How can physical therapy help with hip bursitis?

Feeling pain at the point of your hip? Does it extend into the outside of your thigh? If you answered yes to these two questions, you likely have a condition called hip bursitis. 

It’s estimated that 15% of women and 8.5% of men develop bursitis in one of their hips. This condition occurs in the small cushioning sacs that reduce friction between soft tissue and bones. These sacs are called bursae. Often, medical professionals refer to hip bursitis as trochanteric bursitis. A physical therapy specialist can offer many forms of help to people with hip bursitis. 

Physical therapy for hip bursitis can help you in these ways

Turning to a physical therapy specialist for help with hip bursitis is an excellent decision. These medical professionals are trained to treat the musculoskeletal system, which includes the hips. Some of the ways your physical therapist can help you include: 

1. Educating you about hip bursitis — Underlying factors can lead to hip bursitis. If you don’t know what they are, they can hold back your treatment. Your physical therapist can help educate you on the underlying factors of hip bursitis, such as: 

• Certain types of exercise you do or overdo.
• Ill-fitting footwear.
• Sitting or standing posture. 
• How your legs move as you walk (gait). 

2. Increasing hip muscle strength — Weakness in the muscles that move and support the hip is a common cause of trochanteric bursitis. Such weakness increases the pressure placed on hip bursae, which leads to inflammation. Physical therapists can show you how to perform therapeutic exercises to strengthen your hip muscles. One study of such exercises found that they were able to: 

• Increase strength in the hip flexors by 24.4%.
• Boost hip extensor strength by 47.8%.
• Improve hip abductor strength by 41.2%.

3. Decreasing pain — The most important goal of hip bursitis physical therapy is to reduce your pain. A technique that your physical therapist could use to meet this goal is dry needling. This therapy method involves your physical therapist using thin needles to create a local twitch response in soft tissue around the hip. Such a response can help reduce tension in the hip and reduce your pain. A study of hip bursitis patients reveals that dry needling had reduced their hip pain by nearly 20% after one week of use. 

Back in Motion Physical Therapy is ready to help you treat hip bursitis

Keen to find effective hip bursitis physical therapy? Our Back in Motion physical therapy specialists are primed to help you find the top-notch care you need. They can perform a free screening to confirm that your symptoms are due to hip bursitis. Furthermore, our team is adept at constructing individualized therapy plans that can help you in all three of the ways mentioned above. 

Feeling unable to come into one of our physical therapy clinics? That’s OK! We offer virtual therapy and at-home care services that you can use without leaving home. 

Contact us today for more information about our therapy services for hip conditions or to schedule an initial appointment.