Forums >Health and Nutrition>Strange hip / butt pain causing limp- got massage and almost gone next day!
Hi all
ran just under 8 miles on sat am, felt fine but woke at 3 am with pain in hip
sunday felt dull pain that caused huge limp which continued through mon and seemed to migrate to deep buttock
mon pm went for massage for first time that really hurt and did not seem to do much good but woke on Tuesday and Leg felt better, only slight pain and no limp
not sure what it was and want to start running again but do not want to aggravate or have recurrence
thoughts / suggestions?
thanks in advance
piriformis syndrome is one possibility, speaking from recent personal experience.
- Joe
We are fragile creatures on collision with our judgment day.
Could also be (as in my case) a proximal hamstring issue.
MTA: I may be referring to the same thing as Joe under a different name.
probably just a muscle cramp/spasm.....massage....stretch....keep running
Don't make excuses for why you can't get it done.
Focus on all the reasons why you must make it happen.
Healed Hammy
Watch the symptom like any injury possibility. I had what I thought was pirformis pain and managed it for 10 months till the Proximal Hamstring tore off the bone last week. Now in a hip brace after surgery and on crutches for 6 weeks. I had a dull ache/pain deep in the but. Rolling on a lacrosse ball helped a little. I continued to run through it. The MRI showed a complete tear on my right side and a partial tear on the left side. I also had dull pain on the left side, but was able to control it by sitting on a pillow.
Your situation is different, but not unrelated. Basically monitor the pain, if stretches for piriformis and rest do not help, then do not ignore the issue. Your sports doc may have some insight if the pain does not go away, but do not let it linger.
I was able to walk after my full tear with a considerable limp, by 5 days later it was not bad and I thought I could run. I took 3 steps and realized there was still pain and discomfort. Two weeks post injury I was walking without a limp, but also walking with a torn hamstring. So the symptoms subsided, but the issue remained. Its important to reattach the hamstring in the first month or sooner, success drops off much quicker after that.
Feeling the growl again
It is hard to nail this down as there can be many causes. But it sounds very much like mine, so I will share.
With increasing frequency over the past few years, I'd get a pain which I'd considered to be piriformis syndrome. Stretching did not help an awful lot. At first if I ran very fast for a few intervals, it would hurt like hell but then the next day it was like I had torn something loose and it would be 100% gone for months.
This changed starting about a year ago. It didn't go away, and none of the piriformis fixes helped at all. I did not run much from February of this year until late September due to this issue. Every run, and especially the hours after the run, was a painful experience. Best guess is the sciatic nerve on my right side would get irritated, the muscle around it inflame, and eventually my hip would basically lock up and pain shoot down from my hip to me knee.
One night my wife suggested she try a massage. It was one of the more painful experiences of my life as she found some knot around the sciatic nerve/piriformis area and broke it up. But within 48 hours I was running pain-free and proceeded to run 100 miles in a week.
Since then, about every 5-7 days the issue will start building again; I am not fixed. Once it starts, ANY activity that requires movement -- including walking -- will continue to make it worse. So re-do the massage where she snaps some inflamed muscle I can feel back and forth over the surface of another larger muscle, and like magic I am fixed again (it's not so painful now!).
I don't know for sure what it is, and a visit to a doc and a chiro produced no answers other than I have nothing wrong visible on X-ray and doing core exercises does not fix it. As long as the massages work I've given up finding a real (and expensive) answer.
"If you want to be a bad a$s, then do what a bad a$s does. There's your pep talk for today. Go Run." -- Slo_Hand
I am spaniel - Crusher of Treadmills
As a follow up to Spaniel above, both his and my case may be more extreme than yours, but having more information is better.
I too suffered from that butt pain for quite a while. I believe I suffered the initial strain from running hill sprints and an interval session a week later only 4 months into my running career and my muscles and tendons were not hardened yet. We can debate actual causes, but the symptoms remain.
In hindsight, the uncomfortable feeling in both my butt cheeks actually was a partially torn proximal hamstring tendon. Confirmed by an MRI (x-rays do not show soft tissue damage), both tendons were partially torn and my fall when running was the event that tore the right side off.
So be careful, I think the typical protocol for a partial tear is rest and rehab. I would caution Spaniel on the same, although he is a much more experienced and knowledgeable runner than I.
And this is why you have to try and figure out what you have before following anyone's advice. Mine isn't related to my hamstring, totally wrong location. Prolonged rest is of no help (I took a month or more completely off).
As a follow up to Spaniel above, both his and my case may be more extreme than yours, but having more information is better. I too suffered from that butt pain for quite a while. I believe I suffered the initial strain from running hill sprints and an interval session a week later only 4 months into my running career and my muscles and tendons were not hardened yet. We can debate actual causes, but the symptoms remain. In hindsight, the uncomfortable feeling in both my butt cheeks actually was a partially torn proximal hamstring tendon. Confirmed by an MRI (x-rays do not show soft tissue damage), both tendons were partially torn and my fall when running was the event that tore the right side off. So be careful, I think the typical protocol for a partial tear is rest and rehab. I would caution Spaniel on the same, although he is a much more experienced and knowledgeable runner than I.