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Biking for Hip Pain (that is probably a back problem)

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Biking for Hip Pain (that is probably a back problem)

Old 04-15-21, 08:27 PM
  #26  
DaveLeeNC
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Originally Posted by 70sSanO
So what are you doing to change your golf swing?

My experience with hip and back pain has been bike is good, golf is bad. I had an interesting situation where I found out years ago my left leg was slightly shorter. Easy fix for the bike, but for tennis, golf, basketball, etc., I just went about it without a thought. Started catching up with me in my late 60's to the point where walking pain free was tough, but riding was fine. Once I added a lift to my left shoes, my pain, "for the most part" went away. I'm not saying that is your issue, but if riding is pain free, it is not the bike and you'll need to address the other stuff you do.

My hip pain was also on the outside.

John
FWIW, I. Have not even attempted a practice session (or round of golf), since this showed up. dave
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Old 04-15-21, 10:03 PM
  #27  
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Originally Posted by DaveLeeNC
Re: Can I walk.

Anything that stays "centered without rotation" is fine. Anything else is maybe (or maybe not) a serious issue.

dave

Ps. I have been taking 15mg of meloxicam daily for years. This hip thing is new and not related to my meloxicsm script. . But it certainly is relevant to any other NSAID selection.
See a specialist - orthopedist. Sounds serious to me.
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Old 04-16-21, 06:13 AM
  #28  
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Originally Posted by Carbonfiberboy
See a specialist - orthopedist. Sounds serious to me.
Been there once and will be back on 4/28. dave
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Old 04-16-21, 09:12 PM
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Originally Posted by DaveLeeNC
Been there once and will be back on 4/28. dave
Good! Let us know how it turns out, please. Not that we care about you, just more information.
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Old 04-17-21, 06:52 AM
  #30  
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Originally Posted by Carbonfiberboy
Good! Let us know how it turns out, please. Not that we care about you, just more information.
This is disturbing. My hip is better. It is disturbing because I am traveling and it is better after 3 days off the bike. I do not want the solution to this issue to be less biking.

I am visiting family in TX. and my brother has set up an indoor golf range (mat, net, and ball sensor that outputs distance, direction, etc). I took 10 half swings without pain where earlier I could not even make a single backswing. We will see but this would not be the answer I am hoping for.

dave
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Old 04-17-21, 09:35 AM
  #31  
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Originally Posted by DaveLeeNC
This is disturbing. My hip is better. It is disturbing because I am traveling and it is better after 3 days off the bike. I do not want the solution to this issue to be less biking.

I am visiting family in TX. and my brother has set up an indoor golf range (mat, net, and ball sensor that outputs distance, direction, etc). I took 10 half swings without pain where earlier I could not even make a single backswing. We will see but this would not be the answer I am hoping for.

dave
Trying to be analytical . . . Let us suppose that you have an injury of some sort, say a tear. You've rested it, and it's begun to heal. You took some golf swings, and it was healed enough to withstand them. However on the bike it presents as an RSI. That all makes sense. The partially healed injury is damaged when it's subjected to thousands of small stresses, while a few stronger stresses weren't enough to damage it. I think the message is to continue to rest it. Then the issue becomes when does one know it's OK to resume activity - like riding? I'm no doctor and don't know the theory of healing muscle tears, but it seems to me that there's going to be a period of rest, followed by a period of strength training. I just have no idea of what defines the junction between those periods. So ask. My further guess is that cycling will not be helpful because it doesn't place the exact correct stress necessary for best healing performance. This stuff is complicated.

Here's an interesting link which talks about rehabbing a torn gluteus medius, but also talks about how a weak medius can contribute to patellofemoral syndrome, a connection I hadn't heard of before.
https://www.medbridgeeducation.com/b...luteus-medius/
And another article on exercises:
https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/...s-medius-tears
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Old 04-21-21, 11:49 AM
  #32  
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Go see your doc to find out what it is, or at least what it isn’t.

Your story is probably pretty typical in that riding more than an hour causes no discomfort but can’t even take a backswing to not riding and now you can take easy swings. In other words you have no clue.

And not to throw a curve, but if you take a statin, that can wreak havoc. I’m finding out cutting my normal dose in half has helped also. Should talk to a doctor first... do as I say not as I do.

John
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Old 04-21-21, 03:45 PM
  #33  
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I can relate. People are always suggesting I get a recumbent or crank forward, but the only thing that helps is cycling in a 45-50% bent position. Oddly, riding in an upright position makes it worse. I'm thinking the bent position spreads the discs in a way that is helpful as opposed to upright riding where it would compress them. I've found a rigorous stretching routine helps also along with a torture device (foam roller). I purchased a stretching machine from Valor to make it easy to do - - so I would actually do it - and I stretch every night before bed and first thing in the a.m. Takes 15 minutes. When I feel the hip starting to tighten up, I use the foam roller (damn, that mother hurts!!!). Usually, the combination of all 3 (cycling, stretching, rolling) keeps everything pretty happy. I rarely have to take Nsaids anymore. Surgery is a last resort and I want to hold it at bay as long as humanly possible.
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Old 04-21-21, 04:08 PM
  #34  
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Originally Posted by linberl
I can relate. People are always suggesting I get a recumbent or crank forward, but the only thing that helps is cycling in a 45-50% bent position. Oddly, riding in an upright position makes it worse. I'm thinking the bent position spreads the discs in a way that is helpful as opposed to upright riding where it would compress them. I've found a rigorous stretching routine helps also along with a torture device (foam roller). I purchased a stretching machine from Valor to make it easy to do - - so I would actually do it - and I stretch every night before bed and first thing in the a.m. Takes 15 minutes. When I feel the hip starting to tighten up, I use the foam roller (damn, that mother hurts!!!). Usually, the combination of all 3 (cycling, stretching, rolling) keeps everything pretty happy. I rarely have to take Nsaids anymore. Surgery is a last resort and I want to hold it at bay as long as humanly possible.
Your comments on position and your back is interesting. 4-5 years ago I ran into a serious issue WRT osteoarthritis and my right knee. It was ultimately 'contained' with a very expensive brace and periodic hyaluronic acid injections. I could ride for a while and then a steady ache would develop in my right knee. And riding hands free (where you are totally upright) was far more painful (knee pain) than anywhere else from the hoods to the drops.

Regarding my hip, I am doing my stretches, am back from a family trip to Tx. where I learned that a week off the bike makes not much difference, and am back to pedaling (somewhat cautiously) and awaiting my upcoming doctor's appointment.

dave
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Old 05-01-21, 09:00 AM
  #35  
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Just got my MRI (separate hip and back MRI's). I see the orthopedic doc in 5 days but I was able to see the radiologist's comments. In a nutshell there was not much apparent (soft tissues or bone) on the hip that was not age expected (as I read the comments). The lower back (L3-4 and L4-5) referenced multiple conditions using adjectives like severe and extreme.

So hopefully next Thursday I will know something useful and actionable.

dave
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Old 05-02-21, 03:24 AM
  #36  
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[QUOTE=DaveLeeNC;21963753. I am convinced that the issue is my back and that the forced straight back posture on a road bike is the reason that biking provides relief. The other day it got particularly bad, so I just got on my spinner bike (set up to match my road bikes) for 10 easy minutes. It helped.

dave[/QUOTE]

I'm almost 75 and have been experiencing an issue that I think might be a hip issue. Not sure but it's so minimal that I'm not aware of it most of the time. My road bike has a 3" drop from saddle to bars so there's no straight back for me. In the past my chiropractor has said that the bent over position is good for my spine.
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Old 05-02-21, 03:28 AM
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Originally Posted by linberl
I can relate. People are always suggesting I get a recumbent or crank forward, but the only thing that helps is cycling in a 45-50% bent position. Oddly, riding in an upright position makes it worse. I'm thinking the bent position spreads the discs in a way that is helpful as opposed to upright riding where it would compress them. I've found a rigorous stretching routine helps also along with a torture device (foam roller). I purchased a stretching machine from Valor to make it easy to do - - so I would actually do it - and I stretch every night before bed and first thing in the a.m. Takes 15 minutes. When I feel the hip starting to tighten up, I use the foam roller (damn, that mother hurts!!!). Usually, the combination of all 3 (cycling, stretching, rolling) keeps everything pretty happy. I rarely have to take Nsaids anymore. Surgery is a last resort and I want to hold it at bay as long as humanly possible.
Exactly what my chiropractor told me many years ago. He also showed me Williams Flexion exercise which is basically a stretch that spreads your vertebra.
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Old 05-02-21, 06:14 AM
  #38  
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Regarding pain and 'more upright' I have two independent data points here.

1) I have significant osteoarthritis in both knees, get hyaluronic acid injections in both knees roughly 2x per year, and wear a custom brace on one knee (could well be both soon). It keeps the cycling related pain to a manageable level, but that is getting harder year by year. On every ride I do maybe 1 minute of hands free cycling just to maintain that skill. As soon as I sit up to go hands free I start to feel (low level) pain in my worst knee (right).

2) At the same time as the sitting up in #1 above, I also start to feel discomfort in my left hip.

Note that one pain is clearly sourced in my knee and the other is (I believe) now identified as being sourced in my back. No upright bikes for me!

dave
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Old 05-03-21, 04:04 PM
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It's different for everyone, I think. When I sit for long periods, I'm more comfortable leaning back with my legs out or on a footstool. But when there's pressure on my parts, like when pedaling, forward leaning is the answer. It definitely has to do with the effort of pressing on the pedals as when I ride my bike with an electric motor (same bike just a motor installed) I can comfortably ride more upright. But then I'm spinning easily with very little pressure on my knees and hips. I may not get all the science/medicine behind it, but my body is VERY good at telling me when I get it wrong, lol.
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Old 05-06-21, 04:42 PM
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Well, here is the next chapter of the story. Sporadic hip pain led to the diagnosis of tendonitis in the gluteus medius. 3 weeks of physical therapy caused a significant degradation of my condition (I say caused because immediately after we started a certain type of PT strengthening work, pain increased and I never recovered from that).

Back to the orthopedic doc and we did an MRI of the back and hip and I got my review with the orthpedic doc today. I have pretty much nothing going on in the hip but a whole bunch of severe arthritic narrowing of both the main canal and foraminal openings between L3 and L5 (lumbar) plus a cyst in that area that all correlate exactly with the pain. So I am now under the care of 'the spine team' at Pinehurst Surgical and will be getting an epidural tomorrow and I have my first formal meeting with 'the spine team' team week. So far no one has told me that I cannot ride, so that is at least a positive. There is probably back surgery in my future but maybe not now.

I have written out 'my definition of success' and we'll see what 'the spine team' says about that. FWIW, I am trying to be reasonable here so I took 'set a world record in the dead lift' out of my definition of success

dave

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Old 05-07-21, 01:56 PM
  #41  
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Moved to Pills and Ills. Sorry to hear about your back / hip issues. Good luck and get better fast.
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Old 09-26-21, 08:18 PM
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I am the OP (DOB 1949) on this thread. I thought that I would update things in case someone down the road is doing research and stumbles into this thread.

In summary, I ran into sudden hip discomfort that did not affect my biking but was a big problem climbing stairs, I could not swing a golf club, and it sometimes just hurt. It was diagnosed as tendonitis of the gluteus medius (hip) and after the 4th week of a planned 6 weeks of PT, it was obviously worse. At that point an MRI revealed no hip issues of any consequence, but 'severe' spinal stenosis, foraminal stenosis, and a foraminal cyst. So it was off to the back doctor. You are now caught up with the thread :-)

Treatment started out as a spinal epidural plus some additional (somewhat different) PT. I don't think the PT was helpful other than possibly (if I keep it up) slowing down the inevitable degradation of this condition. However, a week after the spinal epidural I was roughly 90% pain free. Golf was not a problem although I did not risk walking and carrying my 25 pounds of golf stuff (which I had been doing pain free until Feb. 23 when this just hit me out of the blue). Biking had been and continued to be actually helpful - hip always felt better after a ride.

The epidural was in early May and by late June some of the pain symptoms began to return. The doctor was willing to repeat the epidural after 3 months, but from what I can determine repeated epidurals tend to lose effectiveness. I kind of arbitrarily set a personal target of 6 months between epidurals. Things just slowly kept going downhill from that point when about a month ago I had 4 REALLY good days out of the blue (where the heck did that come from) and since then the pain has kind of stabilized at the level it was at in late July (which is irritating but I can tolerate it and can still play golf out of a cart). So for now I am on track for getting to 6 months before my next epidural (that would be early Nov - wonderful birthday present to myself). And bike rides continue to be therapeutic - hip NEVER hurts after a bike ride.

And golf is interesting. I can now swing a golf club (which I could NOT do prior to the epidural) but cannot take more than maybe 20 consecutive full swings without sitting down for a couple of minutes - and then I am limited to about 10 consecutive swings before I have to sit again. Of course playing golf out of a cart (I MUCH preferred walking and carrying my bag, BTW) lends itself nicely to those necessary short periods of sitting (this sitting requirement is very common in spinal stenosis). But there are times when the natural rest periods in a round of golf are inadequate and, for example, I might look at the 60 uphill yards from the green to the cart and think "am I going to be able to do that?". So far I have been able to do that but there have been a couple of times where I was close to sitting out a hole just for some extra relief.

So that is where things stand. Once I get to the point where I need epidurals more often than every three months, start to feel lower body tingling or numbness, or I can't walk a couple hundred yards at a time then there will be serious discussion about surgical solutions (probably requiring some spinal roto-rooting in my case).

Just an update.

dave
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Old 05-09-22, 06:11 PM
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Another update for no particular reason other than it is quite unexpected (and a positive - not many of those on the health front lately). In summary I have spinal stenosis and 3 different doctors have affirmed that just treating the symptoms is the right path for now (surgery being the other path). So it is spinal epidurals no more often than every 3 months until that will no longer support my lifestyle - then we revisit surgery.

Round 1 of the spinal epidural was 90+% relief for 2 months, then a gradual decline until the 6th month when I could no longer live a normal (for me) life. So another spinal epidural at that time (and I should not have waited that long). It was 5 1/2 months ago when I got my 2nd epidural and it followed the identical path for the first 2-3 months. Then the worsening of pain stopped and actually reversed. At this point (5 1/2 months since the last epidural) my stenosis driven discomfort is basically 100% gone! Been that way for at least 6-8 weeks. I am not looking that gift horse in the mouth - just take the good news when it comes your way.

dave

ps. Following what my brother refers to as the 'old age pain migration' my shoulder is now limiting most of my riding to my indoor trainer. Still - shoulder problems are generally more solve-able than are back problems. Specialist appointment coming up (eventually - the best shoulder guy in the area is booked out a good bit).
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Old 05-10-22, 07:58 AM
  #44  
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I agree and I think I have the same condition. An 18 mile bike ride seems to really help whilst a 3 mile sidewalk stroll really aggravates things, even with nice walking shoes.
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