I’ve had this nagging pain in my hip flexor that has come and gone during the last year or so, that feels tight unless I warm up thoroughly and static stretch it before exercise. I am a fencer, and since I only get the pain in one of my legs I can assume it’s because of the assymetric nature of my sport. It must be from lunging or something (it’s my front leg) but it hurts to the point where I can’t even really do normal footwork without an extensive warmup (don’t get me wrong, this isn’t really a problem, but I’m worried it’s going to progress to be more serious). Once I’m warm I usually don’t feel it but it still sucks to have to spend a considerably longer amount of time warming up than everybody else.
I stretch it at least several times a week, is there anything else I can do? Maybe a specific exercise in the gym? I work my entire core fairly evenly, so I don’t think it’s a problem with that. I do a lot of prone bridges, weighted pulley crunches on a stability ball, and pike ups for abs, and deads, hypers and supermans for lower back. Do any of these seem like they might be problematic?
Probably just overtraining I guess. I start tapering next week so hopefully it’ll go away then.
My guess is that it’s from the asymmetric nature of the fencing footwork. It sounds like an overuse injury. I think stretching, soft tissue work and corrective exercises might help, but not if you’re contunually overworking the muscle at the same time. You might want to take a break from the fencing for a while (or reduce considerably) until the soft tissue problem is resolved.
Also there might be a flaw in your technique. Is there anything that might be causing the quads and/or psoas to get overworked? I know fencing footwork is murder on the quads, especially for beginners.
I’d like to be able to stop, but I’m in the competitive season right now which has me training at least five days a week for the next few months. I moved to a different city to get high level coaching, and I don’t have health insurance here, but when I go back home I’m going to abuse my free physio (december).
It’s definitely not a beginner thing, I’m in the top five in the country for my age and I’ve been fencing for about six years. My coach told me to go get physio as well, but apart from that didn’t seem to know what to do about it.
What sort of exercises do you think might help my problem? I spoke to my coach about it, and he said it’s probably an overuse injury, which is O.K. at the moment because I’m just starting a three week taper for my next big tournament. If there are exercises that might help it though, I would like to know about them.
R.i.C.E. does not mean you have to stop training. Just turn it into I.C.E. but do it at night time before bed, hence during R.est time.
Try to avoid stuff that causes it to hurt to much. Dont stretch it to much, let it heal. Massage, (find a hot chick for that if you can!!!) but massage after workouts, then do the I.C.E. - then later, thank the hot chick!
If the tissue is inflammed I wouldn’t do a lot of stretching. Let the infammation calm down. Your coach is probably right, it’s just overuse. And it’s obvious it’s not faulty technique. The taper is probably the best thing for it.
Definitely try to find a woman to massage it…even if it doesn’t help with the injury.