Encountered Problem : The Hip Click

For those of you that don’t know me well enough, I’ve been doing an activity called tricking since about 2001.  Looking back on it, 10 years a long time and it’s no reason why my knees hated me.  Anyway, tricking is basically a spawn of martial arts and gymnastics.  We are the losers that didn’t want to confine ourselves to any strict discipline and pay a boatload of money in the process.  We flip, kick, twist around like maniacs, for no purpose at all really.

Among this community (and martial arts community I may add) the hip click is considered a badge of honor.  Everyone has it, everyone gets it.  Most people refer to it as snapping hip syndrome.  For those of you that have had it, you know what I’m talking about.  For those of you that don’t know what I’m talking about, I hate you.

When I was rehabilitating my knee, something funny happened.   My snapping hip syndrome got worse.  It didn’t make sense to me, and it still doesn’t.  However, I’ve come to know what the main cause of it is.  The best course of action to prevent it from happening is to avoid the main cause.  It’s as simple as that.

A lot of times when we’re doing glute exercises, we like to put our hip into hyper extension. This is because we’re trying to get an immense glute contraction, but often times hyper extension isn’t even necessary.  In fact, hyper extension CAN’T occur unless the pelvis rotates to accommodate it, it’s physically impossible otherwise.

The click comes from doing too many things when our hip is in extension and externally rotated.  Many of you will start to do your hip stretches in this position and will need to toy around with turning your hip into your other leg.  Most people don’t like to do this because you, physically, won’t be as deep in the stretch.  However, you will, in fact, be stretching the hip more and your hip click will go away. Additionally, when doing your basic kicks, it isn’t uncommon for the hip to enter hyperextension during the follow through.