If you have hip arthritis, you may have trouble putting on shoes and socks, lifting your leg to get in a car, getting up from low chairs or toilets, or squatting down to pick things up from the floor.
Watch this video to learn 2 tips to instantly improve hip mobility with arthritis.
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What Causes Reduced Hip Mobility With Arthritis?
When you bend down to pick something up or when you lift your leg to get in a car or put on shoes and socks, those all involve the motion of hip flexion.
When you observe this as an outside observer, it looks like the knee is coming closer to the chest. Or in reverse, the action is the chest is coming closer to the knee.
However, the movement of bringing the knee toward the chest really involves hip flexion and movement of the pelvis and the spine.
When you have hip arthritis, you lose space between the ball of the hip and the socket of the hip.
This can result in decreased hip joint mobility.
Furthermore, a lot of people with hip arthritis tend to stand with a forward tilt of their pelvis and a lot of arch in their lower back.
However, that brings the the socket of the hip down toward the ball.
So essentially, it brings you into top-down hip flexion.
Therefore, you may find it hard to fully lift your leg or squat fully because you're already starting the motion in a bit of hip flexion.
Furthermore, if you've lost some hip flexion mobility from arthritis, you hit an endpoint a lot sooner than you probably should.
How To Improve Hip Flexion Mobility With Hip Arthritis
One tip you can use right away to instantly improve your hip mobility with arthritis is to do a posterior tilt of your pelvis.
To do this, just roll your pelvis underneath of you.
Doing this flattens out your back and that brings you into a better starting position where you're not partway through your flexion range of motion before you even begin the movement.
Additionally, if your keep your pelvis and spine in a neutral position when squtting, it can improve your hip flexion mobility and allow your to squat deeper.
Improving Hip Flexion Mobility By Using Abduction and External Rotation
The second tip to improve hip mobility with arthritis has to do with the orientation of the hip joint.
Many people think of your hip joints as the bump on the outside of your hip.
However, the actual hip joint is in the groin.
The hip joint socket, called the acetabulum, of the hip faces downwards, outwards, and slightly forwards. The ball of the hip (head of the femur) faces upwards, inwards, and also slightly forwards.
Therefore, the axis of rotation around the neck of the femur makes your knee move up and outward, not straight ahead.
If you've lost some space in your hip joint from having arthritis, moving your knee in an up and outward direction rather than straight forward may improve your mobility when lifting your leg.
Or, when squatting, squat with your knees turned out to the side.
Conclusion
Hopefully you found these tips helpful to improve your hip mobility if you have arthritis. To review, the two tips were:
- Tilt your pelvis backward and flatten your lower back
- Lift your knee upward and slightly out to the side rather than straight ahead when flexing your hip
Need Help For Hip Arthritis?
If you live in the St. Louis area and need help to relieve pain or improve mobility with hip arthritis, we'd be happy to help you here at More 4 Life.
Just tap the button below to request an appointment with one of our specialists.