"Hip Impingement" and your options for addressing this "Squat Stopper"

Welcome back to the blog!!

Today we're we're moving up the chain from the knee to the hip. We're discussing femoroacetabular impingement a.k.a. "hip impingement." Anyone familiar with that "pinching" in the front of their hip with a squat, lunge, or while running has likely dealt with a "functional hip impingement" episode. If you have experienced this over a longer period of time, you should be evaluated for hip impingement syndrome.
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Hip impingement has gained notice in the sports medicine community specifically over the last 15 years as advancements in diagnostics and surgical procedures has led to increased people going under the knife. This is a syndrome that can be defined in really 2 ways; intra-articular and extra-articular impingement. Extra-articular refers to soft tissue impingement outside the joint, which could be muscular or nervous system in nature. Most commonly though, we are refereing to intra-articular issues which are further classified in to 3 sub-diagnoses;  a Pincer Lesion, Cam Lesion or Mixed Lesion. In a Pincer lesion the, there is bony overgrowth of the acetabular rim (the socket) that leads to decreased available motion for femoral head (ball) and increased "pinching" at the top of the joint with flexion. In a Cam Lesion, the overgrowth is on the neck of the femur and leads to an early contact between the acetabulum and head of the femur at end range.  Both of these can lead to increased shearing at the joint. They are often diagnosed both clinically with certain special tests as well as with both x-ray and MRI. However, recent studies have show that clinical tests are not as specific as we would like them to be for diagnosis, and imaging does not seem to have a direct correlation between evidence of a Cam or Pincer lesion and the presence of pain. 

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