Beth,
I'm a surfer up here in Humboldt County. A year and a half ago I did the splits landing a floater. It was very painful, and continued to cause me pain and discomfort throughout the past year. Originally, it was diagnosed as a muscle strain in my hip flexor muscle, and so I did physical therapy for about 2 months without any improvement. My hip was continually popping, with pain, weakness and numbness from my lower back down to my knee. It turns out after an MRI that I have a torn labrum in my right hip joint and have to have arthroscopic surgery to hopefully fix my problem. Is there any preventative exercises or treatments that I can do to keep my hips from being more susceptible to injury before or after the surgery? I notice that I have a similar problem with my other hip from another weird accident surfing, but it's not as severe. It seems that I have really loose joints or something because I've had problems with other joint strains from accidents that aren't too severe. Any help would be appreciated.

Later,
Bryan from Humboldt

ANSWER:

OUCH!
I guess you have to watch what you ask for. I am envious of your flexibility (due to my lack there of) but wouldn't want to deal with the splits while surfing! Sounds to me like you were born hyper mobile (lax joints) which means you need to constantly work on keeping your muscles strong, especially the little guys like the hip area. So yes, there are exercises you could do pre and post surgery that would prevent further incidences such as these from occurring. I would have your orthopedist write you a script for 1 to2 pre-physical therapy sessions. The PT should be able to give you a bunch of safe exercises you can work on before your surgery date. They will be similar to the ones you do post surgery as well. Your PT may also give you some stretches that you can work on. I bet the whole area has tightened up around the injury. Ask about body work as well. I know several folks with torn labrums in their shoulder who have avoided surgery all together through body work. Not a great comparison as I do not know the severity of your case vs their case but I do know that the massages helped!

Good luck, stay strong, and get back in the water soon (but not too soon)!

Hasta,
Beth

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