19 with FAI

Thanks. I know it wasn’t my fault, still sucks though. After going through all the stuff with my wrist and now hip I considered med school but I don’t think I would be happy being around hurt/sick people all day. Just going to the docs office and seeing what being old is like is depressing.

Hopefully I keep more strength in my leg then I did in my wrist. Not using my wrist for 1 year plus being put in a full arm cast for 1 month 2 times within that year destroyed my muscle and seems to have caused a weird snapping in my shoulder. Im working on getting the strength back in my arm and getting my wrist used to supporting weight right now. Definitely have to restore as much as I can in it before surgery on my hip.

[quote]fisch wrote:
Thanks. I know it wasn’t my fault, still sucks though. After going through all the stuff with my wrist and now hip I considered med school but I don’t think I would be happy being around hurt/sick people all day. Just going to the docs office and seeing what being old is like is depressing.

Hopefully I keep more strength in my leg then I did in my wrist. Not using my wrist for 1 year plus being put in a full arm cast for 1 month 2 times within that year destroyed my muscle and seems to have caused a weird snapping in my shoulder. Im working on getting the strength back in my arm and getting my wrist used to supporting weight right now. Definitely have to restore as much as I can in it before surgery on my hip.[/quote]

i have to say my freind. i feel for you.
i myself have arthritis. i wa diagnosed with it at 25… i know thats about 6 years after you , but all the same i was rather youn(still am at 27) it really sucks to have you body break down on you early in life. ive gotten to where i can excerise with my bad knee. but ive had shouders issues ive had to learn to deal with too. not sure weather its arthritis or not to tell you the truth, but i manage it. now im dealing with elbow issues, its seems like its golfers elbow
(medial and lateral pain) but im praying its not arthritis. some of us just seem to be unlucky.
its sucks and i dont know what to say. but i know the hurt. i certainly know that.

^ yeah it sucks. I have/had something similar with my elbow ever since I was 10. I would get pain in it sometimes, and I would get a really tight sensation in it if I played video games, especially ones where I had to press buttons fast. Kind of similar tightness to what my hip feels. It doesn’t bother me much anymore, mainly because I stopped with video games, but I know it’s not “healed” and it flares up if I go do any quick repetitive motion.

I’ve dealt with multiple surgeries already throughout my life. By my math, about 20 percent of my life has been surgeries and recovery from them. This just sucks the most because I finally got a taste of what it was like to be on my way towards one of my lifelong goals in life (reaching a physique I am proud of) and then have it all crash down. I was decently strong, especially for being 17, before my wrist injury and now 2 years later im a skinny lanky kid who wants nothing more then to get back to lifting but thats not happening in the near future.

I can just tell though that with my wrist/shoulder I will be dealing with it for the rest of my life. To much weird snapping going on. I plan on living my life very active however my wrist shoulder and hip turn out, im no stranger to pain and would rather deal with that then the mental torture of doing nothing.

Had my doctor appointment yesterday and said I wanted surgery. We can’t schedule it yet because the insurance company has to approve it, and the doctor said that could take 2 days or a couple months just depends. After talking to the doctor he said I “technically” have arthritis because the cartilage is damaged, but it is damaged due to the FAI so on my medical history it won’t mention arthritis.

Talking about post op with the doc he said I would be on crutches for 4 weeks and meds to prevent Calcifiaction after the surgery (No idea for the spelling, I think theres newer a thread in T-cell about this actually) where bones grow in the muscle. Apparently it is an occasional side effect of the surgery.

After the 4 weeks of crutches/meds I would be able to walk and use elliptical/bike, but no jogging. After another 4 weeks (8 weeks post op) I could start jogging. Whenever I could comfortably jog “for 30 minutes straight” I can start doing lateral movements.

Sounds like a longer time on crutches then I’ve read on the web, but I trust my guy so I hope he knows what hes doing. Just want the freaking insurance company to come around soon so I could get the surgery over spring break. Doubtful, but we’ll see

Look into prolotherapy. Really.

Prolotherapy for bony overgrowth in the hip…strong second post. And if you want to know how I feel about prolotherapy, check my post history.

I’m very glad I found this thread. I’m 19 as well and have had hip/groin pain for the past year and a half. I wrote it off to hip flexor tightness and a tight groin and not warming up properly. I stretched and foam rolled for about 30 minutes a day for the past two months but I have barely noticed any lessening of the pain.

So I kept researching what it could possibly be and I’ve discovered that is has got to definitely be hip impingement, as I have all the symptoms. I’m going to have ti go see a doc and get his opinion. I’ve already had knee and shoulder surgeries due to football injuries and I’m really not looking forward to another possible surgery. I believe I can live with the pain of hip impingement and keep doing squats/lunges/etc, but if there is a risk of arthritis I may have to consider the surgery.

Keep us updated with your condition.

I had the same issue when I was your age, and it turned out that I had synovial chondromotosis. I had surgery to remove it ten years ago, and now I am dealing with the pain as much as I can until I have to have surgery again. Look into the hip resurfacing procedure, it wasn’t available when I had my surgery and it could possibly eliminate your arthritis

@fisch I am also 19 and have severe pain in my right hip joint. For me this pain started after changing my squat stance from a close weightlifting stance to a wider PL stance. Since December 2011, the pain progressively got worse until I got to the point where I could not squat or deadlift.

After taking 2 weeks off there was hardly any pain at all, so I began squatting and deadlifting again. The pain came back. What I would like to know is, specifically how did your pain start? Was it all of a sudden or did the pain come after doing something markedly different in training? Right now I am in the process of getting X-rays and MRI’s to see what the problem is with my hip.

[quote]MAXpower92 wrote:
@fisch I am also 19 and have severe pain in my right hip joint. For me this pain started after changing my squat stance from a close weightlifting stance to a wider PL stance. Since December 2011, the pain progressively got worse until I got to the point where I could not squat or deadlift.

After taking 2 weeks off there was hardly any pain at all, so I began squatting and deadlifting again. The pain came back. What I would like to know is, specifically how did your pain start? Was it all of a sudden or did the pain come after doing something markedly different in training? Right now I am in the process of getting X-rays and MRI’s to see what the problem is with my hip.[/quote]

From what I remember (started happening at least 2 years ago), it would never really bother me during lifting, maybe the blood flow helped in some way I have no idea. I always did the same things, the pain just started appearing. I did nothing different in training. If you have this condition, it may be that when you widen your stance your causing your ball joint to hit the socket in some way. X-Rays will be able to tell any hip doctor who knows about this condition (which should be a fair number of them) right away if you have an impingement. My doc pulled out the xrays ans showed me the excess bone. MRI with dye tells them if the labrum is damaged, how much/little they can’t tell without cutting you open.

Pain was always worse after a few hours after lifting. I would be sitting and go to lift my leg and I would have a sharp pain. resting for a couple weeks always eliminated (for a VERY brief time, once training resumed hurt again) or greatly reduced the pain.

In your case depending on how wide your stance is I would probably change that back to your original stance, or close to it. That is ONLY if the doctors cannot find anything noticeably wrong. If they find this FAI (impingement), then discuss options with them. Right now I can’t do jack shit for leg workouts, only extensions and curls while I wait for surgery. Boring.

Kind of an update.

Still waiting to hear back from the doctor (so far its been 3 weeks) that the insurance company agrees to the surgery. Pretty frustrated since this means no leg work essentially, especially with a recent injury on my left (opposite) foot. Leg extensions and leg curls right now.

Pain is still there, but since I don’t do squats/leg press/hack squat or anything that causes flex, it is minimal. My wrist injury is close to being 100%, so I’ll be pretty bummed when I do get this surgery that I won’t be able to upper body lifting for 4 weeks either. Honestly at this point, I just want the freakin surgery to happen so I can move on with my life and see what injury next befalls my body.

[quote]CJT wrote:
I’m very glad I found this thread. I’m 19 as well and have had hip/groin pain for the past year and a half. I wrote it off to hip flexor tightness and a tight groin and not warming up properly. I stretched and foam rolled for about 30 minutes a day for the past two months but I have barely noticed any lessening of the pain.

So I kept researching what it could possibly be and I’ve discovered that is has got to definitely be hip impingement, as I have all the symptoms. I’m going to have ti go see a doc and get his opinion. I’ve already had knee and shoulder surgeries due to football injuries and I’m really not looking forward to another possible surgery. I believe I can live with the pain of hip impingement and keep doing squats/lunges/etc, but if there is a risk of arthritis I may have to consider the surgery.

Keep us updated with your condition.[/quote]

On the arthritis part, you will not get your doctor to ever say this leads to it. Mine in a roundabout way hinted at it, but when I asked directly said “theres no long term conclusive evidence”. When I said “Well, if 2 bones keep slamming into each other and rip up the cartilage, pretty much sounds like a receipe for arthritis to me” he said he shared that view. Even though he did, he says it is a bad idea to operate on my left hip since it is showing no pain symptoms.

I personally believe this condition leads to arthritis, but odds are you will not find a doctor who will recommend this surgery if you do not have pain. But since you have pain, I think the doctor will be more then happy to cut you open assuming he is qualified. Not a lot are because it is a relatively new procedure. My guy sent me to one of 3 in my state that is qualified.

[quote]fisch wrote:

[quote]MAXpower92 wrote:
@fisch I am also 19 and have severe pain in my right hip joint. For me this pain started after changing my squat stance from a close weightlifting stance to a wider PL stance. Since December 2011, the pain progressively got worse until I got to the point where I could not squat or deadlift.

After taking 2 weeks off there was hardly any pain at all, so I began squatting and deadlifting again. The pain came back. What I would like to know is, specifically how did your pain start? Was it all of a sudden or did the pain come after doing something markedly different in training? Right now I am in the process of getting X-rays and MRI’s to see what the problem is with my hip.[/quote]

From what I remember (started happening at least 2 years ago), it would never really bother me during lifting, maybe the blood flow helped in some way I have no idea. I always did the same things, the pain just started appearing. I did nothing different in training. If you have this condition, it may be that when you widen your stance your causing your ball joint to hit the socket in some way. X-Rays will be able to tell any hip doctor who knows about this condition (which should be a fair number of them) right away if you have an impingement. My doc pulled out the xrays ans showed me the excess bone. MRI with dye tells them if the labrum is damaged, how much/little they can’t tell without cutting you open.

Pain was always worse after a few hours after lifting. I would be sitting and go to lift my leg and I would have a sharp pain. resting for a couple weeks always eliminated (for a VERY brief time, once training resumed hurt again) or greatly reduced the pain.

In your case depending on how wide your stance is I would probably change that back to your original stance, or close to it. That is ONLY if the doctors cannot find anything noticeably wrong. If they find this FAI (impingement), then discuss options with them. Right now I can’t do jack shit for leg workouts, only extensions and curls while I wait for surgery. Boring.[/quote]

Thanks for your input. Weird thing is I’ve always been a sumo deadlifter, but not until I switched my squat stance to toes out and slightly wider did I feel pain. Good luck with your injuries

[quote]On the arthritis part, you will not get your doctor to ever say this leads to it. Mine in a roundabout way hinted at it, but when I asked directly said “theres no long term conclusive evidence”. When I said “Well, if 2 bones keep slamming into each other and rip up the cartilage, pretty much sounds like a receipe for arthritis to me” he said he shared that view. Even though he did, he says it is a bad idea to operate on my left hip since it is showing no pain symptoms.

I personally believe this condition leads to arthritis, but odds are you will not find a doctor who will recommend this surgery if you do not have pain. But since you have pain, I think the doctor will be more then happy to cut you open assuming he is qualified. Not a lot are because it is a relatively new procedure. My guy sent me to one of 3 in my state that is qualified.[/quote]

Yeah I know what you’re saying about they’re not going to tell you decisively that it can lead to arthritis but they wouldn’t hesitate on cutting you open. I’m going to try to get in to see the doctor soon and get some results.

I squatted today, first time squatting since I discovered it was a bone/cartilage issue rather than a muscle/tendon/ligament issue. So I cut my stretching/dynamic warmup in half and the squats felt the same, painful. But I think I can live with this pain and keep doing squats. I have this pain that’s only been occurring the past few weeks, it’s almost directly behind where the impingement pain is, right in my glute. Is this related to the hip impingement or is it just an ass strain?

Also is there any chance of stretching or physical therapy work that can reduce the pain? I know surgery is needed to actually go in and shape the bones to fit but is there any chance of reducing the pain other than surgery?

[quote]CJT wrote:

[quote]On the arthritis part, you will not get your doctor to ever say this leads to it. Mine in a roundabout way hinted at it, but when I asked directly said “theres no long term conclusive evidence”. When I said “Well, if 2 bones keep slamming into each other and rip up the cartilage, pretty much sounds like a receipe for arthritis to me” he said he shared that view. Even though he did, he says it is a bad idea to operate on my left hip since it is showing no pain symptoms.

I personally believe this condition leads to arthritis, but odds are you will not find a doctor who will recommend this surgery if you do not have pain. But since you have pain, I think the doctor will be more then happy to cut you open assuming he is qualified. Not a lot are because it is a relatively new procedure. My guy sent me to one of 3 in my state that is qualified.[/quote]

Yeah I know what you’re saying about they’re not going to tell you decisively that it can lead to arthritis but they wouldn’t hesitate on cutting you open. I’m going to try to get in to see the doctor soon and get some results.

I squatted today, first time squatting since I discovered it was a bone/cartilage issue rather than a muscle/tendon/ligament issue. So I cut my stretching/dynamic warmup in half and the squats felt the same, painful. But I think I can live with this pain and keep doing squats. I have this pain that’s only been occurring the past few weeks, it’s almost directly behind where the impingement pain is, right in my glute. Is this related to the hip impingement or is it just an ass strain?

Also is there any chance of stretching or physical therapy work that can reduce the pain? I know surgery is needed to actually go in and shape the bones to fit but is there any chance of reducing the pain other than surgery?
[/quote]

I have a pain in my glute when I do RDL’s. Not a lasting pain, not even that much of a pain, but it is there. I know its two of my bones hitting each other or sliding off each other, because this is a slight click I can feel if I do them weightless and focus on the area. When I asked my doc about it he showed me on the x-ray I actually have a pincer impingement on both the top/front and the bottom/back, the bottom/back one is more rare but is likely the cause of the glute pain/clicking. It is not fixable by arthroscopic procedure, so the only fix would be open surgery. My doctor does not think that is a great idea from my symptoms, as it does not cause much pain just clicking.

That could be what you have, without an x-ray it is impossible to know. From what I understand, if that pain is not severe/a lasting issue, the trouble of fixing the glute pain is much more bothersome then the normal impingement. And thats saying something, cause fixing the normal impingement is a pain.

I had the same thought about non-surgical treatment. The doctor said there wasn’t really much you can do with your muscles/tendons to fix this. If you have an impingement, it does not matter how loose/tight certain muscles are, when you go through a certain range of motion (squat, leg press, deadlift) the bones will hit. So if you wanted to do non-surgical, it appears that you would have to alter your lifestyle to avoid flexing (squat, leg press, deadlift) movements.

To reduce the pain, only thing seems to be an prescription anti-inflammatory long term. I hate the idea of constant medication, so that was out the window. Plus I ran the meds for 4 weeks and while the pain was reduced it was still there, though I was not allowed to do squats or leg press during this time so it is possible if I did those the pain would be equal.

From my view, even if you did that your day-to-day life would still cause you to go through the range of motion that would put you in flexation (is that a word?) so it would still hurt sometimes, though likely no where near as much as an active lifter would have.

Im all for lifting through the pain and living with it. I did it for 2+ years, but eventually after 3x a week leg lifting for a while I realized this wasn’t normal. I would say look into the procedure. I love lifting, it is the highlight of my day and has been for years, but I also want to walk when im 30. If this surgery allows that, im in. Just realize that taking a 6 month setback IF you need this surgery is not the end of the world. If I can take almost 2 years off upper body lifting from injuries, you can take 6 months off for lower.

Long post, but I want to help others with this. This (plus my wrist injury) has pretty much f’d up my life for 2 years and I would rather not have anyone else suffer any longer then they have to.

[quote]MAXpower92 wrote:

[quote]fisch wrote:

[quote]MAXpower92 wrote:
@fisch I am also 19 and have severe pain in my right hip joint. For me this pain started after changing my squat stance from a close weightlifting stance to a wider PL stance. Since December 2011, the pain progressively got worse until I got to the point where I could not squat or deadlift.

After taking 2 weeks off there was hardly any pain at all, so I began squatting and deadlifting again. The pain came back. What I would like to know is, specifically how did your pain start? Was it all of a sudden or did the pain come after doing something markedly different in training? Right now I am in the process of getting X-rays and MRI’s to see what the problem is with my hip.[/quote]

From what I remember (started happening at least 2 years ago), it would never really bother me during lifting, maybe the blood flow helped in some way I have no idea. I always did the same things, the pain just started appearing. I did nothing different in training. If you have this condition, it may be that when you widen your stance your causing your ball joint to hit the socket in some way. X-Rays will be able to tell any hip doctor who knows about this condition (which should be a fair number of them) right away if you have an impingement. My doc pulled out the xrays ans showed me the excess bone. MRI with dye tells them if the labrum is damaged, how much/little they can’t tell without cutting you open.

Pain was always worse after a few hours after lifting. I would be sitting and go to lift my leg and I would have a sharp pain. resting for a couple weeks always eliminated (for a VERY brief time, once training resumed hurt again) or greatly reduced the pain.

In your case depending on how wide your stance is I would probably change that back to your original stance, or close to it. That is ONLY if the doctors cannot find anything noticeably wrong. If they find this FAI (impingement), then discuss options with them. Right now I can’t do jack shit for leg workouts, only extensions and curls while I wait for surgery. Boring.[/quote]

Thanks for your input. Weird thing is I’ve always been a sumo deadlifter, but not until I switched my squat stance to toes out and slightly wider did I feel pain. Good luck with your injuries
[/quote]

Sumo deadlifting does not require you to go as far down as squatting, at least how I’ve always seen it done/done it myself, so that could be why. Also, from what I understand, wide stance causes much more stress on your hips. I think it is the ligaments/tendons, but that’s just a guess. Could be when you started squatting and deadlifting wide stance you put much more stress on the hips. Or could be you have an impingement that doesn’t come into effect until your near the bottom of the squat, so you would not notice it during deadlifts. Depending on where the impingement is exactly it could be a non factor when your feet are closer.

Thanks for the reply, you’re definitely helping me by giving me your experience with it.

Today during squat day, I did goblet squats (holding dumbell infront of you while squatting) and I felt absolutely no pain in the area. So I thought maybe I don’t have exactly what you have. After 2 sets of painless goblet squats I tried to do front squats, which also do cause the area pain, and they did indeed hurt. I went back to goblets and they felt fine. Then I tried to do just a plain bodyweight squat and the pain appeared again. I just found that whole session very strange. Goblet squats and front squats are similar in style, both being front loaded, deep squatting exercises and only one caused pain.

Also to help with the other poster, I’ve recently switched to a Sumo DL to relieve some of the hip pain and because I don’t need to go down with my ass as much as I did with conventional DL’s, and that’s relieving the hip pain.

[quote]CJT wrote:
Thanks for the reply, you’re definitely helping me by giving me your experience with it.

Today during squat day, I did goblet squats (holding dumbell infront of you while squatting) and I felt absolutely no pain in the area. So I thought maybe I don’t have exactly what you have. After 2 sets of painless goblet squats I tried to do front squats, which also do cause the area pain, and they did indeed hurt. I went back to goblets and they felt fine. Then I tried to do just a plain bodyweight squat and the pain appeared again. I just found that whole session very strange. Goblet squats and front squats are similar in style, both being front loaded, deep squatting exercises and only one caused pain.

Also to help with the other poster, I’ve recently switched to a Sumo DL to relieve some of the hip pain and because I don’t need to go down with my ass as much as I did with conventional DL’s, and that’s relieving the hip pain.[/quote]

Well your form might be different with the goblet, like maybe your feet are wider/narrower, your feet point differently, you go down farther/higher. Generally when I think front squats I think narrower stance, more forward toes and when I think goblet I think wider stance, forcing knees out. Any of those are possible, though if you have this impingement unless your stance is fairly different it doesn’t make much sense.

Kind of an side note, if anyone thinks they have this due to the pain/clicking, try to rotate your knee inward. Like, sit up with good posture, hands on knees, and push your knee toward the other. You will likely feel a lot of tightness/discomfort in the effected hip. You will know, trust me. Especially if you have a “good” hip.

So yesterday was Squat day in week 3 of Wendler’s 531 for me. I figured I would give the squats one last shot and see how things go. I didn’t do a long warmup routine, a few dynamic movements and then 2-3 minutes of hip/glute stretching with a band. The first couple warmup sets of squats I felt a slight pinch like usual, but a few sets later I could barely notice the pinch on my working sets. I contribute this to leaving my hip alone for the past week and not doing nightly stretching like I was prior to last week and also only squatting once a week instead of twice a week like prior weeks. I’m going to repeat this again next week and see if this is my savior or if it was just a one time coincidence.

Called the insurance company on Friday and was pretty mad at them, asked them why the hell it was taking so long to get approved only to find out they approved the surgery on March 14th. Called the doc office, they say the insurance company never contacted them and they will call me back after talking to the insurance company. Eventually it got settled and my surgery is scheduled for April 25th, I will be getting the impingement shaved down and the damaged labrum cleaned up/removed.

Right during dead week for school, so right before finals. Inconvienient, but I don’t want to wait any longer then I have to, and the week before I have 3 tests, 2 quizzes, and a project due so dead week it is. Have to get a CAT scan tomorrow, not sure why since I already have x-rays and an MRI, but doc says so.

My left foot (non-surgery hip) is still inflamed (injury over 4 weeks ago) and hurts, I am somewhat nervous because I need it to be healed by surgery day so I can walk on crutches.

For any of you that are going to get this surgery and have to get it approved by the insurance, make sure you call the insurance company after a couple weeks to see where they are. It saved me countless weeks of wasted time. I wish I called them a couple weeks ago when I first thought about it.

If anyone has any questions I am always happy to help.