sore hip advice?

First of all, I would like to re-thank everyone who offered me advice on my hip pain. Here's a quick update for those of you who are interested and/or may have suffered a similarly injury of your own. Yesterday I went in to interview some doctors and physical trainers at the UPMC Sports Medicine Center (magnificent facility, by the way.) This is for my next GQ column, which is supposed to be on the active rehab of sports injuries. As with many of my columns, my editor was interested in having me serve as a guinea pig of sorts, and my recent hip pain seemed a perfect opportunity for the story's lead. I thought I was going to be given some stretching and strengthening exercises and be told to keep on swimming, etc., maybe at a somewhat reduced intensity. Instead, the PT (Pete Draovitch) and doctor (Marc Phillipon--both famous guys who have arthoscoped the hip joints and rehabed a ton of athletes like Greg Norman and Lynn Swan) did a bunch of hip manipulation (i.e., bend the joint in direction X, followed by "Does that hurt? How about this? And here?"), ordered an X-ray (which showed very minor "normal" arthritic changes), talked about having me undergo an MRI with some kind of dye injected into the joint, then finally concluded I have a combo of "capsular strain" and iliopsoas tendinitis. The likeliest cause is not the abductor Nautilus exercise I thought set things off, but rather the fly and breaststroke drills we've been doing tons of in practice lately. My joke in practice several weeks ago comes back to haunt me today--"Ah! My balls ache! My sockets are okay, but the balls ache!" If only I'd listened back then to the message the ball-and-socket joint had tried to tell me... From what I can gather, iliopsoas tendinitis is an inflamation of tendons that hook the hip flexors and other muscles to bones in the complicated hip joint. Anyone with an anatomy hobbyist mentality can read more about the latter condition at: www.emedicine.com/.../topic52.htm The bottom line recommendation I got from the doctor: two weeks off from any sports activity. No swimming, no weight lifting, no hiking around for hours at Kennywood Amusement Park with my sons, not even very much regular walking. Lots of sitting with ice, yes; but that's about it. At the end of this period, Dr. Phillipon seemed confident that the acute inflammation would have had a chance to die down, then I will be able to return for some rehab exercises to strengthen the compensating muscles, keep the joint more stable, stretches, etc. I can then return to swimming in a gradual way. I mentioned the USMS long course meet in August, and Dr. Phillipon said that if I take some time off now and prevent further aggravation, that shouldn't be a problem. If after two weeks I still have some pain, then they might have to do the MRI with dye to see if I maybe tore the labrum or other soft tissues inside the hip. This experience has made me want to reiterate a word of caution to my fellow borderline geriatrics. On the USMS forum, people have spoken about the Masters prerogative--i.e., depending on how your body feels, you can choose to opt out of a set, or avoid fly, or do anything else you think you need to do to prevent injury. As a diehard disciple of my excellent coach's, I admit that I have not always taken the various aches and pains of my fellow swimmers all that seriously. With the coach's help, and an unwavering belief that he is infallible in terms of swimming advice, I was able to have the best year of my whole swimming life last season. However, as great a coach as he is and will always be, I do think that his own youthful resillience and musculoskeletal magnificence (he's 31!) can sometimes perhaps blind him (well, not blind, but astigmatize him, maybe) to the vulnerabilities of the somewhat more mature (well, not mature, it's more like rotting) bodies of guys like me. I would like to reiterate a maxim of caution regarding physical exertion and the aging body: Anything that you have not done a lot of lately, don't do a lot of now. The kicking drills, for instance, though not nearly as strenuous as a set of 10 x 200s on 2:30 proved, for my body at least, way too much for my pathetic iliopsoas tendon to handle. I'm reminded of earlier in the season when the coach generously agreed to try to teach me the wave breaststroke on a thursday before a sunday meet. I'd entered the 200 *** for the first time in my life, and my goal was to try to make it into the local Y top 10. Well after an hour of whip kicking muscles I'd rarely remembered ever using, I was a little sore. But I thought nothing of it. That Sunday, I was warming up with some hyper leisurely breaststroke, my groin muscle pulled, and I had to withdraw from the 200 *** and the 400 im (because I could not kick any breaststroke at all.) There is nothing inherently wrong with any drills, wave *** stroke, etc. What I am going to try to do my best to remember, however, now and in the future, is that it's critical to work up to any new activity slowly and over a long period of time. Being in "great shape" is very specific to what you've trained for--any slight variations from what you are used to will recruit different muscles, tendons, cartilage, etc. And it's easy to dupe yourself into believing that because you're in "great swimming shape" these different-than-usually-recruited soft tissues will be similarly invulnerable to problems. As my own iliopsoas seems to point out, this is not necessarily true. Fortunately, the doctor said nothing about beer imbibing--so I will see my teammates this friday for pizza and beer. Thanks again for the advice. I should note that one fellow--name escapes me right now--prescribed exactly what the hip specialist said: 2 weeks out of the water, then very gradual return to activity. Thanks.

First of all, I would like to re-thank everyone who offered me advice on my hip pain. Here's a quick update for those of you who are interested and/or may have suffered a similarly injury of your own. Yesterday I went in to interview some doctors and physical trainers at the UPMC Sports Medicine Center (magnificent facility, by the way.) This is for my next GQ column, which is supposed to be on the active rehab of sports injuries. As with many of my columns, my editor was interested in having me serve as a guinea pig of sorts, and my recent hip pain seemed a perfect opportunity for the story's lead. I thought I was going to be given some stretching and strengthening exercises and be told to keep on swimming, etc., maybe at a somewhat reduced intensity. Instead, the PT (Pete Draovitch) and doctor (Marc Phillipon--both famous guys who have arthoscoped the hip joints and rehabed a ton of athletes like Greg Norman and Lynn Swan) did a bunch of hip manipulation (i.e., bend the joint in direction X, followed by "Does that hurt? How about this? And here?"), ordered an X-ray (which showed very minor "normal" arthritic changes), talked about having me undergo an MRI with some kind of dye injected into the joint, then finally concluded I have a combo of "capsular strain" and iliopsoas tendinitis. The likeliest cause is not the abductor Nautilus exercise I thought set things off, but rather the fly and breaststroke drills we've been doing tons of in practice lately. My joke in practice several weeks ago comes back to haunt me today--"Ah! My balls ache! My sockets are okay, but the balls ache!" If only I'd listened back then to the message the ball-and-socket joint had tried to tell me... From what I can gather, iliopsoas tendinitis is an inflamation of tendons that hook the hip flexors and other muscles to bones in the complicated hip joint. Anyone with an anatomy hobbyist mentality can read more about the latter condition at: www.emedicine.com/.../topic52.htm The bottom line recommendation I got from the doctor: two weeks off from any sports activity. No swimming, no weight lifting, no hiking around for hours at Kennywood Amusement Park with my sons, not even very much regular walking. Lots of sitting with ice, yes; but that's about it. At the end of this period, Dr. Phillipon seemed confident that the acute inflammation would have had a chance to die down, then I will be able to return for some rehab exercises to strengthen the compensating muscles, keep the joint more stable, stretches, etc. I can then return to swimming in a gradual way. I mentioned the USMS long course meet in August, and Dr. Phillipon said that if I take some time off now and prevent further aggravation, that shouldn't be a problem. If after two weeks I still have some pain, then they might have to do the MRI with dye to see if I maybe tore the labrum or other soft tissues inside the hip. This experience has made me want to reiterate a word of caution to my fellow borderline geriatrics. On the USMS forum, people have spoken about the Masters prerogative--i.e., depending on how your body feels, you can choose to opt out of a set, or avoid fly, or do anything else you think you need to do to prevent injury. As a diehard disciple of my excellent coach's, I admit that I have not always taken the various aches and pains of my fellow swimmers all that seriously. With the coach's help, and an unwavering belief that he is infallible in terms of swimming advice, I was able to have the best year of my whole swimming life last season. However, as great a coach as he is and will always be, I do think that his own youthful resillience and musculoskeletal magnificence (he's 31!) can sometimes perhaps blind him (well, not blind, but astigmatize him, maybe) to the vulnerabilities of the somewhat more mature (well, not mature, it's more like rotting) bodies of guys like me. I would like to reiterate a maxim of caution regarding physical exertion and the aging body: Anything that you have not done a lot of lately, don't do a lot of now. The kicking drills, for instance, though not nearly as strenuous as a set of 10 x 200s on 2:30 proved, for my body at least, way too much for my pathetic iliopsoas tendon to handle. I'm reminded of earlier in the season when the coach generously agreed to try to teach me the wave breaststroke on a thursday before a sunday meet. I'd entered the 200 *** for the first time in my life, and my goal was to try to make it into the local Y top 10. Well after an hour of whip kicking muscles I'd rarely remembered ever using, I was a little sore. But I thought nothing of it. That Sunday, I was warming up with some hyper leisurely breaststroke, my groin muscle pulled, and I had to withdraw from the 200 *** and the 400 im (because I could not kick any breaststroke at all.) There is nothing inherently wrong with any drills, wave *** stroke, etc. What I am going to try to do my best to remember, however, now and in the future, is that it's critical to work up to any new activity slowly and over a long period of time. Being in "great shape" is very specific to what you've trained for--any slight variations from what you are used to will recruit different muscles, tendons, cartilage, etc. And it's easy to dupe yourself into believing that because you're in "great swimming shape" these different-than-usually-recruited soft tissues will be similarly invulnerable to problems. As my own iliopsoas seems to point out, this is not necessarily true. Fortunately, the doctor said nothing about beer imbibing--so I will see my teammates this friday for pizza and beer. Thanks again for the advice. I should note that one fellow--name escapes me right now--prescribed exactly what the hip specialist said: 2 weeks out of the water, then very gradual return to activity. Thanks.