Heal. Strengthen. Protect.

My hypermobility first started wreaking havoc on my hips around age 30. I didn’t know my pain was related to hypermobility at that time. After three kids and years of hand wringing, I finally sought help and discovered that I had labral tears in my hips. My hypermobility caused a lot of muscle imbalances and my right glute wasn’t firing and neither was my right quad. The muscles all around my hip were working overtime and had contracted to protect my loose hip joint and there was constant inflammation. I was having pain walking up and down the stairs and doing housework. Vaccuuming was the worst. I couldn’t lift groceries. I couldn’t carry laundry baskets up and down the stairs.

There was a lot of confusion. The MRI showed labral tears and I wasn’t responding to physical therapy after the first six weeks of treatment. I was given the option to continue physical therapy or pursue surgery. I opted for more physical therapy because I thought it was strange that my glute wasn’t firing. It had started to fire a little bit–I had woken it up and I was curious about how things might progress. My physical therapist was confused by my symptoms because stretching didn’t seem to work for me since I was already so flexible. We carried on and kept trying to strengthen all my weak muscles. After a further six weeks, my hip pain was still really bad and now it was constant. I was anxious of surgery, and decided to power through the physical therapy. I did a few more weeks of physical therapy, and just as I was about to pursue surgery, I did a deep tissue massage, deep, deep in my hip, right where it hurt the most. Viola! The relief was incredible! I turned a corner in physical therapy soon after and all my other muscles started firing! I cried tears of happiness.

How long did it take for your hip pain to go away?

It took about three months of physical therapy to get my glute to fire again. Four months in, and the front of the hip, just above the knee, started working again. I’d almost lost hope and was ready to get surgery–but then the surrounding muscles took over and my hip was able to relax! I don’t feel any pain anymore and am able to do all the things I used to do ten years ago!

What do you credit to your recovery?

I credit activating my glutes, my quadracepts, and my core muscles, and I credit deep tissue massage, and persistence. It’s important to get a feel for when you’re using the right muscle and when you are compensating and doing an exercise that’s supposed to be targeting a certain muscle, but your body is using another muscle instead. You need to request that your physical therapist tell you where exactly you’re supposed to feel the muscle being worked, or they won’t pick up on you compensating. It’s not enough to do the exercises; you need to stop yourself and ask: where am I supposed to be feeling this? Hypermobility created conditions where certain muscles were inactive and others were being overworked due to joint instability and hyperextension.

Doctors and physical therapists don’t receive a lot of training to work with people who are hypermobile. It’s true that they often see gymnasts and dancers with hypermobility, but generally these individuals are already in excellent shape, so the doctors and physical therapists don’t have to stray too far from their usual route of treatment to get these folks back on track following an injury. But non-athletes and people in their thirties, forties, fifties, sixties and beyond might have a more sedentary lifestyle, refraining from regular gym use, and not being mindful of balancing and strengthening the muscles surrounding their hypermobile and hyperextended joints. This is when issues start to crop up–issues that aren’t easily addressed if you apply the same physical therapy that you’d use for someone who wasn’t hypermobile who had a hip or knee injury. My hope is that with education, you can advocate for yourself and hasten your recovery.