Lateral Hip Pain: Causes, Sleeping Tips and Exercises
Updated: Sep 5
At My Family Podiatry, we will often see patients struggling with hip pain. This pain can range from an annoying niggle through to debilitating pain during the day and night. But what are the causes of hip pain, and how can we effectively manage them?
Causes Of Hip Pain
Hip pain can result from a variety of conditions that affect the hip joint and surrounding structures. Some of the common causes are:
Hip Bursitis: This is inflammation of the bursae, small fluid-filled sacs that cushion the bones, tendons, and muscles around your joints. Symptoms can include pain when lying on the affected hip, weakness in the hip and glute, and pain on the outer hip or thigh that can extend to the lower leg.
Hip Osteoarthritis: This occurs when the cartilage in your hip joint wears down over time, leading to symptoms like joint stiffness, decreased range of motion, and pain that worsens with activity.
Gluteal Tendinopathy: This is a condition where the tendons of the gluteal muscles become damaged and inflamed, causing pain in the hip and buttock area.
These are just a few examples of issues that can lead to hip pain and imaging techniques such as X-ray or ultrasound may be required to confirm exact diagnoses.
Managing Hip Pain
At My Family Podiatry, we offer a range of effective treatments for the various conditions that cause hip pain, focusing on relieving pain, rectifying imbalances, and improving joint function.
Shockwave Therapy: This non-invasive treatment stimulates blood flow and tissue repair in the affected area and can help settle pain sensitivity. It is often considered by people who would rather avoid repeated cortisone injections, which carry their own risks including tendon weakening.
Orthotic Therapy: Custom orthotics can significantly improve the position and function of your lower limbs, helping correct biomechanical imbalances that contribute to hip pain. Our team will assess your gait and foot alignment to design orthotics specially tailored for you.
Exercise Therapy: Specific exercises can strengthen the muscles surrounding the hip joint, improving stability and flexibility, key in managing hip pain. Our team can develop a personalised exercise program to meet your specific needs and speed up recovery.
Collaboration with Other Allied Health Professionals: We strongly believe in the value of collaborative care and often work closely with other allied health professionals such as physiotherapists and chiropractors to provide holistic treatment plans.
Preventing Hip Pain
While treatment is crucial for managing existing hip pain, prevention is equally important to ensure that you're not battling recurring episodes of discomfort. Here are some strategies designed to prevent hip pain:
Maintain Proper Posture: One of the simplest ways to prevent hip pain is to maintain good posture. When standing, keep your weight distributed evenly between both feet and avoid slouching. When sitting, especially for prolonged periods, make sure your feet are flat on the ground and your knees are at a 90-degree angle. Good posture can go a long way in preventing undue strain on your hips.
Limit High-Impact Activities: Certain activities, such as running on hard surfaces or playing contact sports, can exacerbate hip problems. If you're already experiencing minor pain or discomfort, consider switching to low-impact activities like swimming or cycling that offer aerobic benefits without putting too much strain on the hip joints.
Choose Footwear Wisely: Wearing the right footwear is essential, especially if you're on your feet a lot. Shoes with good arch support can help distribute your weight more evenly, taking some of the load off your hips.
Incorporate Regular Exercise: Engaging in regular exercise is crucial for hip health. Exercise can help you maintain a healthy weight, which reduces pressure on your joints, including the hips. Certain exercises can also strengthen the muscles surrounding your hip joint, providing better support and reducing the risk of injury or pain.
Here are some exercises that can strengthen the muscles around the hip area, improving stability and flexibility:
Hip Bridges: Lie on your back with your knees bent and your feet flat on the floor. Lift your hips towards the ceiling while squeezing your glutes. Lower back down and repeat for 10-15 reps.
Clamshells: Lie on your side with your legs stacked and knees bent at 90 degrees. Keeping your feet together, lift the top knee as high as possible without moving your pelvis. Lower the knee back down. Perform 10-15 reps on each side.
Standing Hip Extension: Hold onto a chair or table for balance. Extend one leg straight back without bending the knee, engaging your glutes as you go. Bring the leg back to the starting position. Complete 10-15 reps on each leg.
By incorporating these exercises into your routine, you can improve the strength and flexibility of your hip muscles, providing better support to the hip joint and potentially reducing your pain.
Lateral Hip Pain: Pain on the Outside of the Hip
Pain on the outer side of the hip, sometimes running down the outside of the thigh, is called lateral hip pain. It is the most common hip complaint we see, and in most cases the joint itself is not the problem. It is the gluteal tendons where they attach to the bony point on the side of the hip, a condition now called greater trochanteric pain syndrome, or GTPS. Plenty of people still know it as hip bursitis.
The pattern is fairly recognisable. Pain lying on that side at night. Pain with stairs, hills and getting out of the car. Tenderness pressing on the bony point. Aching after a long walk rather than during it.
Because the driver is usually tendon overload rather than the bursa alone, treatments aimed only at the bursa often disappoint. Our hip bursitis and GTPS page explains how we assess and treat it.
How to Sleep With Hip Bursitis
Night pain is the symptom that pushes most people to get help, because lying on the sore side compresses the tendons against the bone.
Put a pillow between your knees when you lie on your side. This stops the top leg dropping across your body, which is what pulls the tendon tight over the bone.
Avoid lying on the painful side while it settles. If that is the only way you can sleep, a softer mattress topper reduces the direct pressure.
If you sleep on your back, a pillow under the knees can reduce the pull through the hip.
Do not sleep with your knees crossed or with the top leg hanging forward off the edge of the pillow.
These changes will not fix the tendon on their own, but they often improve sleep within a week or two, which makes the rest of the plan much easier to stick to.
Exercises for Lateral Hip Pain
Gluteal tendons respond to progressive loading rather than rest. Complete rest lets them weaken, which is why pain tends to return the moment you get active again.
Isometric hip abduction. Lying on your back or standing, press the outside of your leg gently against a wall or a band and hold for 30 to 45 seconds. Five repetitions. This is often the first exercise people can tolerate, because it loads the tendon without moving the hip.
Side-lying leg raises. Lying on your good side, lift the top leg slightly behind the line of your body rather than in front of it. Ten to fifteen repetitions.
Standing hip abduction. Holding a bench for balance, take the leg out to the side without leaning your body the other way. Ten to fifteen repetitions each side.
Bridges. Lie on your back with your knees bent, lift the hips and squeeze the glutes. Ten to fifteen repetitions.
Single-leg balance. Stand on one leg for 20 to 30 seconds, keeping the pelvis level. Three times each side.
Two things to avoid, because both compress the tendon: deep stretches that pull the knee across your body, and standing with your weight slumped onto one hip.
Build up gradually. Some ache during and after is expected when loading a tendon. Sharp pain, or pain that is clearly worse the next morning, means the load was too high.
When to Get Lateral Hip Pain Assessed
Book an assessment if outer hip pain has lasted more than two weeks, is disturbing your sleep, or is changing the way you walk. Hip pain can also come from the joint itself, from the lower back, or less commonly from a stress reaction in the femur, and those are managed differently.
At our Albany Creek clinic we assess hip strength, single-leg control, walking pattern and footwear, and treat GTPS with focused shockwave therapy, load management and a staged strengthening program.
If outer hip pain is disturbing your sleep or limiting your walking, it is worth having it assessed rather than waiting it out. Call My Family Podiatry on 07 3088 6116 or book an appointment using the button below.
