3 Myths About Post-Baby Hip Problems

If you’re like most people struggling with hip pain and discomfort, you’ve probably found yourself deep in the internet researching causes and cures and watching YouTube videos to figure out what, if anything, you can do to address your hip issues. 

If that’s the case, you’ve likely heard these 3 pieces of advice that are super common but, frankly, not helping anyone fix their hips. 

3 Myths About Fixing Your Postpartum Hip Problems

Myth 1: Hip Problems Are Just Part Of Life After Pregnancy

We’ve all probably heard this, in some form or another, from some well-meaning, but uninformed individual. They say the pain and discomfort you’re experiencing is just par for the course in your post-pregnancy life. Which basically means…You are just supposed to shut up and deal with it. 

This line of thought does NOT help postpartum women.

Yes, of course, your body changes during and after pregnancy. 

But it is NOT true that you have to deal with pain, discomfort, tightness or looseness in your hips forever. 

All of these symptoms are simply signs that your body is out of balance. When you rebalance your body, you will feel better! 

Please, do not just accept physical issues as a necessary part of your post-baby life. 

 

Myth 2: If you have hip problems, you just need to stretch. 

The second myth you’ve run across says that your hip issues would be solved by stretching alone. Hip stretches and hip openers are incredibly common suggestions given to anyone experience hip issues. 

But if you are struggling with post-baby hip tightness, odds are that tightness is serving a purpose in your body. 

Those hip muscles are tight because they are trying to stabilize the pelvis because other muscles aren’t doing their jobs. (i.e. you have muscular imbalances!) 

Most often, your hips tighten up because the core, glutes, and pelvic floor are weak and aren’t properly stabilizing the body.  

If the hips are desperately holding tight to stabilize the body, you create even more issues by stretching. When you stretch you destabilize an already unstable system. Because of this, you will likely feel tight again very soon after you stretched (and you might even feel tighter than you did before you stretched!!). 

For this reason, hip stretches, alone, are ineffective. You need to make sure you are also strengthening the muscles that provide stability for the pelvis (core, glutes, possibly pelvic floor) so that the hip muscles can safely relax.

 

Myth 3: To fix hip problems, you just need to strengthen your glutes. 

Finally, the third piece of common hip advice is that you just need to strengthen your glutes. 

Admittedly, the glutes are very important for overall hip health. When working with women to heal their hips, we spend a lot of time on glute strength. 

But it isn’t just about the glutes. 

The glutes are one part of a larger set of muscular imbalances. 

We have multiple muscles that are underworking, and multiple muscles that are overworking. 

And to make things even more complicated, some of those overactive muscles actually shut down glute activity and prevent the glutes from working properly (!!)

So you could work your glutes all day every day. You might see some improvement. 

But until you balance out the entire system of muscles surrounding the pelvis, you’re not going to stabilize your pelvis and feel better.