Sorry to hear man. I did PT for 8 weeks and it helped a little but I could not get back to running pain free. Ended up having surgery and it was the right decision. Took about 6 months to get back to regular training. I'm now running completely pain free with no issues (21 months post op right now). I do get some tightness in my hip every once in a while but I am able to manage it with stretching and massage. I also do all my PT exercises once or twice a week still to keep my glutes strong.

For surgery, make sure you find a good doctor if you haven't already. And you have to follow the doctors orders to the T. You cannot try to rush the recovery/rehab process. It's not worth trying to get ahead of the recovery process. You will end up having a setback and doing more damage. The rehab is long, slow, and extremely frustrating. I'm not going to sugar coat it.... it sucks. But it was all worth it in the end.

Best of luck

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I had the exact same issue, PT didn't help, had surgery and was back racing competitively after about a year. I'm assuming you got the MRA to diagnose it? Find a good doctor, one who specializes in that surgery. Depending where you're located, there's plenty of people on this board who have recommendations. Do exactly what they say with recovery, don't try to rush it or you could damage something else. The first week for me was miserable, but depends on how much they do in there and what got damaged with the hip dislocation. Take into account some time off of work. But definitely plenty of success stories with this surgery.

Here's what worked for me -
- 3 weeks of nothing
- 8 weeks of hardcore strengthening of glutes/ adductors/ abductors (gradual building) with no running. Mostly cable exercises in gym attached to ankles.

- rolled glutes nightly on hard rubber ball

- started running. 5 mins/day week 1 - treadmill only.
- week 2: 10 mins a day
- week 3: 15 mins a day
Etc etc. Continued for 12 weeks until up to 1 hour a day.

At this point (6 months) I now felt strong and healthy. Began increasing mileage and introduced long run.

I tore last summer. Racing ironman Texas in a few weeks

Good luck!

Thank you everyone for the feedback. Yes had the MRA which revealed the damage. Got a first and second opinion. Both agree. Both very experienced with this procedure. So how do you choose if you are impressed with both surgeons?

I had the surgery to repair my Acetabular Hip Impingement. When I was initially diagnosed the doctor told me I would never run again. Fortunately I discovered an orthopedic doctor at my local hospital who did the procedure to repair it. He was highly recommended by other athletes. I believe he had been a college athlete and had had the same procedure done to him. It was done outpatient and done arthroscopically. They pulled the hip out of the socket a bit, drove anchors into my pelvis to help sow the cartilage back together, repaired the labrum, removed some bone from both the neck of my femur and the front of my pelvis.

Fortunate my insurance paid for 2 month of PT following the surgery. I worked hard at the PT and home exercises. After about a year I was doing my track workout and it occurred to me that I don’t even think about my hip anymore! No pain and it is rock solid. I am 200 pounds – so you know it takes a beating. Saturday I PR’d my ½ Marathon time and have completed 4 or 5 Ironman races since the surgery.

Best of Luck!!!!

You're lucky in the grand scheme of orthopedic problems. The procedure has a very high success rate, something like the mid 90 percents.

Just wanted to wish you luck.

Jtaylorh and vomer.
Truly appreciative for your replies. I'm encouraged. First major surgery for me so obvious anxiety here. Thanks again. Excited for positive outcome and ready to put in the hard work for recovery.

Do a search on labral tear, there are a bunch of really good threads on this already. Long story short, get it fixed by a good doc, and you'll be as good as new as long as you follow the recovery protocol.

I had mine done about a year ago. I've always been a decently strong runner (compared to bike or swim) and since the surgery I've set PR's on all distances I've raced. I'm faster now than in college. My family jokes around and says I'm half machine now.

So can you guarantee me i'll be faster? kidding of course. thank you for the encouragement. looking forward!

I had a labral tear repaired a few years ago along with a core decompression (avascular necrosis). I run completely pain free now. I was not a runner before so I don't remember too much about the recovery time so I can't help you there. For my specific surgery I wasn't allowed to bear weight on that hip for 1 month, and then I was able to start walking with a crutch and doing PT. On day one of PT they had me on a stationary bike so I'm assuming you could get back to biking and swimming fairly quickly. (This was about 4 years ago so forgive me if my timeline isn't completely accurate) .

TLDR; Recovery took a while, but I'm completely pain free now.

in addition to running, are you pain-free sitting for long periods of time now?

I'm personally 100% pain free.

I am also interested to hear what everyone has to say. I have the impingement but getting mixed answers on whether I have a labral tear even with the MRI and contrast. Have been at PT for about almost 2 years has gotten somewhat better but feel as though I'm heading for surgery

Surgery on 12/27/16, by week two I was lifting upper body. Week three swimming with a buoy between my legs and riding up to a hour.

By mid March running 2-4 miles,three times a week. I recently bumped up my mileage starting this week.

Trips to the PT 3. He said since I have all the tools there is no need to come in.

Crutches 3 weeks. Off prescription pain meds after day two.

The biggest thing that I feel helped is in November I found out I was going to have surgery and lifted a lot with my lower body. A lot of lunges and a lot of squates.

Currently I am swimming 3 times a week 2000-3200 yards per swim, riding 3-4 times a week 1-3 hours at a time and running a few times a week. I am doing a criterium race this weekend...

I would say I am 85% right now.

It sucks but if you are careful, go I to it strong you can recover fairly quickly in my opinion.

Encouraging recovery report to hear. You mentioned 85%. Do you anticipate getting to 100%? Or have you plateaued?

Every week I get a little better. I'm comparing myself today versus last year. I hope to get an Olympic tri in next month, half IM at the end of July.

When you go through the surgery you need to ask yourself, "what can you control?" At least that was my mindset. In swimming faster than ever, I really worked on not getting fat, and I built a few bikes and tried to educate myself to be better.

I did try PT and looked into PRP injections. Surgery was the way to go.

Another success story here. 1 year post-surgery. Surgeon said it was much worse than the MRA showed.

Suffered for ~4 months after onset of pain, tried PT to no avail, finally had surgery 4/27/16 and as of today, I'm back to running 30-40mpw, primarily discomfort-free. Rarely do I think about my hip anymore.

I would caution you not to return to training quickly. Be conservative and let your body heal and don't push it. I began running again at 16 weeks on the AlterG, starting at 65% weight and worked my way back to 100% over 4 weeks. Then treadmill-only running 3 days a week for 3 weeks, then alternated treadmill and road for 3 more weeks and finally, mostly road. I do feel better if I do some treadmill days still.

I was religious about going to PT and doing my PT homework.

Good luck!

I've been searching the internet for some people who have dealt with the same issue and I'm glad to see someone who's actually gone from a-z and recovered from surgery.

So my doctors have all diagnosed this previously as some level of osteoarthritis in the hip and until I saw sports med they told me it was either this hip flexor thing or FAI femoroacetabular impingement.

idk you've probably done it all but what I'm trying to get is to the end here now. In Canada with our socialized medicine, I have a year long wait now for my free MRI. I had one previously done this summer but I also waited a year for that one. I"ve been put on disability and every single doctor just laughs and shrugs his shoulders and tells me to be patient. If the solution is to scan and make sure it's torn, to then directly get booked in for surgery after, then why can't these doctors all tell me?

I'm kinda young, definitely not 20 anymore but being 29 I still have a bit of fight left in me, if you can go jogging again without much concern to your hip after surgery then I don't see why people aren't fighting to get me back to work here at this time. I'm really sick of being told to wait and noone actually giving me any information about my own god damn body lol. Mechanically it seems pretty simple to me. 2 sports med people say it's a torn labrum with FAI but I have to wait over a year to confirm it lol.

I could make the money back for the surgery in a few years and still pay off my loans and live a life if I got this dealt with in a few months.

Sorry though that was just me venting I guess about this dumb situation and Canadian medicine practices. Everyone thinks it's alright for some reason to just throw you on assistance without even attempting to fix the problem.

Anyways, my question is, is that really the only solution in the end? Because I'm pretty sure I've been ready for this surgery for 3-4 years but doctors seem to get unbelievably upset when a person diagnoses themselves with something like this. I'd like to get on with my life thank you very much.

Sorry to hear that you are experiencing this.

My n=1. I had surgery in 2015 (I was 28) after being in pain for 6 months. I tried everything to avoid surgery but I never made any significant progress. Most can avoid surgery by doing PT and strengthening the glutes. I think surgery is the last resort and not always necessary. Unfortunately, there are too many docs that knife hungry and look at an X-ray and mri for a few seconds and automatically think surgery.

I recently had an X-ray and mri on my non surgical hip and I was diagnosed with a hip impingement and a labrum tear. However, that doesn’t seem to be where my recent pain was coming from as the mri showed a stress fracture. Point is, many people have labrum tears and are asymptomatic. Just because you have it, doesn’t mean you need surgery.

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If you are willing to sink your own $ into this surgery, why not go to the USA?

FYI- For FAI surgery, you want the best surgeon on the case, not the surgeon that they might give you.
Do your research.

I had this surgery in 2011 on my left hip. It allowed me to keep doing the activities I like to do.

I can believe it but in Canada you're not given much of a choice. I thought this hip thing was lots of different things initially but it kept bouncing back to the joint specifically. Like I said initially almost every doctor who looks at my xray says it's arthritis I only got the sports med doctors giving me the concerned looks about labral repair surgery. Initially my family doc thought I would need constant spinal surgeries and I wasn't down for any of that and got really upset at the suggestions but if the labral tear is a real option and potentially what is actually the issue it seems like a good place to invest time into.

My back doesn't hurt really and I find it absurd that I somehow thought this deep pain in my crotch came from my back at one point but in all reality I was basically a pretzel person until I spent the last 3-4 years doing stretches and using a roller on my back. Now it's quite painfully obvious it's my hip and I would like it dealt with.

On health Canadas website it says Canada will pay for any level of outsourced medical care because Canada themselves were unable to do it themselves and It would be great if some doctor could help push that point and embarrass some Canadian surgeons because this is dumb lol it's been close to 4 years now of me trying to get it figured out with 8 different doctors saying it's this or that. Chiro, phyisio and occupational therapists I've all talked to say it's probably my hip and I'm agreeing with em, the typical pediatrician you see in Canada is a joke and shouldn't even be given the title of doctor.

I have tears on both sides, I did not have surgery and have no issues running now. I never took off too much time but I did reduce mileage by like 80% and did a lot of strength work and some rolling/stretching. It did take YEARS to get to the point where I was able to run without hip pain and I was doing PT exercises almost daily during that time and continue to do some PT exercises weekly or whenever I feel my hips flare up. My injury occurred in 2014, I've since done many 50 mile runs and a couple sub 24 hr hundred milers along with training weeks of 100+ miles.

It probably took years of abuse to injure your hips, it not something that will clear up too quickly, be patient.

Just been diagnosed with FAI , but fortunately no surgery required at the this point of time .
I need to stretch strengthen the hip area.
What PT programs or specific exercises will help this area .

I'd agree if all the stuff I've done has ruined it to begin with. What really set the whole thing off was walking unfortunately. I used to actually longboard a lot for commuting reasons and that could have potentially hurt it too because whatever position you ride you put a lot of weight on your leading limb which in my case being goofy, is my right.

I can't actually do much extensive longboarding anymore it's really lame. I can feel some really weird stretching deep in my crotch whenever I get into the pushing position and I stretched quite a bit but I guess because of my, "pincher" style hip socket even just pushing on a longboard for long periods of time probably put real stress on the labrum. People should be getting full body scans or something when they're really young to see what potentially could hurt you in the future. I used to run a lot in the past as well up until the age of 13 but I had gotten into an altercation with a student who was I guess upset I had long hair and instigated a fight and intentionally broke my right leg, making it impossible for me to continue with sports of any kind until I was about 16 almost 18 even really. I didn't buy a long board until I was about 20.


There's also the issue with myself being native american which most wouldn't really think would add to the issue but how I'm treated in the ER is entirely different I feel than most people. I'm usually sent like a nurse that deals with addictions people which can be really frustrating lol.

I broke a bone and I'm here to have it assessed, I am not looking for pain medication for the 15th time now can we go do the xray please? And then a real pain doctor comes in after the xrays show something broken with a big ol' box of percocet and an apology about the nurse asking weird questions about me lying about broken limbs.

Anyways back on to me being patient. I've been basically bed ridden for almost 2 years now. The other years adding up to 3 and 4 I have been as inactive as one can possibly be only to be doing back roller exercises and yoga-like stretching to hopefully strengthen the area. Any level of exercise and strain that is put on the right hip, hurts it to the point where I sleep for 3-4 days to feel normal again. And then after 4 days of sleeping I can get up again, and hear the hip click back into place and feel it jar itself out of place when I put weight on it again. It's really dumb and I've been really patient for almost 4 years now trying to figure out what's wrong. Me bitching about it on a forum that's not even a medical forum it's for runners apparently, is me now trying to reach out and figure out what other people have dealt with.

I'm getting the exact same information i see randomly on the internet, one person is trying to imply i'm some sort of cry baby super bitch because my hips and back hurts while others are saying not to listen to those types or even the doctors who aren't helping and to find a surgeon who will listen to my concerns.

Those are extremities on both ends it's like a political debate vs the hard left and hard right. I've done, we'll even just say 2 years of personal physio and stretching over the past 3-4 years that only make the situation worse. When I bend my leg too far forward or backwards to move my left side over, it feels like my right hip is popping out of it's socket and sometimes I fear I'll just be walking in a back alley and slip on some ice and dislocate the damn thing so I just stay inside now.

I get my groceries delivered and pay like 12 bucks for a pack of eggs now. I could walk over 2km to the safeway but at risk of what lol having my leg break off or even if I make it back I gotta sleep for a week to feel normal again.

I've been extremely patient with these people I had to scream at them 2-3 months ago and do this whole embarrassing thing because my doctor said over the phone multiple times If I can't work I should be applying for the CERB thing because where else am I supposed to get money from? I thankfully qualified for the student benefits version and got disability because of my ADHD but after it ended my doctor was shrugging his shoulders and I had to make this huge stink about social assistance and how can I be expected to pay for anything when I have to take a 4 day recovery period for buying eggs.

It's really dumb and waiting around patiently isn't doing me any good. If I had the money I'd of done private everything but I can't even afford the $800 MRI scan for my hip to expedite the process, I have to wait in line with the other Canadians who are usually cancer patients and people looking for far more serious things than a misaligned hip.