PT has not helped. Can someone give me hope. Any succes stories out there? Looks like I’m headed for surgery. Just scary but seems like there is a high success rate.
Also suffering from Achilles tendinitis. I’m told compensating and imbalances from the hip are causing this. Any thoughts?
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
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.