Antioxidants - A Summary

If you are experiencing hip pain, but you're not sure what type of injury you have suffered, or how bad it is, this article should answer those questions for you.

There are three main types of hip flexor pain:

Pain When Lifting Leg

Hip flexor pain is often associated with pain while lifting the leg, but more specifically, pain only during this movement is usually a pulled hip flexor.

Pulled Flexor

If you have a pulled flexor you may know it already, if you remember when it first started hurting, if it was during some sort of explosive movement, you probably have one. In order to test if you do, try standing on the opposite foot, then lifting your leg as high as possible(knee to chest), if you feel any pain at any stage stop immediately. Once you have established that there is pain performing the knee to chest movement, it is almost thinking fast and slow summary that you have a pulled hip flexor. Please scroll down to the severity section to learn what his means.

Constant Pain

If you have nagging pain throughout the day, and it hurts when you move your leg or stretch your hip flexor, you may have a case of tendonitis.

Tendonitis

Hip flexor tendonitis occurs usually with athletes as an overuse injury. Whenever a repetitive movement is performed, such as running or cycling, there is a lot of force being placed on the hip flexors. Often this will lead to inflammation of the tendon attaching the hip flexor muscles to the bone and will cause a lot of pain.

Pain When Touching Hip Area

A bruised hip flexor is an umbrella term describing an injury to one or more of the several muscles that the hip flexor contains. If your pain started after a blunt trauma to this area, you probably have a bruised hip flexor.

Bruised Flexor

It can be hard to tell the difference between a bruised and a pulled hip flexor, because you will often experience pain when lifting the leg either way. The difference is that in a stationary position, a bruised muscle will be very sensitive if you touch it. So to diagnose this, stand up and slowly apply pressure to the different parts of the hip flexor; if the pain felt while applying pressure is similar in intensity to the pain felt lifting your leg, you probably only have a bruised muscle, this is great news!! Bruised muscles only require a few days of rest and you'll be ready to go, although maybe a bit sore...To speed up healing, apply a moderate amount of heat to the area 2-3 times a day with a heat pack or warm towel, this will stimulate blood flow and kick start your healing system.