Have you followed the initial hip flexor treatment procedure? If so, you’re in the right place; this article will help you learn about the time needed to heal muscle tears and ways you can speed this process up.


After the P.R.I.C.E. procedure is applied, you need to rest before you can move on to regaining your strength; the length will depend on the severity of the strain.

A first degree hip flexor strain will take at least 2 weeks to fully heal, while a second degree pull typically takes up to 6 weeks.  Keep in mind that your injury is probably somewhere in between first and second degree, so your recovery time should be about 2-6 weeks.  The next article in this series will give you tests to determine when it’s ready to move on.

Now nobody wants to sit around doing nothing waiting for their hip flexor injury to heal,  so what can we do to make it heal faster?

Heat

In order for muscle tissue to repair, cells continually need to bring resources to the area that is damaged, in this case the hip flexor.  To help this process we use heat; before we go any further please take precautions with heat, if something is too hot it will burn your skin, which will prolong your recovery by making repair resources go towards healing the skin as well.

To heat the area properly, you can use either a heating pad, or soak in a warm bath or hot tub.  Again, I would like to re-iterate taking precautions with the heat, use a towel around a heating pad if needed, and raise the temperature of a bath/tub slowly.  Heat is a very effective tool that could reduce your hip flexor injury healing time significantly.  You should aim for 20-30 minutes of heat 1-2 times a day, any more and you risk damaging the skin.

Scar Tissue From Your Hip Flexor Injury

Even if you aren’t doing any strenuous activity, you still use your hip flexor in minor ways when you walk or move around in general.  Any activity when a muscle is injured will result in a build-up of scar tissue, even though there will not be much if you aren’t doing physical activity.  Scar tissue is weak tissue that the body can make quickly to help the function of injured muscles, but since it is weak it leads to chronic re-occurring Hip Flexor pain in the future.  To prevent scar tissue from accumulating there are two methods available:

Light Massage

Light self-massage can be applied to work the tissue surrounding the hip flexor injury;  the stimulation of the tissue will aid blood flow which as mentioned before is a positive, and it will also breakdown any minor scar tissue that has formed, which should be minimal if Phase 1 was followed.

Foam Rolling

Foam rolling is great for loosening the muscles and breaking down knots of scar tissue.  This isn’t just for the hip flexor, but for any muscle group in general.  Rolling will not have to be done very often, but it is beneficial to do 2-3 times a week for a short time period.  Please refer to the prevention phase article for a detailed guide on foam rolling.

If you would like to read more about the hip flexor anatomy and function before continuing, refer back to the hip flexor information homepage. Otherwise please continue to phase 3 of hip flexor injury treatment for the third part of this series.