February 21, 2025 • 9 mins
In this episode of the Golf Fitness Bomb Squad Podcast, Chris dives into a listener question from one of P4S’ diamond members about nagging pain in the front and side of the hip—especially during squats. He breaks down the common culprits behind this discomfort, like declining rotational mobility as we age (a key factor since squats demand internal hip rotation), and explores whether it’s a soft tissue problem, a joint issue, or even a movement pattern glitch like anterior tilt. Chris shares practical solutions, from soft tissue work to heavy band techniques and joint-focused fixes, offering golfers actionable steps to squat pain-free and boost performance. Whether you’re battling hip stiffness or just want to move better, this episode is packed with expert insights to keep you swinging strong!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Welcome to the golf. In this bomb squat, I'm your host,
Chris spin and today I wanted to take a question
from one of our diamond member Q and A. So
we have our highest level of programs, limited spots, you know,
like you know, less than fifty people in the across
the world that are part of this, but we do
a Q and A every single month, where with myself
(00:30):
and my leadership team, there's some really good questions that
come out of it, and so today I wanted to
cover one from one of our guys. Mic. It was
just a super it was just a great question. Actually
Doc had this question too, and basically having pain in
the front and outside of the hip where it feels
like the wording of it right, it feels like the
(00:52):
femoral head or what could you know could be it
work because think of it like on the side of
your hip is kind of where the hip pain is,
and it's they feel it when he does like a
goblet squat and if he stops doing it, then he
feels like it's better and then you know, basically asking
how to increase the hip mobility. So I think that's
(01:13):
a commonplace the front or side of the hip is
a common place for people who have hip pain to
have it. I think it's it's a good question to
dive into a little bit in terms of if you
do have hip pain when you're squatting, is you're trying
to get stronger for the game of golf, you know,
what are some signs that either like, hey, you may
we may need to like look out for this maybe happening,
or if you're already having it happen, how can we
(01:35):
kind of keep an eye on it and help you
resolve it. So this is you know, first of all,
I think when you think of squatting, you're basically closing
down the front of the hip capsule. So the best
analogy I could use is, like if you trying to
think it, like if you have like a piece of
paper like in a door, and you like close the door,
(01:55):
the paper kind of gets squished and like bends when
you close it, right, And if you open up the door,
there's a lot more space to fit in the door, right.
That's kind of what happens when you squat is that
door kind of closes in the front of the hip,
and so there's you know, there's labor them, there's tissue,
there's muscle, there's lots of stuff there, and particularly as
you get older, there can be arthritic kind of bony
growth that's going on around there that you could not
(02:17):
have a lot of space in the front of that hip.
It can also just be genetic based on how deeper
or shallow your hip capsules are. So there's lots of
different reasons why this could be troublesome. Right the common
reason why it'll be troublesome for guys as they get
older is that there's a lack of internal hip range
of mobility, so the tissue locks down and then the
(02:38):
joint doesn't have as much space. So a lot of
people don't realize is when you squat down, there's actually
an internal rotation occurring at the head of the femur
or basically the hip. You know the thigh bone word,
it attaches into your hip, and so if you naturally
don't have a lot of mobility up in there, that
can increase the pinching. So a lot of times what
we will look at is how do we do some
(03:00):
soft tissue work the tens or foshi lotu or the
TfL which is those we have no idea what the heck,
I just said, it's not a language. If you're sitting
in your car listening, or sitting in a chair somewhere
at the office and you're supposed to be working, glad
you're listening to me instead. But if you're sitting down,
if you kind of put your thumbs kind of right
in like your hip pockets, you'll feel that little muscle
(03:21):
kind of right on the you know, just the top
front of the hip, maybe a little bit to the side.
There's a little little kind of probably a little tender
area there that you can find, particularly if you play
golf that tends to get tight. That's a muscle that
can tighten up. It's one of the there's a number
of different hip flexers. So these muscles pull your knee
like if you're picking your knee up off as you're
standing and you pick your knee up to stand there
(03:42):
to step over like a little fence or yea, for me,
it's stepping over all the toys my children leaveing around
the house. You're using your hip flexers every time you
pick that foot up off the ground in front of
you to step over something. So the TfL is one
of those, and it also as those get tight. There's
also get tight obviously as you're sitting because they're in
a shortened position, so then when you go to stand up,
they have to lengthen. And unfortunately for us as golfers,
(04:05):
we tend to just in the Western world, we sit
a lot, and those muscles tend to get tight, and
they also get tight the more we rotate into the
trail into the lead side, those muscles kind of start
to tighten up a little bit too. So one of
the most common soft tissue areas where we will start
to look at is that those areas all the hip
flexers TfL, which is kind of in that hip crease.
(04:26):
There's a deeper hip muscle called the so as and
aliacus which kind of run from the spine down underneath
the underneath like the inside of the hip into the
thigh bone on the inside. Those are all muscles that
kind of get locked down. It can cause some lack
of space to occur in the front of the hip
the other so that'd be the soft tissue, right. So
you can do some soft tissue work with either hands
(04:48):
on or you can use hurricanes or lacrosse balls softballs
to massage, and we'll make sure we link to some
videos on our YouTube page on some of these releases
because they're just tough to describe in a audio format.
But if you go to the shout out so I'll
make sure the team, we've kind of put a couple
just simple like a video to the TfL release and
a video to the SOIZ released, and that'll a least
(05:09):
give you guys some visuals where you can kind of
have a little bit of a resource. So definitely check
that out so you have a visual on that. But
that would be kind of the two most common soft
tissue issues that we see now. If it's a bony issue,
and you can test this, like if you see a
therapist knows what they're doing, they can feel it's called
a hard end feel versus a soft end feel. Hard
end feel is like you open your door into your
(05:31):
house and slams on the wall. It's not going to
go anywhere any further, just bounces back at you, right.
A soft end feel is it's kind of like it's
kind of end, but I can kind of push it
a little bit more, kind of squish it in a
little bit more. That's generally more tissue based. So what
it's hard I mean, you run into bone. Now, the
only way to open that up is surgically to go
in and you know, shave the bone basically if there's
(05:53):
additional bone growth. Those sorts of things. Now you can
try to do the tissue work, and then you can
get into joint distractions. You can use heavy bands for that.
There's lots of really cool drills that we do. A
lot of our people in house, a lot of our
members that we work with remotely as well, can get
into that as well too. You just need a like
a rig or something heavy to anchor the bands on,
so you know, pull over like a bannister in your
(06:14):
house or something, because they're pretty like one hundred plus
pound band resistances that you're actually using to distract the
joints and create space. So those would be kind of
the mechanical reasons why that would potentially happen. You could
also get into a movement reason, which would be the third,
which is as you squat down, you know, does your
your pelvis basically what's called an anterior tilt. Is it
kind of you think of if your archer you're standing
(06:35):
up and then you like stick your butt out by
arching your back. That's an anterior tilt that can help
happen as people squat a lot of the times, particularly
if you're loading like a barbell on your back or
the weights behind you, then that can cause the front
of the hip space to close down as well. So
those would be the three three like mechanical ways that
that can happen. Now, couple like things that you can
(06:55):
do to try to address at Number one would be
going a goblet squat, so you hold the weight in
front of you. That's going to tend to keep your
spine angle more upright, which would create a little bit
more space in the front, make you less likely to
anter your pelvic tilt. You obviously can get your hip
mobility better, which would which obviously would give you more
space there. Now, if all of that doesn't work, then
I would start to look at what's the depth because
(07:17):
then I'm starting to think, I wonder how mechanical this
actually is in terms of there's an actual bony block
and you know, we're not going to fix that unless
we know go in surgically right and if you know
in this question it was like it's caused by doing
gobba squats and stopped if it you know, if I
don't do it right. So then I'd say, well, how
deeper you got right? So we'd look at how deep
(07:38):
somebody's gone, because the deeper somebody goes, eventually it's gonna,
you know, the hip space closes more and more the
deeper you got right. So maybe there's somebody who does
a high box squad. Maybe we look at do lunges
like an exercise alteration. Could we do single leg lunges
or step ups, something that doesn't require that same squat
movement but still would be a knee dominant move that
(07:58):
would help us to improve our ability to push force
into the ground. And then the the ultimate like big question.
I'd always the first questions like does it hurt when
you do anything else right? And if literally the only
thing and only time, the only thing that makes it hurting,
The only time hurts is when you're squatting and doing
gobble squads, which is you know you have if you
have a heel lift, so you have enough ankle mobility,
and like, no matter what adjustment we make, it's still
(08:20):
irritates it with squatting. Then I'm going to go look
at what are some other alterations that we could do
in terms of single leg work, step ups, you know, lunges,
those sorts of things, or we can do could we
do a high box squad so you don't go as deep.
Maybe it's a depth issue. That's how you kind of
think through if you're having those sorts of issues with
your with your hip when you're squatting. So hopefully that
helps a little little technical today, but hopefully that those tactics,
(08:41):
you know, technical tactics will will help anyone who's having
those issues kind of start to navigate that. And you know,
as always, if you guys have any questions, you know,
reach out. You know, we happy to chat with you.
You don't charge anything for the consults on the phones
and zoom and we can give you more information. That'll
be great. So as always, guys, thanks for so much
for hanging out with me here on the golf that
is else Black and I look forward to catching me
(09:02):
on the next episode.
Welcome to the golf. In this bomb squat, I'm your host,
Chris spin and today I wanted to take a question
from one of our diamond member Q and A. So
we have our highest level of programs, limited spots, you know,
like you know, less than fifty people in the across
the world that are part of this, but we do
a Q and A every single month, where with myself
(00:30):
and my leadership team, there's some really good questions that
come out of it, and so today I wanted to
cover one from one of our guys. Mic. It was
just a super it was just a great question. Actually
Doc had this question too, and basically having pain in
the front and outside of the hip where it feels
like the wording of it right, it feels like the
(00:52):
femoral head or what could you know could be it
work because think of it like on the side of
your hip is kind of where the hip pain is,
and it's they feel it when he does like a
goblet squat and if he stops doing it, then he
feels like it's better and then you know, basically asking
how to increase the hip mobility. So I think that's
(01:13):
a commonplace the front or side of the hip is
a common place for people who have hip pain to
have it. I think it's it's a good question to
dive into a little bit in terms of if you
do have hip pain when you're squatting, is you're trying
to get stronger for the game of golf, you know,
what are some signs that either like, hey, you may
we may need to like look out for this maybe happening,
or if you're already having it happen, how can we
(01:35):
kind of keep an eye on it and help you
resolve it. So this is you know, first of all,
I think when you think of squatting, you're basically closing
down the front of the hip capsule. So the best
analogy I could use is, like if you trying to
think it, like if you have like a piece of
paper like in a door, and you like close the door,
(01:55):
the paper kind of gets squished and like bends when
you close it, right, And if you open up the door,
there's a lot more space to fit in the door, right.
That's kind of what happens when you squat is that
door kind of closes in the front of the hip,
and so there's you know, there's labor them, there's tissue,
there's muscle, there's lots of stuff there, and particularly as
you get older, there can be arthritic kind of bony
growth that's going on around there that you could not
(02:17):
have a lot of space in the front of that hip.
It can also just be genetic based on how deeper
or shallow your hip capsules are. So there's lots of
different reasons why this could be troublesome. Right the common
reason why it'll be troublesome for guys as they get
older is that there's a lack of internal hip range
of mobility, so the tissue locks down and then the
(02:38):
joint doesn't have as much space. So a lot of
people don't realize is when you squat down, there's actually
an internal rotation occurring at the head of the femur
or basically the hip. You know the thigh bone word,
it attaches into your hip, and so if you naturally
don't have a lot of mobility up in there, that
can increase the pinching. So a lot of times what
we will look at is how do we do some
(03:00):
soft tissue work the tens or foshi lotu or the
TfL which is those we have no idea what the heck,
I just said, it's not a language. If you're sitting
in your car listening, or sitting in a chair somewhere
at the office and you're supposed to be working, glad
you're listening to me instead. But if you're sitting down,
if you kind of put your thumbs kind of right
in like your hip pockets, you'll feel that little muscle
(03:21):
kind of right on the you know, just the top
front of the hip, maybe a little bit to the side.
There's a little little kind of probably a little tender
area there that you can find, particularly if you play
golf that tends to get tight. That's a muscle that
can tighten up. It's one of the there's a number
of different hip flexers. So these muscles pull your knee
like if you're picking your knee up off as you're
standing and you pick your knee up to stand there
(03:42):
to step over like a little fence or yea, for me,
it's stepping over all the toys my children leaveing around
the house. You're using your hip flexers every time you
pick that foot up off the ground in front of
you to step over something. So the TfL is one
of those, and it also as those get tight. There's
also get tight obviously as you're sitting because they're in
a shortened position, so then when you go to stand up,
they have to lengthen. And unfortunately for us as golfers,
(04:05):
we tend to just in the Western world, we sit
a lot, and those muscles tend to get tight, and
they also get tight the more we rotate into the
trail into the lead side, those muscles kind of start
to tighten up a little bit too. So one of
the most common soft tissue areas where we will start
to look at is that those areas all the hip
flexers TfL, which is kind of in that hip crease.
(04:26):
There's a deeper hip muscle called the so as and
aliacus which kind of run from the spine down underneath
the underneath like the inside of the hip into the
thigh bone on the inside. Those are all muscles that
kind of get locked down. It can cause some lack
of space to occur in the front of the hip
the other so that'd be the soft tissue, right. So
you can do some soft tissue work with either hands
(04:48):
on or you can use hurricanes or lacrosse balls softballs
to massage, and we'll make sure we link to some
videos on our YouTube page on some of these releases
because they're just tough to describe in a audio format.
But if you go to the shout out so I'll
make sure the team, we've kind of put a couple
just simple like a video to the TfL release and
a video to the SOIZ released, and that'll a least
(05:09):
give you guys some visuals where you can kind of
have a little bit of a resource. So definitely check
that out so you have a visual on that. But
that would be kind of the two most common soft
tissue issues that we see now. If it's a bony issue,
and you can test this, like if you see a
therapist knows what they're doing, they can feel it's called
a hard end feel versus a soft end feel. Hard
end feel is like you open your door into your
(05:31):
house and slams on the wall. It's not going to
go anywhere any further, just bounces back at you, right.
A soft end feel is it's kind of like it's
kind of end, but I can kind of push it
a little bit more, kind of squish it in a
little bit more. That's generally more tissue based. So what
it's hard I mean, you run into bone. Now, the
only way to open that up is surgically to go
in and you know, shave the bone basically if there's
(05:53):
additional bone growth. Those sorts of things. Now you can
try to do the tissue work, and then you can
get into joint distractions. You can use heavy bands for that.
There's lots of really cool drills that we do. A
lot of our people in house, a lot of our
members that we work with remotely as well, can get
into that as well too. You just need a like
a rig or something heavy to anchor the bands on,
so you know, pull over like a bannister in your
(06:14):
house or something, because they're pretty like one hundred plus
pound band resistances that you're actually using to distract the
joints and create space. So those would be kind of
the mechanical reasons why that would potentially happen. You could
also get into a movement reason, which would be the third,
which is as you squat down, you know, does your
your pelvis basically what's called an anterior tilt. Is it
kind of you think of if your archer you're standing
(06:35):
up and then you like stick your butt out by
arching your back. That's an anterior tilt that can help
happen as people squat a lot of the times, particularly
if you're loading like a barbell on your back or
the weights behind you, then that can cause the front
of the hip space to close down as well. So
those would be the three three like mechanical ways that
that can happen. Now, couple like things that you can
(06:55):
do to try to address at Number one would be
going a goblet squat, so you hold the weight in
front of you. That's going to tend to keep your
spine angle more upright, which would create a little bit
more space in the front, make you less likely to
anter your pelvic tilt. You obviously can get your hip
mobility better, which would which obviously would give you more
space there. Now, if all of that doesn't work, then
I would start to look at what's the depth because
(07:17):
then I'm starting to think, I wonder how mechanical this
actually is in terms of there's an actual bony block
and you know, we're not going to fix that unless
we know go in surgically right and if you know
in this question it was like it's caused by doing
gobba squats and stopped if it you know, if I
don't do it right. So then I'd say, well, how
deeper you got right? So we'd look at how deep
(07:38):
somebody's gone, because the deeper somebody goes, eventually it's gonna,
you know, the hip space closes more and more the
deeper you got right. So maybe there's somebody who does
a high box squad. Maybe we look at do lunges
like an exercise alteration. Could we do single leg lunges
or step ups, something that doesn't require that same squat
movement but still would be a knee dominant move that
(07:58):
would help us to improve our ability to push force
into the ground. And then the the ultimate like big question.
I'd always the first questions like does it hurt when
you do anything else right? And if literally the only
thing and only time, the only thing that makes it hurting,
The only time hurts is when you're squatting and doing
gobble squads, which is you know you have if you
have a heel lift, so you have enough ankle mobility,
and like, no matter what adjustment we make, it's still
(08:20):
irritates it with squatting. Then I'm going to go look
at what are some other alterations that we could do
in terms of single leg work, step ups, you know, lunges,
those sorts of things, or we can do could we
do a high box squad so you don't go as deep.
Maybe it's a depth issue. That's how you kind of
think through if you're having those sorts of issues with
your with your hip when you're squatting. So hopefully that
helps a little little technical today, but hopefully that those tactics,
(08:41):
you know, technical tactics will will help anyone who's having
those issues kind of start to navigate that. And you know,
as always, if you guys have any questions, you know,
reach out. You know, we happy to chat with you.
You don't charge anything for the consults on the phones
and zoom and we can give you more information. That'll
be great. So as always, guys, thanks for so much
for hanging out with me here on the golf that
is else Black and I look forward to catching me
(09:02):
on the next episode.
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