Is Exercise Good for Hip Impingement? (THE TRUTH!)

By Shane Dowd , CES, CMP

🤔 Do I look like I have hip impingement? Well, I do!

Because of my hip impingement in 2011, Doctors told me:

🛑 “STOP running,
🛑 STOP squatting, and
🛑 STOP moving…or else, your hip will get worse.”

But I said, “NOPE!” 😅 Instead, I used mindful exercise to HEAL my body. And you can, too.

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How? I will explain in this article. Keep reading!

PROBLEM - The Doctor's Dilemma

So what's the problem with the Doctors' advice to 'just move less'?

After all, isn't it pretty reasonable advice if movement hurts you? The problem is simple – if you move less, you'll never be able to move more.

In other words, your “'circle of movement” will shrink until you can’t do anything. If you do nothing, your future will be limited to slowly walking, like a penguin, and maybe sitting/standing with great difficulty. After all, you haven’t been preparing for anything else!

What you need to do instead is to learn to improve your hip mobility and strength. This takes, you guessed it – MORE movement and BETTER movement.

Case Study: Bodybuilder with Hip Impingement Turns Olympic Weightlifter

Take a look at one of my students, Megan, where she explains that no other trainer/coach taught her what she learned in our program and how the new exercises were THE thing that fixed her. It wasn't until she started exploring MORE movements more MINDFULLY that she got better!

In that clip, you hear Megan talk about how what fixed her was:

Learning how to do more refined tissue work
Learning how to do more refined strength/stability work for her hips/core

While, there are many, many exercises that can be helpful (which is why we have an entire “do it yourself” hips program as well as 1-on-1 personalized coaching for hip pain), here are a few of our favorite exercises that you should consider trying out:

Massaging quads and doing a band quad stretch
Band hip distraction exercise
Core exercise
1-leg RDL

TRUTH - Movement Is Medicine

Those are just a few of the exercises Megan used to heal her hips. As you can see if you watched the full video of Megan’s story – 'Movement is medicine.' So, the next time you see someone moving, I want you to think:

“Wow! That there is EXERCISE repairing a man!” After all, exercise is not “wear and tear,” if you do it right…It’s “wear and repair!”…. and when your body repairs itself, it repairs itself bigger, better, and stronger than before! And furthermore, there's science backing this up!

For example, this 2020 systematic review and meta-analysis showed that exercise and sports improved pain and physical function for elderly people with hip and knee osteoarthritis.

CAVEAT - The Mindful Approach

Of course, there's a caveat – your movement should ideally be mindful.

In other words, we need to avoid two extremes:

NO movement (where you practically become a statue…)
And EXCESSIVE/UNMINDFUL movement (which can lead to trouble)

Just like balancing on a tightrope, finding balance in your exercise intensity is critical. For example, when I was first coming out of my hip impingement issues, I occasionally experienced little 'tweaks' or setbacks by moving unmindfully.

I even made a video about my 12+ year journey that you can watch here.

My journey was like the stock market:

Up up, up, then down, down. Up, up, up, then down. 2 steps forward, 1 step back.

However, each time I experienced a 'crash,' I took the time to reflect, learn, and improve. What I DIDN'T do is use each setback as a reason to move less – even though some Doctors and experts advised me to do so. This commitment to constant and neverending improvement eventually led to 10 steps forward, no steps back.

The ultimate outcome of my mindful movement exploration has been an EXPANSION, rather than a CONTRACTION of my movement abilities since being diagnosed with hip impingement, labral tears, and bone cysts nearly 14 years ago.

This brings me to the Ultimate Goal of all this mindful exercise…The goal is – you become anti-fragile. You become resilient. You become ready for the unexpected.

This is important because life throws you curveballs, and your hips should be ready to catch them all. Now, you may or may not have aspirations of sprinting, cutting, jumping, or playing sports, but I BET you’d like to be able to play at the park with your kids or run across the street to protect someone you love from an onrushing car. This requires some movement abilities!

The point: whatever your aspirations, the only way to become “anti-fragile” is to stress-test your body. You have to push it a little bit. You have to take it to its “stretch zone” without taking it into its “snap zone.” This is how you gradually become more and more resilient.

Become Anti-Fragile

If you're ready to embark on your journey toward anti-fragility, start with our Hip Fix program.

The Hip Fix is based on direct, personal experience with FAI combined with the latest science on how to heal all kinds of hip pain, including labral tears, bone-on-bone, hip arthritis, hip dysplasia, and more. We've also spent over 14+ years working with people aged 18 to 80. This broad spectrum has allowed us to hone and refine our methodology based on feedback from our over 30,000+ students.

Also, if you’re looking for an even more personalized, 1-on-1 solution, check out gotrom.com/vip to see if you qualify for our 1-on-1 VIP coaching with a hip specialist who’s dealt with hip problems just like you.

So, here's the bottom line, my hip-hurting friends. Don't let hip impingement be the end of your story. Embrace the power of mindful movement. Movement CAN be your medicine.

If you found this video/article helpful, give it a thumbs up and subscribe for more hip wisdom.

And as always, remember, you’re just 1 step away from building (or re-building) your perfect body.