Physio Co in Mawson Lakes

There is a huge difference between rehabilitating an injury to being pain-free and rehabilitating an injury to high-level performance. Here at Feel Good Physio Co. we specialise in just that, we want you to return to performance, not just play. You should feel confident that your body is going to be able to do what you need it to do, without fear of immediate re-injury.

That is why athletes choose us for their sports rehab.

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CONDITIONS I TREAT

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HIP & GROIN PAIN

HEAD & NECK PAIN

SHOULDER PAIN

ELBOW PAIN

LOWER BACK PAIN

SCIATIC PAIN

GENERAL ACHES, PAINS & SPRAINS

KNEE PAIN

ANKLE PAIN

FOOT PAIN

TENDON PAIN/INJURIES

OSTEOARTHRITIS

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Led by me, James a sports-physio, Feel Good Physio Co. combines modern clinical rehab with performance-level strength training. I’ve helped hundreds of athletes break their injury cycles and come back stronger then ever.

I've worked in all levels of sports from the elite, semi-professional and amateur, and the one thing remains consistent - injuries affect everyone differently so you need the right rehab.

And personally I've dealt with my fair share of persistent injuries during my time as an athlete. I know the impact they can have at a physical and mental level.

Therefore, I have a strong passion for dealing with sporting injuries and making sure you are as strong and resilient as possible at the end of your rehab journey.

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