Anyone deal with Ischial Bursitis? Tips on getting over it NEEDED!

Berkgal33

Have been dealing with both trochanteric and Ischial bursitis now for going on 4 months. Brief history....started bothering me about 4 months ago. After 6 weeks it was getting pretty bad, after another 2 weeks I saw the Dr. 2 weeks of prednisone kicked the trochanteric bursitis, helped the Ischial some, but it was still pretty painful. Had a cortisone shot there (that was fun) and it has helped, but it still hurts. I stretch my hips twice a day, see a chiropractor who has helped it immensely but it still bothers me. I go to gym 4-5 days a week and cardio every day I am there. I rarely bike anymore although that's my favorite. I need some help as I am going on vacation to the Canary Islands, am supposed to go hiking volcanos, and walking up inclines HURT. Any and all advice would be so appreciated.

canadianlbs

i'm not sure if i have the same thing you do - not diagnosed atm so what i'm saying could be completely irrelevant.

but i've had something wrong with one hip for about the same time and some of what you described sounds very familiar. can't bike uphill anymore after more than a decade of doing exactly that. can't squat without making it nuts. nervous of deadlifting now. basically, anything that could excite that area between my trochanter and ilium makes me nervous, because i can wake it up with one or two misplaced moves and then be dealing the craziness for two days. and i know my entire glute complex has suffered from it, but i can't do any of the standard activation moves for those muscles without also activating whatever is wrong.

so what i've been doing instead is my own thing. if i poke around back there for my own self, i discovered i can physically locate my own trochanter and it's way too palpable - and very very unstable compared with the right hip, iyam. i can fit my own fingers into the space between them. i quit stretching because actually imo that hip is already too mobile for its own good.

i do this thing now where if it's bothering me i put all my weight on the opposite leg so the muscles are slack. then i reach around and find that 'space'. and then i concentrate on just trying to shorten the gap. i sort of 'suck' my hip back into position until i find something that's comfortable. then hold that for a couple of seconds; relax and repeat. i've been doing it because it makes the immediate problem feel better, basically a loose hip back there seems to be irritating all the soft tissue around the trochanter especially.

but i'm also noticing that finally, after months of trying other things, a week (so far) of this one little trick has palpably thickened all the glute muscles and it's getting harder to get my hand into that 'slot'. i suspect that if i showed it to a physio they would say something like 'well duh. you're activating and strengthening your deep hip rotators'. and i probably am, but all i know for sure right now is that it's helping more than anythign else atm.

tl;dr: eccentric contraction of any muscle attached to my femur still causes trouble. but concentric contraction - shortening the muscle even more when it's not already stretched out - that's what's helping. it's counter-intuitive when all the talk is about stretching and mobility nowadays, and people mostly assume that if somethign is hurting you then it's too tight.

but hypermobility is pretty bad for you too and i think that's what i have. certainly approaching it from that pov is helping tons more than anything else that i've tried. good luck.

Berkgal33

Thanks. I feel like it's very similar to what I have, and I have noticed a definite decline in my strength on that side. I will give your "method" a try! Thank you again for the response.