Has anybody had a stress fracture in your hip? If so, how long did you have to take off from running for it to heal?
Femoral Neck? tension or compression side? 6 weeks without running. Don’t negotiate with this fracture. Do assess your risk factors, harbinger of things to come.
I suffered a sacral stress fracture three years ago while doing some high mileage collegiate running. I would definitely suggest to be VERY cautious with it, because a hip fracture is obviously a little more unusual and complicated than the classic tibial stress fracture. I took a full 8 weeks off (they were an awful 8 weeks). 6 weeks would probably be enough, but again, you are dealing with your hip here. Obviously, when you start up again, do it very slowly.
I have not had any major injuries since then, but it took me until recently to mentally get over the event. But it did, however, get me into triathlons, so that’s a good thing! My advice is to swim and ride a lot, and give yourself a chance to truly heal. Then get crackin’ again.
Best of luck! You will get through it.
I had a stress fracture in my femur in 2008. One year later, I was logging a couple of 2-hour runs per month (and still am, with no pain). So don’t get too worried, these things heal.
It’s all pretty standard stuff - no running, taking calcium supplements, etc… Also, I would recommend that whenever your doctor says it’s ok to run again, wait an extra 2-3 weeks, and even then be extremely conservative and be vigilant about not breaking the classic “10% rule” when increasing volume.
My doctor gave me the green light at 10 weeks post-fracture, but I actually waited until 24 weeks post-fracture. Maybe it was too conservative, but hey… femoral stress fractures are no joke.
The biggest rule is… don’t f*ck with a stress fracture, especially one in your hip/femur. Take care of it properly and conservatively, and you’ll be good as new in due time.
8-10 weeks for mine.
4 weeks spent on crutches
I took about 10 weeks off. Femoral stress fracture. I went on crutches for three weeks…at least as much as I could…I was single at the time so there were lots of day to day duties that I couldn’t do without help. The more time you can take weight off the fracture, the better. I rode as much as I could as I knew I had the opportunity to spend more time on the bike. My “bricks” would consist of bike and elliptical work, non impact. My doc told me I could spend as much time and energy as I could on the elliptical, so I did. I had a fantastic tri season that summer and hit PR’s at all distances. Injury took place in December. I was running again by late March I think. Best of luck. Hope this helps.
Once saw a femoral neck stress fracture progress to full degeneration in a young soccer player. Aseptic necrosis and complete hip replacement was needed.
He didn’t follow medical advice. Be very careful with this one.
Femoral Neck? tension or compression side? 6 weeks without running. Don’t negotiate with this fracture. Do assess your risk factors, harbinger of things to come.
+1 I had a very minor Compression side stress fracture going into the season last year targeting a full IM distance towards the end of the season.
Scaled back running for about 2 weeks before seeing Ortho then X-Ray/MRI’s later docs says “that’s it 3 weeks off running, biking and swimming fine”…after that 3 weeks reeval and then he said 2 more weeks…which I took 1 and then slowly very slowly got back into the run training. All on treadmill or rubber track. I would say that by the time I got back into decent mileage it was about 9 weeks total (yeah thats a LONG time but it gave me a fighting chance to get a decent season out of it) before I was back to doing whats about normal for me.
Upside is that all my times from similar races the year before were better by about 20%. Go figure.
Hang in there. Do what the doc says, keep up what you can and all will work out allright.
cheers
S.
I had one a few years ago. I couldn’t put any pressure on my foot for about a week and was on crutches for about 4 weeks. Didn’t run for 12 weeks or so. It was hell.
Well, I haven’t had it confirmed that it’s a stress fracture yet. I had X-rays and they showed up negative, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. But the pain started at the end of November (I was two weeks away from my marathon at the time). Then I ran the marathon and it was painful the whole way. The pain is deep in my hip but radiates to my groin. I’m now able to swim, cycle, and do the elliptical without any pain, but the minute I step on it to run, it’s really sharp pain. The marathon was December 5, and I’m still unable to run on it. Does it sound like a stress fracture? And for those of you who asked, if it was a stress fracture it would be in the femoral neck I suspect, not the shaft of the femur.
Lucky - if your healthcare provider has an “index of suspicion” that this is potentially a stress fracture (not just one item on a long list of possibilities), have they scheduled you for a definitive test? As noted above, failure to diagnose this and modify behavior can have some pretty serious consequences.
Well, I’ve only seen my general physician so far just so I could get an order for X-rays. He referred me to an ortho doc which I’m *finally *seeing next Monday. I’m hoping they’ll recommend and MRI or bone scan. As for behavior modification, I’ve just been avoiding any activity that causes pain, which is mostly just running.
I just had a stress hip fracture in the femoral neck on the compression side this past July. I couldn’t put any pressure on it and couldn’t walk. I took an X-Ray the next day and it turned up negative and made an appointment to get an MRI. Results of the MRI showed it. I was on crutches for 8 weeks and was losing my mind laying on the couch, and was off from work until October (due to the fact I’m a Firefighter, need to be 100%). I took calcium supplements to speed recovery but I did not run until the beginning of december. Low distance, low intensity. But i spent many hours at the pool with the pull buoy after 8 weeks of the injury. I tried not pushing off the wall too hard during the recovery process. I also took a bone density test to see if everything was good. I am now back to my running routine and feel good. I know I didn’t train well during the summer for my races, I up"ed the miles too soon. Do not try to rush back into running, use swimming as an advantage, It helped me keep me sane throughout this whole ordeal. Listen to your ortho. Good luck, train smart.
Good. After your exam, if the doc thinks this is the next step - and frequently they don’t - depending upon your insurance carrier and a number of other factors, either a bone scan or MRI will be ordered. A bone scan is cheaper and frequently the insurer will deny precertification for the MRI but approve the bone scan. Personally, I hope the pain just goes away, no scan no nothing!