Addressing the other side of the hip

See how one hip joint is lower?

So for the past, I don’t know, 6 years or so I’ve been addressing the pain in my right hip.  PRP seemed to repair the torn labrum as well as stabilize the joint in dramatic fashion.  When physical therapists examine both hips, they find that my right one moves better than my left one.  Also, when I lam hanging out in the bottom of a squat I notice that my right hip joint is lower (I.E. moving better) than my left.

Now that Dry needling has finally released all those painful adhesions in my groin, I’m pretty much pain free on the right side. Sometimes I feel some pain in my gracillis (pain in the inguinal crease, gets worse when I try to raise my leg). But I’ve noticed when I do some work with the softball on my piriformis area it seems to go away.  So with regards to my right hip, I think I’ve got things about as good as it’s going to get (almost no pain while doing heavy lifts).

But one sensation that I’ve always been dealing with is pain/tightness in my lower back on the left side. It would usually flair up every once in a while, (I mean, almost five years ago I was thinking it was a kidney infection) but now that I’m back to deadlifting it’s always there. Either that or I just got used to it and it took a while to realize something was wrong.  I find my L5 is almost always out of alignment, and when I twist my torso one way it hurts that side, but when I twist the other way there is no pain.  So I’ve started thinking about my left hip.  I know the psoas on that side is always really tight, nowadays it’s tighter than the right side.  I also remember that the MRI came back with the diagnosis of bilateral FAI both cam and pincer type.  That means that the FAI was also going on in my left hip. And to finish it all off. I spent MONTHS of PT trying to get my left hip working correctly so that I would pass the Thomas test AND the Ober’s test. 

So all of this information points to the fact that perhaps my left hip should be addressed.  I’ve tried PT and that really didn’t do very much at all.  However, perhaps one or two prolo treatments will tighten everything back up? I’ve decided that while I’m down in Austin to see Dr. Fullerton about my shoulder I might as well find out my options for my hip. 

I don’t expect to get anything done when I’m down there for my first visit. For one, I might be going alone so I have to be able to drive back up to Dallas the day of the treatment, and I don’t think I could do that if he shoots up my hip.  Secondly, with my shoulder labrum healing I will probably be restricted from doing pretty much any upper body exercise. I’m hoping he will give sprinting the green light and I’ll join the local sprint club here in Dallas.  If I’m going to be able to sprint for exercise, I doubt getting prolo treatments for the hip will be allowed. …However since there isn’t a torn labrum being treated here perhaps I won’t be limited in what I can do with my lower body three days out from a treatment.

I have a lot of questions, but I am hoping that treating my left hip will help balance things out, and perhaps stop the lingering muscle tightness in my right hip. Only three more weeks until I see Dr. Fullerton!!!

Note to Future Self

Next month I’m going to use prolotherapy to treat my shoulder.  It’s been a ridiculously long journey to finally find the root of my shoulder/neck issues, but I seem to be near the end of it.  However, even though stabilizing my shoulder is necessary to get stronger a part of me is still really, really not looking forward to limiting my upper body strength training.  Yesterday I just overhead pressed 140#s easily, and my arms are looking bigger/better than they have in a long while, if ever.  The idea of no bench press or overhead press for like 3 months is scary, but I know treating my shoulder is the only way I can get rid of the constant pain in my neck/shoulder.  So to help remind me of how bad my current situation is, I decided to write down a day in the life.

• Wake up, crack neck from sleeping on my side/back.
• Figure out which ball to use to try releasing the knots in my neck, back, and arm.
• Try desperately throughout the day try to release various knots, sometimes being successful.
• Always feeling pressure in my inner ear, like I need to decompress my left ear ALL THE TIME!!!!!
• Sometimes crack my neck again, feeling the temporary relief as various muscles relax for a time.
• Feeling the mechanics of my left arm differ from the mechanics of my right arm in any pressing movement.
• Looking in the mirror and seeing more of my left trap than my right (I have noticed this since high school and if this fixes that it will be a great relief)
• My left shoulder muscles giving out on my near the 10^th rep of something heavy because they are already waaaay too tight and can’t be pushed any farther.
• This simple knowledge that I know something is wrong with my shoulder, sitting in the back of my mind the whole time.

All these things just wear me down, day after day. It’s so much of my routine I don’t even think about it now, but I want to be able to look back and remember exactly what I’ve overcome.

If this prolotherapy treatment works like I think it will, I will be in a much, much, much better shape.  I’m going to make video entries documenting my progress. I want the whole world to know about prolotherapy and how well it works as an alternative to surgery for damaged labrums.