Newbie Butt/Hip pain caused by Bike. Help :(

Triathlon Forum
1

Hey Gang,

I’m new to Triathlons, coming from marathon training. I switched to Triathlongs because of ITB issues (which are almost all better now).

I am loving Triathlon training and have been full tilt training for over 2 months. Unfortently I have developed pain in my butt/hip. The pain is in the middle of my butt cheek. Generally I am pain free during exercise, it’s after my bike ride when I am sitting that the light relentless throbbing begins.

I have been having ART done for 3 weeks, it has helped a little bit. The ART guy said my hips are week. Been doing some strentgh and stretching.

2 Questions/Thoughts:.

  1. Bike Fitting- Cound this be the root of the cause?? I bought my Road bike from a NJ local reputable shop. I was not impressed with the 25 minute fitting. Just last week I went in for an adjustment, which did not help my pain much. I have heard from friends that their fitting was hours long, they took pictures, videos, measurements and lots of other stuff. My fitting was all done by eye and relatively quickly.

I have an opportunity to get a bike fitting from Coach Justin Trolle, I guess in the Tri world he is the coach of coaches. So I am planning to get a fitting from him.

  1. Any other type of doctors I should consider seeing?

I would appreciate any comments or thoughts. I’m so frustrated with injuries. My marathon training ITB issues, now this :frowning:

Thanks in advance!

Eric

2

get a bike fit for sure.

Google Piriformis syndrome and see if that sounds right.

3

your seat is too high.

seriously - i gave myself a wicked dose of SI joint dysfunction last summer after jacking up a measurement and putting the saddle on my CX bike about 2cm too high, then riding a 45min crit on it one day and a 100km hilly ride the next. spent the next few weeks (including a half iron tri) feeling like someone was stabbing me in the arse with every pedal stroke, barely able to bend over and put socks on, but had no issues swimming or running.

drop your saddle a bit and see how it feels. once i did so the same bike that crippled me actually ended up being therapeutic, and a few solid rides on it had me back to feeling fine again.

cheers!

-mistress k

4

Hey Guys, thanks for taking the time to respond.

I am mentally so beat up, dealing with ITB for 2+ months for my marathon training. Then I switched to Triathlons and had such a positive experience for about a month of training pain free. Now I’m back in the injury trenches dealing with this butt thing.

Kello- I asked my ART guy about Piriformis Syndrome. He didn’t think it was that, he said it was weak hips and all the muscles surrounding it.

Mistress- thanks for the advice. I hope the new fitting I get on Saturday helps. If not, I will try lowering my seat!

5

Get a fitting. You should be able to get one from a shop for around $80. I’d probably avoid the shop that you went to originally though.

6

did you look it up and see if the symptoms fit? or just ask your guy?

I now go to all my appointments armed with some amount of knowledge, if possible, as it never ceases to amaze me how some practitioners tend to get focused in one direction based upon their practice.

I had piriformis syndrome once, ended up with permanent collapsed arch and residual nerve damage in foot. initial treatment was just effed up

If felt good riding, but lying down/walking was murder

7

Hey Jeff,

Thanks for the advice. I did go to my ART guy armed with tons of information about piriformis syndome. He said he thought it was hip issues causing the butt pain and also my ITB when that flares up. I plan to give him 2 more weeks (already been seeing him for 3 weeks). Then I’m going to go to someone else.

I’m not even sure who I would want to see next, any recomendations for a specific type of doctor?

Thanks!

Eric

8

no recomendation, as I can’t diagnos

FYI, I went to doc for a foot issue two weeks ago. I researched first, after it nagged me for 2-3 weeks. Docs(3 of them) went with what I thought it was, peroneal tendonitis. However, they also suggested I go across the street for a free sport PT eval, which I did immeadiately after. They were semi sports based and were much better at locating and inflicting pain on my foot. Their conclusion was sprain of my 5th metatarsal at its base. Taped me up, showed me how to tape it up too, gave me free tape as well as their emails in case it wasn’t helping. showed me some exercises to do to help in future once pan subsided. It helped a great deal. I now just tape before riding, and can tell it will be gone in about another week based on how it feels. I’ll tape a bit longer for good measure.

my piriformis was misdiagnosed by docs initially and they sent to to elctric shock treatment for it. felt good for about 10 min after treatments, but that was it. finally got doc to give referral to PT, which found and painfully treated the issue for 6 weeks. I already had my dropped arch and foot flop before that in the 3 weeks they treated it incorrectly.

9

just went through damn near the exact same thing.
My root cause was a poor tri fit forced onto a road bike.
Three weeks on a tri bike and the pain is gone (or at least disappearing rapidly).

betting the fit will correct it, but shoot to keep your hips open.

10

What do you mean by hips open? Do you mean spread the knees apart?

This sure is a silly question… :stuck_out_tongue:

11

not your knees
your hip angle…your bike fitter will talk to you about this or if he/she doesn’t, bring it up.

12

I am loving Triathlon training and have been full tilt training for over 2 months. Unfortently I have developed pain in my butt/hip. The pain is in the middle of my butt cheek. Generally I am pain free during exercise, it’s after my bike ride when I am sitting that the light relentless throbbing begins.

I have been having ART done for 3 weeks, it has helped a little bit. The ART guy said my hips are week. Been doing some strentgh and stretching.

I had the same problem and they kept telling me it was weak hips, so I keep dong all the strengthening & stretching exercises they gave me, but to no avail. I was getting some ART treatment also and that relieved the pain for a few days but then it would flare up again. I did the whole take a couple weeks off with ice, but then it would come back when I started training. I finally decided to just go back to the weight room and swimming. Doing light squats relieved the pain some, but then I also went to a yoga class and it was there that I learned a couple of stretches that really opened up my hips. I learned that my hips weren’t weak but they were just tight. I also did some stretches that loosened up my gluts. I continued doing the light squats and the yoga stretches and feel 100% better w/o any pain.

13

This time of year, I spend most all of my cycling time on my tri bike mounted to my kurt kinetic down in the basement. 5+ hours of cycling a week. Boring. Monotonous. And most of all, zero position change. If I spend a bunch of that time down in the aero bars doing power sets, my left hip will flare up which will be a similar type of complaint (bad aching afterwards, weak buttocks with sharp pain on flexion with lateral movement) and especially pronounced during my running speedwork out on the roads. Most of it is related to weak hip muscles for me but some of it is definitely related to tight hip muscles. My symptoms are very similar to piriformis syndrome. I do some core work with lots of stretching. I also won’t spend much aerobar time until the Spring when I can move outside. Roll it out with a foam roller (do it a few times a week but don’t go crazy. 30 second counts are good enough when you “light up” the hip area.) I’ve been living with it since 1987 in some form or another. With core work and strengthening, it will go away. Be careful if you get numbness, burning down leg towards feet/toes. This implies the sciatic nerve is being compressed and can lead to permanent damage. You want to back way off and make sure you get a proper diagnosis in that case.

Good luck with it. --Brian

14

Hate to mention this, but “weak hips” is not really a diagnosis. It may be contributing to your problems…but…

15

Hey Gang,

I’m new to Triathlons, coming from marathon training. I switched to Triathlongs because of ITB issues (which are almost all better now).

I am loving Triathlon training and have been full tilt training for over 2 months. Unfortently I have developed pain in my butt/hip. The pain is in the middle of my butt cheek. Generally I am pain free during exercise, it’s after my bike ride when I am sitting that the light relentless throbbing begins.

I have been having ART done for 3 weeks, it has helped a little bit. The ART guy said my hips are week. Been doing some strentgh and stretching.

2 Questions/Thoughts:.

  1. Bike Fitting- Cound this be the root of the cause?? I bought my Road bike from a NJ local reputable shop. I was not impressed with the 25 minute fitting. Just last week I went in for an adjustment, which did not help my pain much. I have heard from friends that their fitting was hours long, they took pictures, videos, measurements and lots of other stuff. My fitting was all done by eye and relatively quickly.

I have an opportunity to get a bike fitting from Coach Justin Trolle, I guess in the Tri world he is the coach of coaches. So I am planning to get a fitting from him.

  1. Any other type of doctors I should consider seeing?

I would appreciate any comments or thoughts. I’m so frustrated with injuries. My marathon training ITB issues, now this :frowning:

Thanks in advance!

Eric

It’s the fit most likely.

Mine original fit took me 4 hours, the buy a bike fit and put yourself on it only takes 30 minutes to a hour.

I know this topic is kinda old but for new people it can help a lot to hear my experience.

I bought a tri bike and got issue’s with my legs ( keep in mind i bike 400 km every week at that time ) for some people that’s insane, for me it was nothing more then 15 hours of biking on average in a week. ( as i came of a normal road bike ). My legs would hurt like no other after a while. So i decided to do a full blown bike fit that costed me 280 euro’s. It involved lazers and all kind of micro management settings.

Conclusion my bike didn’t fit me. And it was impossible to get it to fit. With some adjustments that we decided to get done i just tried to just learn to adopt on the bike in order ot push forwards. My speed did go fowards big time because of a sharper bike fit. But the injury’s started to keep coming on my legs even after changing all stuff around. It crippled my run speed and even simple 10k runs i just felt completely broken. Legs hurted so badly in the evening that it kept me up at night at one point and i couldn’t do nothing anymore. All kinds of therapy where void the moment i rided the bike again.

Some more adjustments done to the bike and the legs became a lot less painful but i also rode a hell lot less at that time. I once again called up the professional bike dude and asked him for a new bike, which one would fit me. That bike costed a fortune in comparison towards my older bike and i decided against it. So i started to do smaller runs on a faster pace which tended to work. Until i got to the point that my lower back / hip ( right back side ) started to hurt. It started to hurt so god dam bad that i couldn’t finish even 40km without having to get off my bike.

I bought new shoes i bought new cloths ( maybe the sit part wasn’t comfortable enough or whatever ) but no result, 40km was the max i could handle above it my back would hurt so bad i couldn’t even remotely sit anymore and had to stand and stretch.

This did go on for about a half year, the pain was horrible. Then i decided that i couldn’t give 2 cents anymore. The bike i needed was to expensive speically after i just bougth this bike and i was like fuck it. I gona pack my stuff up and put my ass on the bike and ride 200km no matter if i die or not, i will make it and my back can go to hell.

So i biked and biked and saw that after 40km of biking my back started to hurt again. I did sit straight up for a while the pain did go away and i started to move fowards. After 90km no pain in my back, after 130km no pain in my back after 150km massive pain in my back, after 170km zero pain in my back, at the last 20km massive pain in my back /hips .

I had no idea what happened realy, how the hell can i have then pain in my back and then not. So i started to analize the entire road i rided on and found out that whenever my pain starts to push itself forwards it would be in a area where there was a lot of stuff going on where i had to keep track on ( i bike about 40km a hour ) so things go fast on a bike road.

I did go to sleep and the next day no pain in my back but my neck hurted badly.

I put the dots together and realized that the moment i was in dense traffic parts i had to look up more to see if the road was good i wouldn’t get hit by anything or wouldn’t hit stuff myself. I understood at that moment that the pain in my back wasn’t my back or legs that created it, but it was my neck. My neck simple gets to stressed by watching upwards for long time of periods which results in back pain, the moment i stretch my neck on longer empty roads the pain goes away after a while.

I then realized that my steering wheel needed to move upwards so my neck wouldn’t be hit to much with this strain. But the bike simple couldn’t move further upwards then it already was.

So after a year of pain i started to contact the shop again, they ordered me a new bike that was rather cheap but fitted perfectly and after 4 months of waiting i finally got it. While the bike is slower the pain is completely gone. I did had a moment where the pain did come back but that was when my right arm pad basically moved downwards because i didn’t tighten the bolt strong enough which resulted again in my neck being in a strained position.

Conclusion.

Professional > Bike fit > buy bike.

Believe me, i didn’t and i felt it every single day and night because of it.

16

Well, probably combination of factors, fit and fitness.

If you were having ITB issues, then it is likely that your glutes/hips are, in fact, weak. I think the fit is a good idea, but also work on your strength training or else you’ll have nagging, on-going issues.

17

uh, you do know this thread is from 2012, right?