Fix Your Groin Strain On Your Own!

hey guys dr. Chris tienes today I am going to show you how to fix a groin strain on your own now it is baseball season here in New Hampshire which because of the fabulous weather that we have all year round is about this long so they cram a lot of games and a lot of practices into a very short period of time and because of that and some other things I actually am seeing a fair amount of people that come in with groin strains so what happens with a groin strain is that usually it's an over stretch injury right and you stretch it too far especially if it's not flexible which we'll talk about and then it gets pulled usually it gets pulled up towards where it inserts here or excuse me originates sometimes it can be in the belly of the muscle but a lot of times what I see is that this gets irritated because these adductor muscles are a little tight these hip flexor muscles are a little tight and there hasn't been a lot done to work on loosening those up so step one with this strain in the groin is that you don't want to stretch it everybody thanks but it feels really tight I just want to stretch it you just injured it by over stretching it so adding stretching on to that is not going to be helpful eventually when things heal a little bit and are not so uncomfortable then stretching will be appropriate but not yet truly what you really want to do is start with the ice start with a little rest okay then you can start doing some very gentle what we call cross friction massage so it actually helps save your hand I'm going to use the derma edge because your fingers get really tired this grip really helps kind of hold on there so you can use this little end or even that little curved surface and finding that tender spot and you'll feel it in there and then just kind of going back and forth right over that spot honestly until you go hey that's a little bit loose there you're getting in there a little bit more usually takes a few minutes there before you feel that so now we're just trying to avoid scar tissue build up and get blood flow going back in there so that means that after you do that little cross friction massage gently going down the length of that muscle again it has hatches at the knee so sometimes even knee pain can occur because of this really gentle I'm not pushing hard at all just to get that blood flow going okay so no deep tissue massage going on in here yet not right after that injury once you've done all of those things it should actually start to be feeling better and within a week or so you can probably start to add a little bit of gentle strengthening everybody is different though so make sure that if you still have a lot of pain in here you don't move on to this next part until this feels better okay so if we want to start those muscles activating again you can grab one of these lovely drugstore balls or you can grab a towel and roll it up or a pillow they're really really easy kind of jane fonda like you're gonna take and just squeeze into that ball please just like that about 15 to 20 fairly gentle to start you can hold for a little longer as things are starting to feel better and then if you really want to progress that I'm gonna grab a bigger ball squeeze right into there keeping a neutral spine in my bellybutton pulled in and then lower and this really works that whole length of that muscle there okay now that is as you're starting to come back so you do need to make sure that you're working the abdominals this whole time the glute muscles this whole time use a lot of times those muscles are weak to leading into that whole cycle now when things are finally feeling better and they maybe just feel a little tight and not sore then you're gonna go into the stretch and this is one of my favorite stretches for the groin so get a pillow if you need you to kneel on protect that knee and this is the injured side so this leg is gonna go out and you're actually gonna do three positions one with the toe up one with the toe in and then one with the toe out and if one feels a lot better than the other that's where you're gonna hold so your just start in this position that doesn't feel like much of anything then you can go ahead and kind of slide that hand down but gentle it shouldn't feel like this here push through that pain kind of thing that's bad okay just a gentle nice little pole a few times a day try to shoot for 30 seconds to a minute if you can if that's too much start out with shorter periods of time okay and that should get you back in to your playing season or just your regular activity so thanks for tuning in today and for more information on injury prevention injury treatment and nutrition and exercise check out my website at dr. Christian Escom thanks