Hip Flexor... Cycling Touring

[lostonhoth]

Hi,
This is my first post ever on this forum, pretty excited to see such a solid community online! I'm hoping some of you could help me out here. I take off for a cross country tour in 55 days... As of about 5 days ago I started having pain on the hip flexor region of my right leg. I am guessing it may have been strained riding, I went pretty hard one day last week. I have been doing some mild stretches and icing it when possible. I need help getting this thing healed and ready to go before this tour! I can't let this get in the way of this dream I have had for some time. Any recommendations? Anything helps!
Thanks guys and gals.

 

[doss]

Massage and stretch them quads Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[danfoz]

Welcome.

Ice isn't that helpful after 24 hours (most of the swelling/inflammation has already happened by then). Heat may actually be helpful at this point in time.

Gentle stretching, good nutritious food (plenty of vitamin C which helps with soft tissue repair), plenty of rest. And don't stress it to much as that hampers immune system function along with recovery and repair. Don't get back on the horse too fast, and don't push it again till you are really ready.

 

[swampy1970]

Originally Posted by lostonhoth
Hi,
This is my first post ever on this forum, pretty excited to see such a solid community online! I'm hoping some of you could help me out here. I take off for a cross country tour in 55 days... As of about 5 days ago I started having pain on the hip flexor region of my right leg. I am guessing it may have been strained riding, I went pretty hard one day last week. I have been doing some mild stretches and icing it when possible. I need help getting this thing healed and ready to go before this tour! I can't let this get in the way of this dream I have had for some time. Any recommendations? Anything helps!
Thanks guys and gals.

Where abouts in California are you? If you're in or around the SF Bay Area, there's always Psoas Massage and Bodywork - named after the irksome hip flexor...

The one stretch I find most effective is what is described in "stretch 2 - lunge stretch" - before the addition of the towel.

What I find to be more effective is after doing some of those stretches to loosen everything up, use the hip flexor (in this case on his right side) to pull up slowly from the stretch rather than pushing up from the quads on the left leg. The act of adding tension in a stretched state helps ease the pain for me nearly all of the time...

... and for those times that don't, I go to Psoas Massage and Bodywork - which is almost a 100 mile round trip, I might add.

If you want more details about the place, feel free to msg me. I know a couple of the therapists there and I've had a great experience with some and not so great with one in particular...
... and no, it's all legit - no happy endings. The happy ending is you walk out of there feeling better and if you do what they tell you then a couple of days later, you'll feel better still.

Spend some time stretching out and foam rolling the quads and hamstrings. Don't just roll back and forth on it - slow movements to ease the pain and then find a troublesome spot and just relax on it, until it relaxes. When it does, be prepared to support your weight as it'll be painful and your body will want to tense up again. I find that when I have a specific issue - say hip flexors are crapped out - I spend one evening just stretching as shown above, another evening just foam rolling the hamstrings and then another stretching the hip flexors again. A therapist can do this much faster but if you want to give it an honest hour per evening then you can do most of the grunt work yourself.