First Step in Treating A Hip Flexor Strain

This article will guide you through the process of treating a hip flexor injury. When you sustain a hip flexor pull, the body's natural defenses kick in and you will usually see some sort of swelling. To transition from this phase to the next phase in recovery, you should follow the P.R.I.C.E. procedure as soon as possible following the injury.
Injury Treatment Procedure (P.R.I.C.E.)
Protection - Stop all physical activity and try to immobilize the injured leg, this will prevent any further damage. Note that this step is primarily for grade 3 and bad grade 2 strains, there is no significant difference if you follow this step for grade 1 strains, however if you have the necessary equipment, you should use it to be on the safe side.
Rest - Rest may be the most frustrating step of the hip flexor treatment process, but also the most important one. An injury cannot heal unless it has time to rebuild, if you continue to train on an injured muscle you will develop a buildup of scar tissue which will most likely lead to chronic injuries. In this context, rest is about reducing the movement of the injured leg as much as possible and try to take as much stress of the injured hip flexor as you can.
Ice - Immediately after the injury, alternate icing and not icing the injured hip flexor every 20 minutes in order to reduce inflammation and pain. Continue this for 2-3 hours, after this continue icing at a less frequent rate, judge how often by how much swelling is still present; the more swelling, the more frequent you should ice. As a precaution, never apply an extremely cold object directly to your skin, wrap it in some sort of towel to prevent skin damage.
Compression - Compression goes hand in hand with icing, which has a purpose of reducing swelling from inflammation. The compression will temporarily restrict blood flow which prevents swelling from occurring. This area is hard to wrap, and takes a lot of material, so for the most part tape is not the best option. You should try to find a compress bandage that you can wrap around your torso several times and re-use for a long time.
Elevation - Try to elevate the injury as much as possible. The hip flexor is hard to elevate above everything else, but try to stay away from a sitting position where your hips are the lowest point on your body.
This protocol should be followed until all swelling is eliminated and the majority of Hip Flexor pain subsides, typically 48-72 hours with most grade 1/grade 2 pulls.

The Plague of Athletes - Hip Flexor Strain Injuries

A hip flexor strain, can be a devastating injury to anyone unlucky enough to get one. This article will guide you through all aspects of a hip flexor strain and help you to understand the injury better.
First of all, what is a strain? Simply put, it's a tear (could be very small, or very large) in one of the hip flexor muscles, usually the psoas since it's one of the largest and most used hip flexor muscles.
Strain Causes
The first thing to look at in regards to a pulled flexor is how it was injured in the first place. Certain injuries can happen in a multitude of ways, but a hip flexor strain is not one of them. Imagine what happens in order for a strain to occur in a strong muscle group; there has to be a force strong enough not only to damage the muscle(s), but to cause a physical tear in the muscle, this is an enormous force required! There are rare cases where someone has a tight muscle to an extreme degree and pulls it doing something routine, but the majority of muscle strains are caused in explosive movements like sprinting or changing directions really fast, almost always while playing a sport.
Strain Types
There are officially 3 types of hip flexor strains, first, second, and third degree. Try to think of them not as absolute terms, but as relative terms on a spectrum, with first degree being at the very bottom, third degree at the top, and second degree in the middle of the spectrum in regards to damage done to the muscle.
First Degree
A first degree pull is a minor tear in a muscle, but you can usually still perform all movements like normal, except you will feel some pain or discomfort. Obviously this is the ideal level if you do pull your hip flexor as the recovery time is very short, often you may be able to play through the injury with little risk of further injury.
Second Degree
A second degree strain is a point in which significantly more damage has been done to the hip flexor than in a first degree strain. This type of strain involves a significant partial tear to a muscle and can cause considerable pain and function loss. Typically along with the pain there is minor bruising and swelling, which will be addressed later on in treatment.
Third Degree
This is the absolute worst strain you can suffer, a full muscular tear. If you have a third degree strain I can only hope that the first thing you did was go see a doctor, if you have not yet please do so NOW. Along with a third degree pull is a considerable amount of pain, and extremely limited functionality, usually you will not be able to walk at all. There will not only be pain, but also major bruising and swelling, and possibly even spasms.
How to Treat
Since muscle strains have long since plagued athletes, a lot of research and testing has been done on how to best treat them. Using the PRICE System along with a rehabilitation program will help you treat a hip flexor strain effectively.

Is Hip Flexor Pain Slowing You Down?

If you are experiencing hip flexor pain, but you’re not sure what type of injury you have suffered, or how bad it is, this article should answer those questions for you.
There are three main types of hip flexor pain:

Pain When Lifting Leg
Hip flexor pain is often associated with pain while lifting the leg, but more specifically, pain only during this movement is usually a pulled hip flexor.

Pulled Flexor

If you have a pulled flexor you may know it already, if you remember when it first started hurting, if it was during some sort of explosive movement, you probably have one. In order to test if you do, try standing on the opposite foot, then lifting your leg as high as possible(knee to chest), if you feel any pain at any stage stop immediately. Once you have established that there is pain performing the knee to chest movement, it is almost certain that you have a pulled hip flexor. Please scroll down to the severity section to learn what his means.

Constant Pain
If you have nagging pain throughout the day, and it hurts when you move your leg or stretch your hip flexor, you may have a case of tendonitis.

Tendonitis
Hip flexor tendonitis occurs usually with athletes as an overuse injury. Whenever a repetitive movement is performed, such as running or cycling, there is a lot of force being placed on the hip flexors. Often this will lead to inflammation of the tendon attaching the hip flexor muscles to the bone and will cause a lot of pain.

Pain When Touching Hip Area
A bruised hip flexor is an umbrella term describing an injury to one or more of the several muscles that the hip flexor contains. If your pain started after a blunt trauma to this area, you probably have a bruised hip flexor.

Bruised Flexor
It can be hard to tell the difference between a bruised and a pulled hip flexor, because you will often experience pain when lifting the leg either way. The difference is that in a stationary position, a bruised muscle will be very sensitive if you touch it. So to diagnose this, stand up and slowly apply pressure to the different parts of the hip flexor; if the pain felt while applying pressure is similar in intensity to the pain felt lifting your leg, you probably only have a bruised muscle, this is great news!! Bruised muscles only require a few days of rest and you’ll be ready to go, although maybe a bit sore…To speed up healing, apply a moderate amount of heat to the area 2-3 times a day with a heat pack or warm towel, this will stimulate blood flow and kick start your healing system.

Severity of Injury
If you’ve identified that you have a pulled hip flexor, now we need to classify it into one of three types of pulls, after you have determined what class of pull you have, you can begin to treat it.

First Degree Strain
If you can move your leg to your chest without much discomfort, you most likely have a first degree strain; this is the best kind you could have. A first degree strain means you have a minor or partial tear to one or more of the muscles in the area.

Second Degree Strain
If you had a lot of trouble moving your leg to your chest and had to stop part way through, you probably have a second degree pull. A second degree pull is a much more severe partial tear to one of the muscles, it can cause significant pain and needs to be taken care of extremely cautiously in order not to fully tear the injured area.

Third Degree Strain
If you can barely move your leg at all why are you reading this article!!! Go see your doctor right away and try not to move your leg if you can avoid it. A Third degree strain is a full tear of your muscle and requires a much longer time to heal, please get your doctors opinion on this before you do anything else.

Summary
Hopefully you have identified your injury based on the type of pain you are having, if you are not confident in your ability to assess the degree of injury following the above instruction, please see a qualified doctor who can give you a second opinion, it can never hurt, but may help a lot.

Are you at Risk of a Hip Flexor Injury?

The hip flexor is a muscle group that encompasses many smaller muscles at the front of your body in your hip region. This is the most important muscle for lifting up the leg, which we do for many common activities. It is important to know what happens internally when you get a hip flexor injury. This article will identify the most common ways to injure this muscle group and what your next steps should be.

Hip Flexor Injury Causes

In day-to-day activity, most actions will never come close to damaging muscles severely, however, in any athletic activity there is always a risk. The most common type of injury is not from blunt trauma, but rather an excessive stretch of the muscle, a hip flexor pull in other words. A pull can happen in several ways, running, jumping, shuffling, and any other explosive sports. Modern sports are extremely fast, which push athletes to be faster all the time, and when you try to go just that little bit faster, that little extra extension of the leg can cause a hip flexor injury. When you pull a muscle you are actually creating a partial tear in the injured muscle. This obviously reduces the functionality of your muscles and explains why you are often unable to walk comfortably when hurt, and in some cases you cannot walk properly at all.
The other type of injury that you may develop is an overuse injury, which in later stages is referred to as hip flexor tendonitis, which is an injury that causes the attached tendons to get inflamed and cause pain. This injury specifically afflicts athletes who do copious amounts of repetitious movements during training, typically dancers or soccer players.

Healing your Injury

Picking up an injury is never fun, what's even less fun is waiting for that injury to heal, which is why it is a common goal to heal that injury as fast as possible in order to get back to playing! In order to do so it is absolutely crucial that you learn more about how to heal injuries properly.
Initially you need to focus on following the proper recovery path you will ensure that you will not worsen your hip flexor injury any more to the point that surgery may be required. After the initial stages learn how to accelerate healing and minimize scar tissue and other unwanted side effects of the recovery process.

Hip Flexor Information

The hip flexor is a crucial part of human functioning in everyday life. From basic activities like walking, standing up and sitting down, to physically demanding activities like sports and weight training, it is involved more than you might know.

What does the Hip Flexor do? It has both major and minor functions, and is able to fulfill different roles because it is composed of several muscles, the largest ones are discussed below. The primary goal is to facilitate flexion of the hip joint. In normal terms, this means that the hip flexor is used anytime the knee is lifted up, a step is taken, or a stair is climbed. The muscle group also has those smaller muscles whose purposes are mainly stabilization roles, so when you lift up your knee on an angle, these muscles provide the power needed in the lateral(horizontal) direction.

Anatomy | Location?

Everyone knows all about the hamstring, the quad, the groin, but the hip flexor gets far less exposure, even though it is just as important as any other muscle in your body. It is actually a muscle group located towards the front of your leg/abdomen; it is composed of smaller, but sizeable muscles as shown in the picture. When looking at what they do, we must examine the role that the Psoas and Iliacus play in movement; these are the two main muscles in the Iliopsoas, which is by far the largest and most important muscle group and are the most prone to hip flexor injury.
The Psoas: The Psoas muscle is actually divided into 2 distinct sub-muscles: Psoas major and Psoas minor. The Psoas major is the larger muscle that connects the pelvis to the lumbar region, as shown in the picture and is one of the major muscles at risk for an injury. The Psoas minor on the other hand is a muscle located slightly in front of the Psoas major in the muscle group; however, it is important to note that only about half of humans have this muscle! The minor muscle supports the same role that the Psoas major plays, which is to facilitate flexion of the hip joint. If you have recurrent pain in the psoas area, you might want to read about hip tendonitis.

The Iliacus: The Iliacus is that small triangle shaped muscle shown in the picture, its role is to assist with movement, but mainly it functions by connecting the hip bone to the Psoas major. This is considered a secondary muscle for hip flexion and is rarely injured compared to the Psoas.